The alley streets of Nanluoguxiang

    Located just a few blocks from our Beijing hotel was Nanluoguxiang, an alley that featured many shops and restaurants that catered to tourists from all over. It became a good place to hang out after our days out and about. You never knew what else you might discover next with the ever-changing street vendors that would come out at night. From adult costumes of Pikachu and Stitch, to iPhone style lighters to that awesome blue laser that I really wanted to buy but was not available the final 3 days I was there. You could always find something of interest. 

   Some of the food located on the street was more of the exotic kinds of things I had initially expected when first arriving in China. On one evening, I participated with Ivan (too big for China) in a Man vs Food challenge. I found most of the items edible except for the last (squid??) one. I also tried some of the tourist favorites such as the nutella crepes, coconut milk with tapioca(?) and their shakes and smoothies. As a smoothie expert, I have to say their strawberry banana was tasty, but their plain strawberry just did not pass the test. 

   One of things I found fascinating is the sudden transformation at night with the street vendors. You see all these cars driving through all these pedestrians. In America, that car would probably never get one block, but here in China, it is just an accepted fact that there are people and cars sharing the same road and they are able to navigate from one end to the other. But these cars are how many of the street vendors bring in their wares for sale. Some would park along the street and some would just drop off. This would happen from about 8-9:30pm. They would then spend the next few hours selling and then right at midnight they would break it all down and head out. By 12:30am it was like a ghost town. but there was one night at about 11:15 pm that it seemed like an evacuation and all the street vendors were in a panic and trying to pack and get out as fast as possible. They were just throwing everything into boxes and bags and almost running out of the area. It was a few minutes later that I saw like 10-15 police officers walking down the street. Could it be that these street vendors were breaking the law? Or maybe they did not want to be harassed?? If only I could have asked for the reason. Anyhow that made for an early evening and a failed attempt at locating an item of interest for me.