Travel Maven blog

Eating Peking duck in Beijing, China

When i was growing up, Beijing was known in the United States as Peking, which is a more English version of the name. In junior high school, I suffered a teacher who called the city Beiping and spelled it Peiping. All of these names have some legitimacy, but the city is now Beijing, capital of the People's Republic of China.

Still, the code for the Beijing airport is PEK, and if you want duck cooked the Beijing way, you look for  Peking duck on restaurant menus.

Duck was my goal on a recent evening in Beijing. My hotel, called Opposite House (more on that later), recommended Da Dong, a local chain of 10 restaurants, one a walk of about 15 minutes from the hotel, which made a reservation. I was glad for that, as the Da Dong line with 6:30 p.m. reservations was about 15 minutes, while people without a reservation numbered at least a dozen, crowding expectantly around a woman who called out names from three lists like she was offering buys on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. When I left Da Dong about 8 p.m., the cluster of waiting diners had increased.

Inside the restaurant, activity was no less frenetic. Diners talked on cell phones. Waitresses shouted food and drink orders. Quietest were the duck carvers, men in white who wore protective masks over their mouths and rubber gloves. They continuously sliced and piled portions of duck onto plates lined with lettuce, and I wondered how many ducks daily meet their demise for the diners at Da Dong.

I ordered half a duck, Caesar salad and a beer. The yellowish salad dripped with too much dressing, and the draft beer was overly frizzy. But the duck was terrific -- tasty, moist and not at all fatty. Total bill was less than $25.

My waitress showed me how to eat Peking duck, wrapping the meat in steamed pancakes with thin strips of onion, radish and cucumber on a bed of sweet noodle sauce.

I folded a pancake using my hands. The waitress deftly tucked it all together with chopsticks.

"Cleaner than using hands," she said. Next time.

For the latest on cruises, destinations and insights for travels, go to THE TRAVEL MAVENS.COM

New flights from New York to China take an icy route

If you look at the world as a fat round ball, and your eyes move east and west, New York and China are half a globe apart.

But if you view the Earth from above the North Pole, perceptions change.

Flying north from New York, over the polar ice cap of the Arctic, brings China nearly as close to New York as it is to Los Angeles on a route across the Pacific Ocean. When you compare flights to China, Los Angeles is only a few hundred air miles closer to Beijing than New York is to Beijing. 

That's why Continental Airlines now flies north on its three daily non-stops from its New York hub in  Newark, N.J., to three China cities, Beijing, Hong Kong, and the latest, Shanghai, which began March 25.

Continental is the first U.S. carrier with daily service to Shanghai from New York, linking two of the world's top financial centers at a time when finance is on the world's mind. The flight, on a Boeing 777-200, leaves Newark at 11:20 a.m., arriving in Shanghai the following day at 1:45 p.m. The return flight departs Shanghai at 3:45 p.m. and arrives at Newark the same day at 6:20 p.m.

Flying times are approximately 14 hours and 30 minutes in each direction. Movies and music are available in English and Mandarin, as are instructional videos. Menus are in English and Chinese. Continental has offered special fares at Continental.com

I am on a one-week journey from Newark to Beijing, then back to Newark from Shanghai. A highlight of the flight from Newark was the view over the polar ice cap out the window -- ice as far as I could see, with occasional cracks and ridges, and the horizon that clearly showed the curve of the Earth.

For the latest on cruises, destinations and insights for travels, go to THE TRAVEL MAVENS.COM