Beijing Street Food.

Definitely true in Beijing particularly inside the 4th Ring Road. It's part of the drive to clean up, modernize, and sanitize everything. Sidewalk vendors like the jianbing sellers, barbecue skewer guys in the evening, etc. Donghuamen night market, which at least corralled the potential messiness into an organized street, was closed earlier this year. And it's not just the street carts--the food courts in some of the older market buildings have also been renovated and upgraded. This isn't new, it's been going on for the better part of 20 years. But really accelerated in the pre-2008 Olympics period. It is happening in other big east coast cities--Shanghai had banished the street vendors out of the central districts a lot earlier than Beijing. As you go west and also into smaller cities, it seems to be less of a phenomenon, or at least you can still find areas that do street food in authorized selected locations (i.e. Xi'an's Muslim Quarter).

To look at the flip side: the garbage, grease disposal, and blocking sidewalks were becoming worse and worse as the population of the cities increased so massively. Vendor hygiene and food safety was all over the place. Also, a lot of the Chinese urban population started to prefer moving indoors to Starbucks, chain lunch places, etc. vs street vendors. The combination of higher costs and unfavorable regulatory/licensing environment pretty much has put the ad hoc vendor guys out of business in the central cities/high rent districts.

I suppose one other element that may have led to this current street food dearth is the rise of the 小哥 （I think those are the right characters). Nowadays; you can have your lunch delivered by one of any number of Moto-riders. I'd imagine it'd be much easier to order them to fetch you a Cafe Latte and salad from a Starbucks than it would be to tell them to get you a large pot of 热干面 from the bloke with the stand outside the 西二旗 subway station and a cup of 豆浆 from the weird old lady with the goiter.

When I was living here in 2013 they were beginning to make a huge push to eliminate the street sellers/carts due to a concern in health and sanitation standards as well as a few bad apples selling food that was not what they said it was, or was spoiled or not from a sanitary source.

There were a few night time carts near where we lived (LG Tower Area) on the smaller side streets/hutongs but over the years they have all been closed.

I wonder if this holds true for Shanghai, as I had some great street food there, especially out in the farther reaches of the city...

I have to say though, I think China is morphing so fast, and a good way on many levels, at least for the average Chinese, that its is truly amazing the pace at which the country is building, expanding and growing. Juts took the fast train from Beijing to Beidaihe on the coast its like Tanjin and Beijing are only separated by a few KM's of corn fields...

Speaking of Beidaihe, this is one very exclusive area of China I had always heard about but never been to. This is where the central govt elite vacation, and its like the Hamptons or Beverly Hills in a Chinese Govt way, the streets are groomed like a park setting, and the resorts are almost all related to some branch of the Central Govt.

My wife's father (Chinese from Harbin, but a Beijinger) has a summer home there and we went for the weekend for a family gathering...its was very quiet to say least, but so nice too. Interesting how many of the older cafes and hotels also have signs in Russian....

I find that there is still a lot of street food but you need to go in more residential areas, often not that far from the subway. Often on small streets. I have also seen huge street food places outside of ring road 4.
But "downtown", less so. Most people applauded the closure of Donghuamen.

It's not just an effort to sanitize, it's also something about cost. In Guomao, almost all the street vendors of various kinds were replaced with vendors selling egg+hot dog breakfast sandwiches. They sold for 7RMB instead of the 3RMB Jianbing or 1RMB Baozi. Now they are all gone.

Maybe it is crackdowns and regulations from the government, but it always seemed to me that Beijing was running out of competent people who could make delicious street food at a price that was attractive.

Exiting from the subway stations, smell of sweet potato baking was irresistible. Used to be about 5 rmb per jin (500g), willing to bet it is much higher now.

As I recall, the main issue that hit the headlines that got authorities attention and then crackdown was the Cooking Oil many used was so bad it was making people sick.

A lot of the street food is grilled rather than fried. Usually a better choice too.

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