Wednesday's lunch offerings for the Beijing delegation featured the relatively mundane egg drop soup, boiled corn, stir-fried bokchoy and sticky rice with pork.

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Console yourself with dessert: the fermented-rice egg-drop soup tastes, intriguingly, like a bowl of lumpy, cold sake.

NEWYORKER: Biang!

Down another staircase, into another windowless room, where dishes arrived: pork braised in brown sauce, bok choy, egg-drop soup, spicy chicken.

NEWYORKER: The Grand Tour