Beijing Road Route

What Beijing Road is

Beijing Road is Guangzhou's oldest and busiest commercial street. In the pedestrian pavement, excavated ruins show through glass, the paving of a road running since the Song lying in layers. A path where people and goods have crossed for over a thousand years, it is still said to carry hundreds of thousands a day. Old houses and new shops mix on either side, and behind them Huifu and Wenming Roads line up local eateries and stalls. The lead of the walk is less the sit-down plate than the stall snack steaming on the street. The scissor-cut of beef offal, the smell of egg waffle off the iron — downtown food suits picking, a little at a time, as you go.

Following stalls and roast meats

This street's food stands on two legs: the corner snack and the roast meats. Beef offal is tripe and intestine long-simmered in chu hou sauce, bowled with radish and cut with scissors to sell — the Guangzhou way. Wonton noodles set thin duck-egg noodles and shrimp wontons in clear broth, a single coil in a small bowl the Cantonese portion. The pillar of noon is the roast — goose hung and cooked in an oven, chopped through the bone onto white rice with its juices. Sweet comes as clay-steamed bowl cake, and for the walk, egg waffle off the iron. To sit is to take dry-fried beef ho fun and taste the wok's scorched breath. Trying cheap plates a little at a time along the street is this route.

How to walk this route

Starting from Metro Lines 1 & 2's Gongyuanqian Stn, walk the Beijing Road street south. First, past the excavated ruins of the ancient road, take a bowl of stall beef offal — cut with scissors, eaten standing. Turn from the street into Huifu Road for wonton noodles at Qiaomei and the like, and roast goose rice at a roast-meat shop. Pick at bowl cake and egg waffle between, and close by sitting for a plate of dry-fried beef ho fun. Stalls grow from evening into night, and the roasts are fullest around midday. The pedestrian street is very crowded by day, so shifting your hours eases it. Prices and hours are a guide, and names change often, so choose by the queue and the steam. Payment is mostly by phone, but cash is safest at the stalls.