Call of the turtle

A beautiful restaurant creates a lakeside environment indoors, drawing fans of Hunan cuisine to Beijing's north suburbs for platters of softshell turtle and other delicacies, Mike Peters discovers.

=This may not be the place to eat if you get seasick easily, my friend jokes as we cross a little bridge to get to our "waterfront" table.

We are actually indoors, not dining at lakeside, but the Xiaoxiang Jiayu Cun restaurant takes a lot of trouble to make you think you are very close to nature.