The next morning we took a plain from Shanghai to Beijing, where we reserved a place at a hostel (through hostelworld as usually). The hostel was located in a recently gentrified “hutong” (Beijing’s “favelas”) which featured featured narrow alleys filled with both the original hutong life and US-style coffee houses (selling coffee at 2-3 times SF price). We were arguably walking distance to the Forbidden City and we thus wasted about 40 minutes for this walk, much of which turned out to not be worth it. We eventually hit the Forbidden City walked around it and got to Tiananmen Square where several people wanted to take pictures with us. Later in the day we ended up walking along one of the busy shopping streets nearby eventually hitting on a street lined up with street vendors selling the scarriest stuff: fried silk warms, cicadas, scorpions, etc. We settled for a snake as a compromize – scarry enough, but still edible.