Last time Yours Truly visited Beijing I was introduced to a kind of street food that I have since never forgotten. Called a shanbing, these things are full of all the hearty goodness that keeps a body running. Or a peasant farming, all day.

Well, I fell in love with them, and vowed to eat my fill when I returned. There was construction going on in J and S's neighborhood, and so it was a good bet that there would be a cart nearby in the mornings that made them. Apparently, in this neighborhood there's one guy, and he's a fixture. S refers to him as "the little man with the cart," and you'll soon see why. Anyway, after about 20 minutes of driving around looking for him one morning, we found him off the road on a walking path. Paydirt! Five minutes' worth of halting Mandarin later, I was once again tasting the cheap delight of Beijing po' folks food.

Here's how they make 'em:

1. The guy has this cart with a gas powered griddle on top. He spreads a thin batter over the top, cracks a couple of eggs on it, and sprinkles on some fresh green onion.
2. Then, he flips the thing over and spreads on a savory sauce -- probably some kind of soybean paste or sauce. If you like (and I do), he'll also spread on some hot pepper sauce.
3. He puts a fried, er, fritter or something in the middle (like a big flat potato chip), and uses the spatula to break it into foldable pieces.
4. Lastly, he folds the thing up with a spatula,
5. And serves it to you piping hot in a napkin. Eeeeeeeeeeyummmmmmaaaaaaay!

I mentioned above that we called him "the little man with the cart"; and you may notice that all of the shots above were taken from an above angle. See, we weren't really kidding about that nickname. See the picture to the right for a sense of relative scale.

All jokes about hilariously short asian cooks aside, I encourage you now, Gentle Reader, to drop what you're doing, get yourself to China, and eat shanbing in copious amounts. I did!