beijing street food.

i'm pretty sure it was about an hour after we left the peking duck place

that the team i was with in beijing went to visit a food market.

hmmm... i thought. a food market ?

yes, i could definitely go for a bag of chips or a slice of pizza.

do you think i found chips or pizza ?

no.

what was on sale at the food market was this kind of stuff.

small sharks on sticks

or snakes on sticks or what are those things ? bugs ? lavae ?

oooh... what the heck are they ?

they look like they might be sweets you know, those milky things,

some with lemon tops, some with cola tops.

but i think they're probably some internal part of a fish or reptile.

any ideas ?

these looked pretty normal.

some sort of meat i guess.

or how about these things ? 

they look pretty safe.

some stalls had menus so you could at least see what was on offer.

once i saw chips weren't featured i pretty much lost interest in eating

oh. somebody buying a starfish on a stick

what the freak !

who is going to fancy eating a giant centipede on a stick ?

i mean, obviously if the kebab shop is closed at 2am i guess you'd go for it

but this was at 6pm or so.

deep fried spiders ?

you wouldn't find these delicacies in glasgow.

oh dear... cockroach kebabs anybody ?

like me, most of the people there were more interested in taking photos than eating.

i certainly hadn't seen anything worth tucking into.

then all of a sudden i spotted a stall selling cups of potato faces

i didn't think i'd see any happier faces than these at the food market.

until i saw this little lad with an unidentified meat kebab in one hand and 

an octopus tentacle kebab in the other.

it was with a heavy heart and an empty stomach that i waved goodbye to the food market

and headed back to my hotel ( and to a burger and chips from room service )

what ?