If you want to get a feel for the life of a longtime Beijing resident, you could start by walking the city streets until your boogers turn black. Or you could eat some traditional Beijing snacks, foods that have been satisfying the city's populace for centuries. Here are a few of the most popular:

Sticky Rice Balls (Ai Wo Wo): A court snack during the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368), sticky rice balls have disseminated to the masses. Sticky rice, a special variety of rice, is first steamed, then pounded to a doughy consistency, shaped into a ball, and then stuffed with a sweet filling and dusted with rice flour. The usual fillings are sesame and white sugar, pea flour, jujube paste, or red bean paste. The result is an opaque, smooth-looking, chewy ball of sweetness.

Pastry Made of Soy Bean Flour (Lu da gun): A Beijing snack with a Muslim origin, rolling donkey refers to a kind of cake made with steamed glutinous millet or steamed sticky rice, filled with red pea, and then drizzled over with fried bean flour. After being cut into blocks, the cake is rolled in soybean flour, looking like a donkey rolling on the ground raising dust, hence the name.

Pea Flour Cake (Wan Dou Huang): Made with white peas, pea flour cake is a favorite springtime snack, and was very popular among members of the imperial court. A good pea flour cake should have a loose consistency; the taste should be refreshing, but not sweet.

Mung Bean Milk (Dou Zhi): Probably the most famous Beijing snack, mung bean milk is actually the fluid remnants of the mung bean noodle making process. It looks grayish-green, tastes mostly sour with a tinge of sweetness, and has a peculiar odor – it's definitely an acquired taste. First-timers often drink mung bean milk accompanied with a few Chinese-style pickle wedges, which locals say makes it easier to go down.

If all this talk of food is making you hungry (well, except maybe the mung bean milk), get up and grab some grub.

Longtime Beijingers go to Hua Tian restaurant near Hu Guo Temple to satisfy their snacking needs. In ancient times snack vendors would gather in the area during temple fairs held on the eighth of every month (lunar calendar). Though the temple fairs ended long ago, bringing an end to the gathering of snack vendors, Beijingers say Hua Tian has managed to recreate the tastes of the area's past.

If you visit early in the morning you'll find yourself surrounded by the city's elderly population drinking their mung bean milk and eating their pea flour cake, and picking their… you know.