Wangfujing Snack Street

The 810-meter walking street is packed with shops, stores,and restaurants including several big shopping malls, such Oriental Plaza, Beijing Department Store, Sun Dong An Plaza, the New China Woman and Children Department etc. It also has two large bookstores – the Wangfujing Xinhua Bookstore and the Beijing Foreign Languages Bookstore.

One of the highlights about Wangfujing Street is Wangfujing Snack Street (王府井小吃街）which is set on a narrow alley off the main walking street. Now just follow me to have a glimpse of Wangfujing Snack Street.

How to get to Wangfujing Snack Street

Take subway line 2, get off at the station of Wangfujing and use Exit C. Follow the throng into the Wangfujing Pedestrian Street.

Walking north for about 50 meters, you will see a KFC on your right side, and opposite the KFC is a decorated archway, the east entrance to Wangfujing Snack Street.

The Paifang , a decorated archway, is the east entrance to Wangfujing Snack Street. People are going in and out.

The snack street is packed with food vendors, souvenirs stands, and candy shops. There are also the arrays of weird food on offer, scorpions, bugs with legs, bugs without legs.

The skewered scorpions, sea horses and star fishes attract passing visitors to take pictures. Few people would stop and taste the weird food.

A food vendor selling the locally produced mouth-watering fried chestnuts.

Skewered sugar-coated haws and more fruits sugar coated on sticks are sold alluring eaters in and out.

Two guys with huge wooden mallets are pounding a piece of cake

The cakes are cut into small square pieces for sale.

Fried squids ans fried live scorpions on sticks.

So the narrow alley is packed with food stalls and souvenirs stands.

The craftsman is blowing sugar figurines on the spot.

Chinese desserts

Candy fruits on a stick

Cockles, mussels, escargot

Exotic skewers of fried beetles, grasshoppers, centipedes, cockroaches, sea horses, scorpions

Pineapple steamed rice

Wangfujing Snack Street is a festival place where you can experience Chinese food culture, an eye-opener for foreign visitors.

Tip: Hassle-free Beijing Guided Tours

If you don’t want to go the do-it-yourself route and prefer the hassle-free escorted tours,  here are some options for Beijing guided tours:

Further Readings