It was the summer of 2018.
The before times, if you will.
Back when it was still possible to uproot one’s self and travel abroad, without an inordinate fear of death by plague, or of being locked away indefinitely in a government-run quarantine facility.
As for me and my team, we’d recently done just that. The traveling circus which so munificently allows me to remain in gainful employ had, in all its wisdom, dispatched us to the sprawling metropolis of Beijing (北京) for a long-term engagement.
At the time, Beijing was a smoggy, crowded megacity, with over 20 million documented residents. Our troupe’s arrival was fraught with a certain amount of culture shock— we quickly discovered that Beijingers, though lovely people, tended to speak English only infrequently. This made communication extremely challenging, no matter how loudly nor clearly we shouted. Undaunted by such obstacles, we ventured out on the town, armed with nothing more than a roll of toilet paper and a knockoff Pinyin Rick Steves guidebook. After hailing a cab, I flipped the book open and pointed a finger towards one of the city’s most popular tourist sites, shoving it in the driver’s face to indicate where he should haul us.
Which is how we ended up on Wangfujing Street (王府井大街).
Arriving at lunchtime on a sweltering summer Saturday, we found the place packed. Our small group was swept up in a crowd of thousands, the cigarette-smoking mob carrying us past the massive shopping malls and high-end retail stores, towards the narrow confines of the legendary Wangfujing Snack Street (王府井小吃街).
From the entrance, it was obvious that this was a food court of a different breed. Long before we discovered the stalls with more common fare, local delicacies like roast duck wraps, barbecued lamb skewers and bricks of fried tofu, the vendors up front captured our attention with their exotic fare.
I’m talking silkworms.
Roast donkey.
Seahorses.
Scorpions.
And all manner of insects, some of them still alive and crawling, ready for consumption by the most discriminating gourmands.
I’m not ashamed to report that after a period of browsing, my group ended up dining on some of the Wangfujing Snack Street’s tamer fare— plus one Happy Meal from the massive McDonald’s across the street. And, barring a single incident in which an upstanding representative of the Chinese law enforcement community was unintentionally stabbed with a meat skewer by a member of my party, the outing was a fairly quiet one.
And then, some months later, the whole damn world went crazy.
As a result, several members of my entourage found themselves stuck away from Beijing for a time. Fortunately, the dust eventually settled, and our cast members had the opportunity to return. As our tumultuous engagement in China drew steadily towards its inevitable conclusion, we chose to embark on a farewell tour of sorts, spending the last several months saying a proper goodbye to our favorite places.
But when it came time to re-visit Wangfujing Street, and the (now-masked) taxi driver again put us out at the curb, it was somewhat troubling to see just how much the Snack Street had changed.
In short, it was no more.
A cold wind blew down the narrow alley. Without pedestrians, the blank space looked downright eerie.
Empty stalls.
Shuttered windows.
Not a tourist to be seen.
And a complete and total absence of weird foods.
It was almost as if the act of consuming strange animals had lost its novelty, for some reason or other. And even though the Wangfujing Snack Street was unlocked and open to thoroughfare, the plethora of high-tech security cameras created a distinct impression that while outside visitors might still be permitted, we were no longer welcome.
Taking our cue, my group hustled away towards the neon lights of Wangfujing Street proper, and beyond it, Beijing.
Because a more palatable menu was still out there, somewhere, for those of us who were still hungry.