I know there’s a few days of stuff that we haven’t mentioned yet, but we thought it was worth writing up this evening while it was still fresh in our minds.

Having arrived back in Beijing after our “7 beds in 7 nights” tour of a small part of China, and quickly getting the compulsory handbag shopping out of the way, it was decided that for this evening’s dining it was about time I got to experience the culinary delights of Donghuamen Night Market.

This is obviously set up for the tourists, Chinese as well as Westerners. Some of the snacks are pretty standard fare, and we took advantage of these to line our stomachs to start with: something burger-like, made with chopped-up cooked pork, fresh chilli and coriander, which was really quite nice; and some fried dumplings, not the best we’ve had but still quite palatable. We thought we’d seen something that looked like a cheesy chip butty, but it turned out to be something like two fried eggs with chips squashed in the middle, so we gave that a miss.

Then we could put it off no longer: it was time to sample the more esoteric offerings. The big scorpions were quite expensive at ¥50 (£5) each, so we went for two small ones on a stick for ¥15. As Clare had tried these before, it fell to me to have the first one. Not too bad, actually: a bit like a small shrimp, deep-fried in its shell. Not very meaty at all. Clare had the second one, barely turning her nose up at all.

The first hurdle having been crossed, it was time to raise the stakes a bit: crickets. Not just a little cricket, but decent sized ones that looked like they might have a bit of meat on them. Not too expensive either, at ¥20 for two. I decided that the legs weren’t worth the bother of nibbling separately, so just put the whole lot in my mouth in one go and crunched it. Quite meaty in the middle.

Clare had to brace herself to eat her cricket; I think she’d spent too long looking at it and watching me eat it, rather than just getting it over and done with. Probably didn’t help that it was the one from the middle of the stick, not so easy to just stick it in your mouth and chew!

We decided that was enough dodgy food: the starfish didn’t look that appetising, I’d been warned that the snake was just chewy and unpleasant, and the silkworm pupae seemed like the casing might be a bit too crunchy. Besides which, the lights had been turned off on all the stalls, so it was obviously packing-up time. We grabbed a quick large stuffed pancake just to make sure we weren’t hungry, then headed off round the corner on to Wangfujing Street.

This is lined with expensive designer shops (most of which I’ve never heard of), and leads off to Wangfujing Snack Street on one side, through a traditional Chinese gate, as if we haven’t seen enough of those this week. (What you can’t see in the picture is the woman who’s trying to get me to give her money because she’s got a baby.) This area has a mixture of tat stalls and food stalls, selling much the same assortment as the night market, but with still-wriggling scorpions (before they go in the deep fryer, anyway), and something else: seahorses. I really didn’t fancy trying them, not just because I thought they’d be all crunch and no meat, but mainly because I didn’t think it was the sort of thing that should be encouraged.

We had a token browse around the tat stalls, and discovered that Chinese hats don’t fit my very Western head, lucky cats aren’t as cheap as we hoped they might be, and no, we still don’t want to buy any more chopsticks!