Hot pot or HuoGuo are restaurants with a pot of boiling soup in the middle of the table (in some restaurants the pot is divided into two - spicy and not spicy which is called YuanYang HuoGuo). From the menu you order fresh vegetables, raw meat and pastries you throw into the soup and let it cook for a while, then you dig it back out (which can get tricky using only chopsticks) and eat.

Eating Hot Pot is very popular in China and you should definitely try it. If you have been in China and never tried Hot Pot it's like coming to Beijing and not eating Beijing Duck. Normally you get together with you family or your friends on the evening and chat while eating hot pot. That's why it takes very long to eat hot pot but it's much fun this way. It can take from one hour to eating a whole night (this is of course nearly only possible when you do it at home since many people will be waiting in a restaurant). After a while you won't know how much you have already eaten and when we go in a restaurant for hot pot we normally come out way too stuffed then we would have thought we were.

In Beijing there is one popular street for eating hot pot. DongZhiMen Nei Dajie 东直门内大街 also called Ghost Street (Gui Jie) is ideal for eating hot pot. Scatter over the whole street there are at least 30 small restaurants offering hot pot. If you take the Subway just get of at DongZhiMen. You won't be able to miss it at the evening - the street is lightened not only by street lamps but mainly by red lanterns hanging in front of each restaurant.

There are two things you need to know about hot pot restaurants:

• It's better to know your way around Chinese characters since the menus usually don't have pictures. You can only hope they have an English menu. Otherwise it becomes a pure gambling game in which you might win a dysfunctional stomach.

• If you are over four people sitting on one table it will get messy.

In supermarkets in Beijing you can also buy the nearly ready for eating soup and dips. We used to buy some to take with us and eat hot pot with our friends outside of China, too.