BEIJING — So why don’t they call it Beijing duck?
Why not? Nearly everything else has changed in China. My first recollection of Peking duck was in 1972 when Henry Kissinger did the diplomatic dance here with Chou En-lai They had Peking duck, and Kissinger loved it so much he was on the phone to President Nixon that night.
Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit China. Knowing Nixon and, now, knowing Peking duck, I’m convinced China didn’t win over Nixon so much with its economic potential as with a little plucked fowl.
Kissinger wouldn’t recognize China today. Women have exchanged their Mao caps for Manolo heels. Hou Hai Lake is lined with enough bright little restaurants and bars to pass for the San Diego waterfront. And China’s basketball team is pretty good.
But he’d recognize Peking duck. It’s great, just like it has been since the Yuan Dynasty. And it’s all over Beijing. It’s the nation’s signature dish and on the checklist of every Olympic visitor, along with: rat, sparrow, animal penis, live scorpions dipped in oil, silkworms, snake blood, sea cucumbers and something called fawn fetus fluid.
I had tried most of these and so had no problems walking down a dark alley I wouldn’t dare enter in most urban centers of the United States. Most duck seekers head to Quanjude, which has been plucking ducks for the public since 1864. Instead, I found myself just south of the Forbidden City where the spectacular lights from the 600-year-old palaces fade into the dark maze of the hutongs.
In these centuries-old traditional neighborhoods you find the true Peking duck. I could tell Li Qun specialized in duck. I walked through a crude, low-hung doorway and saw a dozen ducks, sans heads and already cooked, hanging on black metal hooks on the wall.
Li Qun is the Peking duck equivalent of that great, neighborhood diner we all had at one time. About a dozen simple tables were scattered around two or three rooms, all at different levels. The windows were foggy. Pipes were exposed. Our table was next to about 20 cases of Tsingtao beer.
It was about as romantic as a rickshaw garage.
What keeps you there are ducks. White-clad cooks carrying knives that could behead a rhino passed ducks under my nose to a small table where they carved up the birds into little pieces. Four companions and I ordered two birds, about 6 1/2 pounds each.
They were brought out piled high on four plates along with the obligatory accompaniments: a stack of ultra-thin pancakes, almost like Ethiopian injera, and a two-sided dipping tray containing Hoisin sauce and sweet noodle sauce. The traditional way to eat them is to dabble the duck pieces in one of the sauces, place them in the pancake, roll it up and eat it like a burrito.
If you can do all that with chopsticks, you are considered a local.
I love eating duck in France, but Peking duck is like no other duck I’ve ever had. It has no grease, and the crispy skin left on gives it a crunchy texture. Add the Hoisin sauce for some tang and stuff it into a pancake, and it’s the tastiest finger, er, chopstick food you’ve ever tasted.
The Chinese have given mankind a lot of inventions: paper, noodles, gunpowder (well, two of three ain’t bad). The Peking duck has to rank up there. It was first prepared for emperors in the Yuan Dynasty around the 13th century right here, back when Beijing went by Peking.
Ruling then was a Mongol warlord named Kublai Khan who liked eating Peking duck almost as much as Persians. When the Mongols left, Peking duck remained.
In the ensuing Ming Dynasty, it became a main dish of the imperial court, and in the Quing Dynasty it spread to the upper classes. Sunday night it had lowered itself to a Denver journalist, four Olympic News Service employees and some clown wearing a giant Australian flag as a napkin.
Zhang Xin, the owner’s daughter and our waitress, said they go through an average of about 40 ducks a night but during these Olympics it has jumped to 100. The good ducks come from Nanjing, west of Shanghai, and the Zhangs get theirs from a local farmer.
“Every day we call and say, ‘Tomorrow we need 30 ducks to restaurant,’ ” she said. “At 5 o’clock he kills the ducks.”
At least we didn’t see them waddle across the restaurant floor before landing on our plate. In China, that’s a plus. Maybe that’s why it’s so expensive. One duck, along with side dishes such as garlic beef, mushrooms and greens, diced chicken and lotus root, is 230 yuan (about $34).
Yet when the dish is split five ways, you don’t need to be an emperor, barbarian or diplomat to enjoy it.
John Henderson writes about food while on the road covering sports and travel.
