端午夏日游 看怎样和孩子一起逛北京

Turns out, scorpions don't taste so bad -- though eating them is more about texture than flavor. They do impart a satisfying crunch.
事实证明，蝎子并没有那么难吃──虽然吃蝎子更多的是质感而非味道上的体验。咀嚼它们，的确能给人带来一种令人满足的嘎吱嘎吱的响声。

I was with my husband and three children in Li Qun, a roast-duck and fried-insect restaurant in a back alley of a rundown hutong -- a neighborhood of traditional courtyard houses -- in Beijing. The only 'facility' was a hole in the ground down the block, but still, on the walls of the restaurant hung photos of famous visitors: Jet Li, Al Gore.
当时，我和丈夫及三个孩子在利群──一家位于北京一条破旧胡同后巷、供应烤鸭和炸昆虫的餐馆。胡同是传统四合院住宅的街区。那儿唯一的“厕所”就是街区尽头地上的一个洞。尽管如此，在这家餐馆的墙上还是挂着造访此处的知名人士的照片：李连杰和前美国副总统阿尔・戈尔(Al Gore)。

My two eldest kids, 10 and 8, were determined to have some dining escapades in China. In the Wangfujing night market, we'd seen live, shoe-size arthropods impaled on sticks, ready to be cooked, but the yuck factor was insurmountable. At Li Qun the bugs were an inch long, dipped in batter, and deep fried, making them just palatable enough. In a video we made, my 10-year-old, Gideon, plucks a crispy critter from a bed of rice crackers, pops it into his mouth and swallows. 'Tastes just like cockroach!' he exclaims. Then he entreats me to crunch a scorpion for posterity. And because my family was in Asia to do what good travelers around the world do -- push ourselves outside our comfort zone -- I did.
我最大的两个孩子分别为10岁和8岁，他们决定在中国进行一些饮食文化上的冒险。在王府井夜市上，我们看见了串在签子上、鞋子大小的活的节肢动物正等着下锅，但难吃、令人恶心的因素令我们难以逾越。在利群餐馆，那些虫子有一英寸长（约合2.5厘米），浸入面浆后再充分油炸，这样就使它们吃起来够美味。在我拍摄的一段视频中，我10岁的儿子吉迪恩(Gideon)从一堆米饼上撕扯下一块脆皮虫身、扔进嘴里然后咀嚼起来。他大叫道：“尝起来就像是蟑螂！”然后，他恳请我为子孙后代咬一只蝎子。因为我的家人在亚洲做了全球各地的好游客都会做的事──将我们自己推出舒适区──所以我就吃了。

Beijing is not the most obvious destination to visit with children. The traffic is murder, the smog so bad locals wear face masks and the tap water isn't potable. 'It's so dirty,' a Chinese-American friend back home warned; we should time our trip to avoid spring's dust storms, someone else suggested. But our children had just completed their first year of Chinese-immersion school in New York, and after months of research, we concluded that the capital might be more kid-friendly than it seems.
带着孩子出行游玩，北京并不是最明显、最合适的一个目的地。那里的交通状况真要命，雾霾严重、以至于当地人都得戴面罩，而且自来水也不能直接饮用。一位华裔美国人朋友从北京回来以后警告我说“那里太脏了”；另一个人则建议我们要安排好旅行时间、避开春季的沙尘暴。但我们的孩子才刚刚在纽约上完了第一年的浸入式中文课，而且在经过数月的研究后，我们得出结论，首都北京比它表面上看起来更适宜儿童。

In Beijing, the ancient is constantly butting heads with the modern. Songs, Mings, Qings and many other dynasties ruled China from the city, over the centuries erecting the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the Great Wall. Now those icons have competition from attractions like the $140 million National Aquatics Center -- or Water Cube -- and the National Stadium (aka the Bird's Nest), built for the 2008 Olympics.
在北京，古典与现代一直在持续碰撞。宋、明、清及其他许多朝代都在此地建都、统治中国，数百年来，紫禁城、颐和园与长城也在北京一一建成。如今，一些新兴名胜──如耗资1.4亿美元、为2008年北京奥运会而建的国家游泳中心（或被称为水立方）及国家体育场（又名鸟巢）──与上述那些标志性古迹展开了竞争。

Our stint in Beijing capped off a two-week visit to eastern China, most of it spent in tiny villages and holiday spots unfamiliar to Americans. Remote Lands, which specializes in custom tours of Asia, did most of the planning, booking hotels, transfers and many activities. With the bulk of the logistics taken care of, we had space for serendipity and discovery.
我们在北京短暂逗留后，便进行了一次为期两周的华东之行，其间，我们大多数时间都住在了美国人不太熟知的小村庄和度假景点。远陆(Remote Lands)是一家专注于亚洲定制游的旅行公司，它为我们做好了大部分的计划、订酒店、安排交通出行以及许多活动。由于大部分的后勤都已被安排好，我们就有了意外发现珍奇事物和探索的空闲。

In Beijing, we started where everyone else does: in Tiananmen Square, built in 1415 as the royal entrance to the Forbidden City, the imperial palace. The square was thick with Chinese tourists, and to their eyes my family must have been a novelty -- people insisted on taking photos with my blond husband and pulled my 5-year-old daughter, Talia, from her stroller for more shots. (I was invisible; perhaps brown-haired mothers aren't so remarkable.)
在北京，我们从其他每位游客都会选择做为出发点的地方开始游玩：天安门广场。它建于1415年，当时是作为皇室通往皇宫紫禁城的入口。广场上满是中国游客，在他们眼里，我们一家人一定很新奇－－人们坚持要跟我金发碧眼的丈夫合影，还把我5岁的女儿塔莉娅(Talia)从她的折叠式婴儿车上拉过来多拍了几张照。（我就是个透明人；可能棕色头发的妈妈不是那么能引人注意。）

The Forbidden City is beautiful and well preserved, from the gilded lions guarding the Gate of Heavenly Purity to the serene Imperial Garden. The kids recognized the complex from Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film, 'The Last Emperor.' But little ones can only take so many halls of thrones and tapestries. ('Where is the princess?' my daughter asked our guide a number of times.) So we went to take a rickshaw ride through courtyard houses yet to be replaced by gleaming condos.
从守卫在干清门的镀金狮子到宁静的御花园，美丽的紫禁城保存完好。孩子们认出了这些建筑群就是导演贝纳多・贝托鲁奇(Bernardo Bertolucci)在1987年拍摄的电影《末代皇帝》(The Last Emperor)中所呈现的场景。但小孩子们也就只能意识到有这么多摆着龙椅和悬着挂毯的大厅，仅此而已。（“公主在哪儿呢？”我女儿问了我们导游好几次这个问题。）于是我们去坐了趟人力车，穿过了一家家四合院，它们现在还尚未被流光溢彩的公寓所取代。