Fair Food Prices

Food culture

Beijing's day starts with a dedicated breakfast ritual rather than a scaled-down dinner — carts selling jianbing, doujiang (soy milk), and youtiao (fried dough sticks) line hutong corners in the early morning and are usually eaten standing up on the way to work, a completely different rhythm from the sit-down meals that come later in the day. Daily grocery shopping for many residents still runs through small neighborhood wet markets and hutong shops rather than supermarkets, though hybrid stores that combine a wet-market seafood counter with a supermarket and an eat-in kitchen are increasingly where younger locals go instead. The price gap is widest around Peking duck, where the same basic pancake-wrapped duck can be a quick counter meal or, at an old-guard restaurant with tableside carving, a full formal occasion. Guijie ("Ghost Street") near Dongzhimen runs on an entirely different rhythm of its own — a strip of hot pot and spicy crayfish restaurants that operates around the clock and stays loud and busy well past midnight.