Peking duck loved by German president

Beijing roast duck is served for German President Joachim Gauck during this visit to China. [Photo provided to China Daily]

On the first night during his visit to China, German President Joachim Gauck tasted the famed local dish, Peking duck, along with other delicacies in a traditional Chinese courtyard.

The restaurant Gauck visited on March 20 is located in Guijie, a popular food street in Beijing famed for midnight dining and spicy crayfish.

The dinner for Gauck was composed of dishes such as fried lion's mane mushroom, sweet and sour ribs, and smoked sausage, reported Beijing Youth Daily on its public account on social networking platform WeChat. Crayfish was not served for reasons of etiquette.

The 76-year-old and his entourage finished all the food with forks and knives rather than chopsticks. Gauck seemed to be happy with the meal, saying "tastes good" to the waitress.

The dinner cost more than 200 yuan ($31) per person, an upper middle level of consumption for the street.

In fact, before Gauck's visit, this restaurant had received other foreign leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, former President of the Swiss Confederation Ueli Maurer, and Willem-Alexander, the King of the Netherlands.

Unlike these heads of state, US Vice-President Joe Biden preferred more ordinary food. In a 2011 visit to China, Biden and his men dropped by a snack store in Beijing and ate noodles with soybean paste, a local delicacy, spending a total of 79 yuan.

Gauck is the first German President to visit China in six years. His next stop is Shanghai where he will visit a Jewish refugee memorial and Tongji University, a school established by a German physician more than a century ago.

After that, he will go to Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, where he will visit churches and mosques in order to understand the integration of different ethnic groups.

Guijie, a Beijing food street famed for midnight dining. [Photo/IC]