Exhausted by the inexhaustible people of Qianmen Street

“The taste of childhood!” it says on the Beijing shopfront. And admittedly, as I bite into the candied haw, or Tanghulu, I am reminded of the toffee apples I once enjoyed as a child.

However this traditional Chinese street food, made from skewering tart hawthorn berries on a bamboo stick before encasing them in sugar syrup, could not be more different.

Neither could the bustling Qianmen Street and Dashilan be more different from Perth’s Hay Street Mall.

Beijing is home to nearly 22 million people. And right now, on a late Friday afternoon in summer, it feels like every one of them has converged on this popular cultural and commercial part of the city’s Xicheng and Dongcheng districts.

There is an old poem about Qianmen Street which goes: “The green and the red are setting off each other on both sides of road; it is a busy street with happy and inexhaustible people.”

It’s these happy and inexhaustible people who still flock here in their thousands every day to enjoy the markets and other shops selling wares ancient and modern.

Dongcheng takes in the eastern half of the old imperial city and many of Beijing’s most famous landmarks including the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and a section of the Grand Canal.

Xicheng district by contrast is home to many of China’s most important government institutions, including the headquarters of the Communist Party of China, the National People’s Congress, the State Council, and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

So you could say there’s a lot to see. Unfortunately my two travelling companions and I, who had just shut up shop at the Beijing International Book Fair before deciding we’d treat ourselves to a few hours sightseeing, hadn’t fully comprehended the nightmare that is Friday peak hour traffic in Beijing.

Therefore, a couple of hours later, we jump out at Qianmen Street and plunge into the vast sea of humanity, content to spend the next hour or so just taking in the sights and sounds here and in nearby Dashilan.

The former dates from the Ming Dynasty; the latter, from the Yuan Dynasty, boasts Ming and Qing courtyard houses and hutongs, or narrow laneways. The former is famous, amongst many other things, for its Quanjde Roast Duck and its markets; the latter for Tongrentang (a Chinese medicine company) and such speciality stores as milliner Ma Ju Yuan and shoemaker Neiliansheng.

Upon arriving, I also note the Zhengyangmen Archery Tower (1419), which lies at the southern end of Tiananmen Square along Beijing’s central axis, and the northern end of Qianmen Street.

Along with families, couples and others out for the night, we dart from shops specialising in pickles and books to purveyors of alcoholic beverages and cosmetics, stopping just long enough to grab another snack in the form of a Great Wall yogurt (delicious!) before calling for another taxi back to our hotel.

Back in my room, I flop on the bed, utterly exhausted — but happy.

+ Will Yeoman travelled to Beijing as a guest of the Fableration Foundation. They have not influenced this story, or read it before publication.