After the wall, the driver dumped us out at a nice restaurant somewhere between Mutianyu and Beijing. Naturally, nobody there spoke Chinese, and I found out the hard way that “Kung Pao” isn’t pronounced like that in China, as the waitress had no idea what I was trying to say.
Sparing us from picking randomly, as the menu was all in Chinese and we didn’t bring a guidebook (foolish), the waitress picked two dishes, the second being a large dish. We babbled enough to get two beers — 750ml YanJing if I recall. Or TsingTao (which is pronounced chin-dao). The food arrived…. beef with breen and red peppers! Yum! This was just what I wanted. And then we were served a fish dish… large meant two full fishes (including the heads!) cooked in a soy-base sauce. Also yummy! — you just had to watch out for bones.
Time came to leave, and the waitress gave us the check… we then tried to ask how much it was, as I didn’t see a total. They brought out 48 RMB… and yes, 48 RMB was at the bottom of the receipt in Arabic numbers, so we could read it. So 48 RMB it was… totally shocked me! That’s just cheap… like about $7 for two beers and two big plates. Wow!
Sadly, I have no idea where this place is, nor its name, as I asked the driver when we arrived back at the hotel and he didn’t know. D’oh! I’ll post some pics that Nick took, perhaps we can deduce the name from them. Doubtful, but ya never know.