Taste of Dadong: Great Duck, Accessible Prices, Shoddy Service

The latest restaurant from titan of Beijing's food world Da Dong offers a literal taste of his famous innovative Chinese cuisine and excellent Peking duck. Taste of Dadong, located on the basement level of Parkview Green, is a fast food, populist reinterpretation of the brand's other branches, the large space buzzing with diners calling in for a quick lunch.

A Few Words With: Badr Benjelloun, Manager at Cuju Moroccan Bistrot and Rummery

This year our 2015 Reader Restaurant Awards have four personality-based categories: Best Chef, Best Manager, Restaurant Personality of the Year, and Food Entrepreneur of the Year. During the voting period that runs through March 8, we’re profiling a few of this year’s crop of nominees.

Oh So That's Where Your Missing Mail Goes

Over the past decade or so of living in China I've learned that if you really need to get something from Point A to Point B, don't count on the China Post to get it there.

When parcels went missing in transit, I usually just chalked it up to complicated inter-country logistics or perhaps poor penmanship: I often wondered if local postal employees could read my English chicken-scratchings or my American relatives' mangled attempts at ridiculously long Pinyin romanizations or even worse, Chinese characters.
 

Even More New Flights, More Passenger Misbehavior, and Becoming a Four Seasons Beijinger

Same ol' same ol' in the travel world, it seems. 

Travelers from China went everywhere during Spring Festival, and The Wall Street Journal wrote about it here. During the holiday, Chinese airlines operated about 60,000 flights, up 7.8 percent over 2014. If you flew, you noticed it. 

A Few Words With: Dave Bob Gaspar, Manager at Home Plate Bar-B-Que Sanlitun

This year our 2015 Reader Restaurant Awards have four personality-based categories: Best Chef, Best Manager, Restaurant Personality of the Year, and Food Entrepreneur of the Year. During the voting period that runs through March 8, we’re profiling a few of this year’s crop of nominees.

Bibigo: Kimchi, K-pop, and in the Running for Best Korean

Beijing is nuts for Korean pop culture, and this goes well beyond the ability to break into a spontaneous horse trot upon hearing “Gangnam Style”. No, be it pop music, soap operas, fashion, and even cuisine, Beijing is obsessed by the contemporary culture of its relatively tiny northeastern neighbor.

Wolf Totem Accused of Misrepresenting Mongolian Culture

Wolf Totem, the popular film directed by French director Jean Jacques Annaud, has been criticized by Guo Xuebo, a renowned Chinese novelist and member of the China Writers’ Association, for misrepresenting Mongolian culture.

The film depicts a Beijing student, Chen Zhen, being dispatched to Inner Mongolia to work in 1967. During this time, his connection to nature strengthens and he learns more about wolves and their relationship with humans, later deciding to raise a wolf cub.