Beijing Eats author Eileen Wen Mooney has started her own blog, eileeneats - much like the book, she writes about Chinese cuisine beyond your everyday jia chang cai - everything from Guilin rice noodles to the delights of duck soup and recipes for meicai kourou (steamed pork belly with meigan cai).

Check it out here.

The ultimate English language guide to Beijing's Chinese restaurants is finally here! It’s called Beijing Eats – A Food-Lover's Companion to China's Culinary Capital, and it guides you to 140 of Beijing’s best Chinese restaurants, covering 31 regional and historic cuisines.

This is the book that plugs you into Beijing like no other guidebook can. It’s fully updated every year, which means that the 2009 edition is about Beijing today – not the pre-Olympics capital, but the city outside your window right now. Every listing (hotels, restaurants, galleries, tourist sites, bars, shops, businesses and more) has been individually checked and updated.

Though we wish that we could rave as fondly about something in the Chaoyang-Lido Fall 2008 Area Guide as we did about No More Bunz in the Sanlitun Area Guide, the truth is … there are so many new venues, and most of them are all so expensive – a little above the humble map correspondent. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop us from faithfully adding them to our area guide: we plough on, regardless of financial crises or epidemic, in order to bring you the best of Chaoyang-Lido.

Our coverage of the Chaoyang Park West Gate neighborhood is more thorough than ever before. Would anyone care to hazard a guess at the number of hot pot restaurants in the vicinity? Or the number of different broths available? Don’t let Block 8 or the Apartment 8 complex (八号公馆) fool you into thinking that everything there is all expensive – there’s some delightfully cheap Beijing treats at Er Yue Er, and of course, the giant baozi at An Die An Niang are fantastic in the early morning hours. The luxury-minded can try role-playing as an emperor or empress at Jiajingdu Roast Duck. Just think, for RMB 199 and up, one can experience groveling respect and worshipful awe – for some of us, this will be the first and only time in our lives. A moment to savor indeed.

Solana brings much great shopping – especially for parents – to the Chaoyang Park area. Expecting parents or those with young kids should check out Mothercare, a comprehensive UK store with all sorts of maternity and children’s clothing and equipment. Ice cream at Romana or Cold Stone makes a great reward for good behavior while Mom and Dad check out new clothes, while an ice skating rink and movie theater should be great attractions on their own. And don’t forget about Chaoyang Park just across the water.

The new American embassy seems to have subtly altered the neighborhood of Super Bar Street (Xingba Lu). Instead of the seedy bars of yore, we now have fewer seedy bars and more homey little Japanese restaurants. Indeed, the whole street now feels like a mini-outpost of Anjialou. We’re slightly envious of the new American embassy environs: instead of being neighbors with Maggie’s and Steak and Eggs, they now have everything from delicious hummus (Biteapitta) to great Japanese (Takenosuke) to fresh Cantonese seafood (Fu Rong) to even Austrian pastries (Cafe Amadeus) at their fingertips.

Shunyi is rapidly developing and transforming, as new shopping plazas and malls make suburban life more convenient than ever. Pick up Immersion Guides’ new Fall 2008 Shunyi Area Guide to discover the area’s latest health clinics, restaurants, schools, shops and more. What’s more, we’ll also help you get around, with revamped roads and new additions – like the Jingcheng Expressway and the spur leading to Capital Airport’s Terminal 3. 

Once one of the few Western-style shopping centers in Shunyi, Pinnacle Plaza now is joined by Europlaza, Lakeview Place and the not-yet-opened Harmony Walk Mall. These will provide not only staples like organic groceries from Lohao City and baby supplies from Leyou Kids, but also conveniently located medical services such as Beijing United’s dental clinic and the New Century Children’s International Hospital.

Gone are the days when you could only get bland American diner food in Shunyi. Now, in addition to those same old American restaurants, a host of new restaurants have brought spicier flavors to the neighborhood, with options ranging from Mexican to Thai. More unusually, Shunyi now has its first Middle-eastern and South African restaurants. Lakeview Place in particular makes a good dinner destination, as many restaurants are clustered around its man-made lake.