Here's dinner in one of Beijing's famed Hutongs.
Beijing, as much as I really didn't care for the place compared to other cities there, has some very cool, beautiful alleyways called hutongs. Lots of them are right off the main roads like Wanfujingdajie. But we saw no westerners in any of them. They all seemed to stay on the main drags. We went hunting for real hidden places and got lucky every time. I think this meal was around $8 total for all three of us.
BTW, I think the vast majority of police in Beijing are plain clothes. You still a lot of uniformed ones, but the plain clothes goons are ubiquitous. In Tiananmen Sq. you see thos tiny minivans everywhere. Rest assured, if someone steps out of line, goons appear out of thin air and take the troublemaker into one of those little minivans. Very fast and effective. But honestly, one of the things I like about China authoritarian style is that everyone knows the rules and knows if they get out of line, they get their skull thumped.