Wangfujing is a very modern, hip, touristy part of Beijing. Besides the Night Market, they have the Beijing Apple store:
yes, it's advertising the 5C. Even though the 6 had come out, and they are made in China, they still have to wait like a year or something until they can buy them.
They also had a ton of these little candy shops everywhere:
and almost all of the candies are some kind of individually wrapped hardened gel candy with almost all of the flavors patterned after various fruits or plants. Pumpkin, tomato, strawberry, etc. You point to the ones you want, and a lady behind the counter adds them to a bag. When you are done, they heat seal the bag closed, weigh it, and you pay based on the weight. I got a bunch of random flavors like peach, jujube, tomato, pear, white gourd, etc.
There was another night market alley down the way which was a lot less touristy. The server/cooks were not all dressed in the same uniforms, and the prices were lower. Time to crush some more skewers!
Had one of those squid things on the far right. It was about as tasty as you'd expect. Didn't even catch typhoid, how lucky.
These little spiraled potatoes were amazing:
You know how pinapple spiralers spiral pineapples? Same concept, except a potato. Then it gets deep fried on a skewer.
This little side street market was super crowded:
and had a few items the more touristy one did not, including these little birds:
they were labeled as quail, but who knows.. I was pretty stuffed by the time I found these and never got around to trying them. For all I know their innards were still inside.
Still have no idea what this one was:
I think it was pork? Or some kind of terrible beef? It was one of the most popular ones, and people were buying them six sticks at a time, so of course I loaded up as well. One thing I have learned while traveling is that if a food cart or whatever is swamped, go get in line. That pile of red dust was some kind of chili powder which the loaded sticks got rolled in.
There were also a few sit down areas:
but I stuck mostly to the stalls.
Managed to get a sweet video of these scorpions wiggling around on the sticks:
I'd say about 40% of them were still alive and fighting. Yes, those are seahorses there, too. They were all long dead. Google wangfujing night market and watch the youtube vids if you want to see the scorpions in action.
The squid were probably my favorite of everything:
and that seemed a common assessment, they were the most common thing I saw people eating. I think I took down 5 of them while I was there.