Before leaving Changzhou we made a special trip to my favorite place in China. It’s a lake not too far from Hong’s hometown called Tianmu Lake that have a certain type of fish from which the local restaurants make fish head soup. The fish are enormous and you get quite a lot of good tasting meat in one soup. That’s not a whole fish in that pot, just the head. My favorite part of the fish head is the cheek. The meat from the cheek is tender, flavorful and has no bones. Somehow I didn’t end up getting the cheek, so my goal is to learn how to ask for it properly in Chinese before we go back again. My favorite dish!

The lake was just gorgeous as well. It was a misty day but you can just see the outline of a fisherman in the photo on the left. There was a group of women dong some ‘evening exercise’ dancing in front of the lake. It was such a gorgeous setting.

They served us a whole lot of other dishes as well. I stuck to eating only the fish head soup and didn’t have too much broth in case they put something in it. I was feeling good but just being careful about what I was eating. Notice how most of the food in this picture is green or meat. That’s how it should be!

We traveled back to Beijing by another short flight. Tao again has got the connections. They let him and Hong’s parents through security with us even though they weren’t getting on any plane. And we got to wait in a private VIP lounge with tea and drinks. How fun is that?

Beijing
Our last 2 days in Beijing were all about shopping. We had Tao’s good friend Wong Li take us around the first day with her son, Cliff, who was just a bit younger than me. We went shopping at the Yashow market which I had been to before and had so much fun at. Anything in there can be bargained and for foreigners they price starts ridiculously high. The funniest was when my mom bought a traditional jacket. They started her at something like 400 RMB. Hong stepped in and bargained her down to 100RMB. She told us our “Chinese” friend was a good bargainer, he is! She bought the jacket and we left that stall to go look around. I then decided that I wanted a jacket so we went back, this time without Hong. I tried one on and it fit well so I asked how much. She quotes me 180 RMB! We just laughed and started walking away, at which point she laughed too and agreed to 100. I can’t believe she tried to get me to pay more. She was still happy to make 2 sales even though we bargained her quite low. Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures as they don’t really like us taking pictures inside, and we were too busy shopping anyway.

After a quick lunch…

While the pineapple rice was pretty cool, the most interesting to me was the oily peppery fish soup on the bottom left. It was served with a slice of bread. You take a piece of fish and dab it on the bread to soak up the oil. At the end, the bread was usually discarded although you could eat it if you want. I just thought it was neat, the one dinner we had bread, and it was used like a napkin. I didn’t eat any of this dish obviously..

We continued shopping along a new pedestrian street. There’s a little train that runs along the street although it’s not very long. It was built a few years ago for the Olympics and has a lot of designer shops and of course a KFC. My mom stocked up on some good jasmine tea (her favorite!). We got more food on a stick, this time candied crab apples.

We randomly wandered into a hat shop where I somehow found 2 hats that actually fit me. My mom also bought a hat, and then Hong felt left out so he bought a hat too. After a nice picture all together, we went to Wong Li’s house for a home cooked meal. It was a nice, relaxing last evening in China.

Our last morning in Beijing was just a bit of last minute shopping at another market. Then we had to pack up and head out to the airport for the long flight home. I brought some hard boiled eggs and bananas from the hotel. I had a couple cheese packs left and some Larabars. And I had food (including yogurt) waiting for me at home so I knew it was ok to fast a little bit on the way home. We had enough time at the airport for Hong to have a nap, and to buy some Panda Candies (not SCD legal), which turned out to be the most loved thing that we brought home. I hear they taste like a cross between Smarties and M&Ms.

So there you have it, my vacation in China! It was fun, I shopped a lot, and ate a lot of soup. I came home with some knowledge and maybe 2 or 3 new Chinese words memorized. Hong, his Dad, my Mom and my Dad did some traveling without me and took so many nice pictures. Hong has promised to write up a little (actually it might be pretty big!) guest post about the places they visited. If you ever want to visit China and want to see more than just Beijing and Shanghai, check out that post because the sites are just beautiful.

First I acquired the raw materials. At the RT-Mart I got what I thought was plain milk as it just said “High quality milk” on the side. I also thought I saw 3.5% written on the carton but it may have been 35% (oops – yum!). I studied the yogurts fanatically and settled on one that didn’t seem to have any thickeners in it. There were a lot to choose from (these are about half of the yogurts that were out on display) and a few said plain but had artificial sweeteners added. I chose one with a bit of regular sugar added and no thickener (it’s the one with the girl’s picture on the front).

Back home I put the milk (heavy cream) in a pot and heated it up until little bubbles started to form. I didn’t have a thermometer, but you can boil cow’s milk without harming your yogurt so I let it come to at least a simmer.

I then set it aside and let it cool until the pot felt about lukewarm to the touch. Now this was the first time I ever tried setting it in a larger bowl with cold water to cool it faster. Wow did that ever work! It only took about 5-10 minutes when normally it would take an hour. I will be doing this at home now, rather than having to wait an hour to mix in the starter. I tried it once at home and just set it in the sink with cold water since I didn’t have a big wide pot to set it in. Anyways, once the milk had cooled, I mixed in one 6oz yogurt pack. Then came the tricky part, I didn’t have a heating pad, oven, slow-cooker(the only one was busy making my soup), ‘warm area’, or yogurt maker. So I put some hot boiling water in the larger bowl the pot was sitting in. I set the pot of milk in that. I changed the water adding fresh hot boiling water about every 6 hours.

After 24 hours it was definitely set, and that’s when I realized it was probably 35% heavy cream. It was SO thick. I tasted it and it wasn’t nearly as tangy as I’ve made it in the past so I left it overnight again. The next morning it was perfect.

It was so good and I absolutely coated it in honey (why not? I’m on vacation) hoping to gain back a bit of weight lost from the sickness. I tried not to eat it too fast since I only made 1 liter and managed to keep a cup of it for the last few days of traveling in Beijing. I’m very glad I attempted to make yogurt even though I had nothing with me. It can be done!

While my family went touring around some cities and a mountain for 4 days I stayed in Changzhou with Hong’s Mom and Aunt. My first adventure was to visit the Chinese Traditional Medicine doctor after getting sick from the dumplings. I took a picture of the hospital entrance. There were a lot of people all over the hospital and even in the ‘exam’ rooms.

I also went to the pharmacy to get my herbal mixture and was allowed in the back to take some pictures. The nurses here were just busy all day filling ‘prescriptions’ by putting different herbs into brown paper bags. Looks kinda different from a Western pharmacy.

Once I was feeling better enough we went to the local fresh market. I got to ride the bus with Min and everyone stared at me. This wasn’t exactly a tourist location so most locals had never seen a white person before.

The local fresh market was wonderful to visit. This type of market would probably not be allowed in Canada. Most of the seafood was still alive (or half dead anyway)

None of the meat was refrigerated. Everyone handled the food with ‘gasp’ bare hands. It was great. Finally people who weren’t scared of real food. There were endless rows of everything fresh including (left to right, top row first): honey!, meat, tofu, vegetables, mushrooms, fruits. The meat guy is actually chopping up a whole ox tail for me I made a delicious, healing ox tail soup out of it. Most of this food is local, with mainly the fruits shipped in.

As nice as the fresh market was, I asked to go to a supermarket for something special. I terribly missed my SCD foods and most of all my yogurt. So I thought, why not try and make it. They don’t have any dairy at the fresh market so we went to RT Mart.

It felt like a giant fluorescent colored Walmart with just about any boxed food you can imagine. Rice comes in huge bulk bins. They sell all kinds of booze in there too. Quite the contrast from the fresh market. I was happy to note that the fresh market was cheaper and busier, while the RT-Mart seemed the less popular choice.

They did have lots of dairy products and I did make yogurt successfully. I’ll post about that later.

After some clothes shopping, we visited Hong’s childhood home which Min is standing in front of here. Unfortunately no one was home at the time so we didn’t go in. It was pretty neat to see what a difference this home was from their current home in Canada.

At some point along one of the streets we saw this old fashioned popcorn maker. Hong still remembers getting some as a kid.

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This post was part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays! and Health Food Lover’s Wholesome Whole Foods blog carnivals. Just wanted to share what a Real Food market looks like in China.

Before my family left for the last leg of the trip we got to tour around Changzhou a bit. I wasn’t feeling well for this part so I’m piecing together what we did based on the photos. I still managed to do quite a lot! Might be a good time to mention, China has awesome bathroom availability. Much better than Europe in my experience. I went ‘backpacking’ around 11 countries in Europe about 4 years ago and there was more than one occasion where we couldn’t find a bathroom. Restaurants didn’t seem as open to letting us use theirs. In China, every hotel, restaurant and shop pretty much has one and they’re very open to letting anyone use it. Not only that but there are public toilets at all tourist locations and most city blocks. Only thing is you have to remember to bring your own tissues (and hope the toilet isn’t backed up..).

We visited Hong’s Great Aunt who used to live in the countryside on a farm. Although she hasn’t moved, she is now pretty much in the suburbs of the city with only a tiny bit of land left. They are actually hoping to be bought out by the government for their land, so that they can move into more modern houses in the city. His Great Aunt is 89 years old and only recently stopped helping around the farm. Her late husband had been farming well into his 80s and passed away not long ago. Here she is with her brother, Hong’s grandfather who is 79 and full of spunk.

Her daughter (and husband) lives with her along with her granddaughters. They still raise ducks and have a fairly large plot of different vegetables (middle pic). We left there with a huge bag of fresh broad beans that smelled so good.

Just for fun, we went to check out the local amusement park which was like Disney World but with dinosaurs. What a great place it would be to take kids to. I visited Changzhou back in 2007 and had no idea this place even existed. We took some fun pics but didn’t stay long before heading out for Hong’s cousin Yao’s birthday lunch.

Yes they have birthday cake in China although it’s not nearly as sweet and gross as the stuff here. We sang happy birthday in the same tune too. That’s Yao with her grandparents on the right.

We also went for foot massages. I didn’t get one because I’m so ticklish I would have kicked them in the face if they touched the soles of my feet. The foot massages actually turned into full body massages for the ladies.

We did quite a bit of shopping in his hometown as well. Tao seems to know everyone so we got to visit some clothing factories where he knows the owners. Hong got measured for a custom suit and picked out the style and fabric he wanted. For about $300 CAD per suit he got them custom tailored! He has a hard time finding suits that fit his frame. Not really a bad thing, having too muscular shoulders and a small waist. We all got something free or cheap from these factories. They end up having piles of clothes that somehow don’t make it to stores or to second hand shops. Since they have agreements with the clothing companies they can’t sell them out of the factory. So they try to give them away. And I’m talking brand names not cheapy Walmart stuff. I got a nice free trench coat, some shirts and jeans. There’s no mirrors in some of these places so we take pictures of each other to see what it looks like.

My favorite shopping in China is actually at the local stores though. I have a hard time finding stuff to fit in Canada because even the S or XS are sometimes too big. In China, I’m guaranteed to fit into an S or M in every single store. Last time I went I got a Chinese traditional dress custom made, but wasn’t there long enough to have them try it on me and tailor it. Turns out the dress didn’t quite fit in the end. This time I went to the same shop and tried one off the rack. It fit! My mom got a tradition silk top made from the same place which fit her perfectly too.

Oh and everyone did a lot of eating. I stuck to some chicken soup and mostly home cooked soups. Here is an example of lunch:

There’s a really nice park in his home city too.

I was feeling invincible. The SCDiet has a way of doing that. You start to feel wonderful and then you start to experiment. I believe that because the amount of healing SCDiet brings, when you start to experiment, you actually do ok. Your body handles it alright for a little while. Your digestive system stays unusually quiet, your mind clear and ignorant. You see, I’ve had quite a leap in healing over the past 6 months, maybe even more than the previous 2 years. I credit this to eating tons of nutrient dense food (liver, pastured eggs, pastured butter, oysters) and getting off the birth control pill. I’ve had months of no rashes, no stomach upsets at all, not worrying about gluten cross-contamination even. I thought maybe I never had Celiac, maybe the rash was a coincidence. That’s what I thought while I was in China. My body was doing just fine with tiny amounts of wheat in marinades, sauces, and cross-contamination. I didn’t have any stomach pain or rashes, although I did notice a bit of strange gurgling noises. It was probably just my system working a little overtime to deal with all the nasties I was eating. I felt fine. I felt great. I even felt a strange high. I kept telling my family and in-laws how great I felt, and everyone agreed I was doing well.

Our second day in Xian we were combining lunch and dinner because of an evening train ride to Hong’s hometown, Changzhou. We decided to eat at a famous dumpling place to sample the last of the 4 local dishes. Since we were there in between lunch and dinner time they didn’t have as much selection as they normally do. My selection for SCD-legal fare was quite limited but doable. I got a plate of shrimp with cucumbers, a plate of greens and some broad beans (not even sure if those are legal). I was starving. I ate every shrimp but knew that was not nearly enough food to last me a 14 hour train ride. I filled up on some veggies but those don’t provide much energy either. Rather than order more shrimp, I decided to try the dumplings. I had this great plan to bite them once, then eat the middle, so I was only getting a mouthful of wheat per dumpling. Somehow at the time this seemed like a great idea. I had no pressure from anyone to eat these. I had enough cheese and Larabars with me to last the train ride. I just felt invincible.

I ate two dumplings. Then more plates of dumplings came through to our table. Hong actually dropped one plate and they spilled onto the table top. I avoided those dumplings, thinking I’d better be safe and not get food poisoning from something that fell on a dirty table top. I ate two more ‘safe’ dumplings. They were pretty good, but honestly I thought as I was eating them that I really didn’t miss not eating food like this. I would have traded them for bacon or SCD yogurt any day.

The pain started within about 45 minutes. It was upper GI pain, just above the belly button, deep inside. Last time I had pain like that was when I was eating wheat constantly (and sick constantly), so this time all I was thinking was that I would be sick right away. But the sickness didn’t hit. The stomach pain continued. We went to the City Wall in Xian before heading to the train station. I didn’t even realize I was bloated until I reviewed my pictures. Here I am 1 hour after the dumplings. It got worse later.

The massive headache started on the train. I took Gravol to try and sleep. I woke up every hour anyway. A strange old symptom I had forgotten about came back; I had to pee a lot and felt awful trying to hold it. By this time I was just hoping for the sickness to hit knowing it would relieve me of the pain. I didn’t care if I was sick on a train, I just wanted it to be over with. The train ride was 14 hours. I slept fitfully for most of it. I ate one little package of cheese, a banana and drank water in that time, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat anything else. No sickness yet. The Rash was starting to appear.

We arrived in Hong’s hometown and I was so relieved. Finally access to home cooked food. I was still not sick yet and still in pain. Hong’s aunt made us breakfast with congee, eggs and pickled veggies. I knew the congee and eggs would be a bad idea but was starving so I ate it. I would later find out I didn’t digest any of that.. (tmi? sorry haha) Rash started getting itchier and spread across my entire chest.

Here’s where things get a little fuzzy. I know we all got a chance to shower after the late breakfast. I know we went for lunch, and dinner, and I think I had a nap in between? I think I went to bed early while others looked at pictures? We took family pictures at some point too (proof below). Hong’s aunt did laundry and I remember bringing her a bag of my clothes. I remember complaining the mattress was too hard and getting a blanket to fold up and sleep on. Or was that the next night? When did the sickness hit? I think it was that night, about 24 hours since the dumplings. Why is my memory of this so fuzzy? I can remember every detail of the first week, and the last few days, but not the sickness in between. I could ask my family, but I think I’ll leave this as a reminder. <-This is your brain on gluten.

The next morning the pain was all gone and I was left with some pretty intense stomach upset. I ate congee and fresh eggs for breakfast. I tried to drink enough water as we toured around the city that day. We visited Hong’s great aunt and then went to Dinosaur Land. By then I was just looking for a bathroom. I wanted to go back to the house but decided to go to lunch anyway. I ordered chicken soup but it’s obvious they had put something in it since it didn’t taste like homemade. I didn’t really care as I was so dehydrated and weak from being sick. I drank/ate 5 small bowls of it. I was sick at the restaurant too and decided that going home for the afternoon was best. I went straight to bed.

I missed dinner that night and was home alone. I almost passed out from dehydration/weakness but managed to crawl downstairs and get a banana and some water. I felt better enough to sit up at the computer but had trouble getting to sites and downloading files (so much of the Internet is blocked in China, and trying to open attachments/documents on Chinese Windows proved impossible). I turned to the BTVC-SCD and GAPShelp Yahoo groups and got some great advice including the electrolyte drink recipe. *HUGE* thank you to everyone on the boards, I tried to reply to all and hope I didn’t miss any! A bunch of people also mentioned activated charcoal and said you could make it usually by burning some kind of starch. I would try this once well enough. Turns out I missed the nicest dinner of the trip at a restaurant in a park. A local news team was there and wanted Hong’s family to be on TV. The park was beautiful and they all took wonderful pictures. They came home and told me this. I broke down sobbing. I knew I was going to miss the last leg of the trip, 4 days touring around the most beautiful cities and a mountain. I did get a chance to visit most of these places on my last trip to China, so I wasn’t too upset about it. The down feeling just seems to always accompany the stomach upset.

Hong’s mother stayed with me at his aunt’s house since she had to work during the day. The last half day or so of sickness Min took me to a Chinese Traditional doctor. I was very excited and hoping Chinese doctors were more helpful than Western doctors. At the very least it was an interesting experience. Let’s just say Chinese hospitals are a scene of organized chaos. I’ve never had an appointment with a doctor with about 20 other people in the room! They were talking all excitedly and I hoped that meant they knew exactly what to do. Turns out, both the nurse and doctor had never heard of Celiac disease, couldn’t even begin to comprehend why I would not be able to eat wheat, and spent most of the time asking Min about it. Well, the doctor was somewhat helpful in that he prescribed a bunch of herbs and charcoal mix that you make into a tea. I only tried one dose though and it made me feel funny. The doctor also said to only eat homemade food (hurrah!) so I used that as an excuse the rest of the trip to not eat anything in restaurants. I made banana pancakes (eggs and banana) and burnt some bits on purpose. The burnt pieces did taste like charcoal so hopefully I did it right. It seemed to work quite well, either that or by then my system was done with the gluten attack. I made chicken soup and ox tail soup and homemade SCD yogurt for the rest of the week. SCD intro in China, it can be done! It had been 3 days of pain then sickness, but once over I was recovering quickly.

Finally I was feeling better and I even got to experience daily life in China. I went to supermarkets, fresh markets, clothes shopping, visited Hong’s grandparents and got to nap like 4 hours a day. It was wonderful! I’ll cover all that with pics in another post, it was really fun. Unfortunately the rash I got was really bad and stuck around for a good 6 days, but at least my stomach, head and energy were doing well. I’m not happy I got sick on my trip, but it happened, could have been worse, and definitely taught me some very valuable lessons.

I do have Celiac disease. And Dermatitis Herpetiformis. I am not invincible. I will never eat gluten again. I will do my best to prevent cross-contamination in my daily life, just in case. I will stay grain-free (no the congee didn’t help!) and as close to SCD as I have to. I will experiment only with food that might contribute to good health – raw milk, sweet potatoes, chocolate (mental health counts, right?). SCD heals me, that I am sure. SCD intro helped me recover from the glutening faster than I have ever recovered from a severe digestive upset. And next time I go to China – there will be a next time – I will not eat the dumplings.

Stay tuned for some fun pictures of my time living SCD in Hong’s hometown.

BTW Thank you to Terry from who I stole the title for this post

Xian Food
In Xian the main crops are wheat and corn so a lot of dishes featured these as staples. It was still easy enough to get some plain meat and vegetables at most of the restaurants. There were four main specialties in Xian that we sampled, including a lamb dish, a noodle dish, hamburgers and dumplings. We actually ate pretty light in Xian because we weren’t there for very long, only one dinner.


Lamb Meat Float
Pieces of lamb floating in soup with little doughy things made of wheat. You can put the red chili paste and herbs into the soup for extra flavor. After eating the soup you the garlic and this is supposed to help protect from food borne illness if the lamb is not fresh. The restaurant serving this dish obviously serves fresh lamb cooked properly, but the tradition to have garlic after has been kept. I tried a piece of lamb and a bit of broth but tried to avoid the wheat. I ate the garlic after too.

Noodles
Spicy wheat noodles made using a special technique where you squeeze the flour into their noodle form. They are served with everything piled high and then you mix it up and slurp it. I didn’t sample this at all.

Chinese Hamburgers
Chinese hamburgers are little pacman looking things with minced oily meat inside. The meat was tasty but I avoided eating the bun. I love the greasiness of these, almost like a sloppy-joe.

Dumplings
The dumplings in Xian were so special they will get their own post..

Everything Else
Of course that’s not all we ate.. here’s a few more dishes from that dinner. I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of the final fruit. From the top to bottom, left to right: walnut, potato & spinach, dates, delicious spicy pork piled high over mung bean sprouts, fried fish, pig feet (yum!!!), greens, spring rolls.

Xian Sites
We traveled from Beijing to Xian by a short plane ride for which once again I was drugged up on Gravol. We arrived late at night and just went to bed. The next 2 days we saw a few sites around Xian. Most of the sites are quite far from the city center so we would take a 1-2 hour bus ride to get to them. Hong’s cousin Yao came to Xian by train from her home city to tour with us.

Day 1 – Terra Cotta Warriors/Qin Dynasty tombs, then the Han Dynasty tombs
First stop in Xian was to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. I for some reason had the impression of these being really big, even though I distinctly remember them being described as life-like. When I got over the initial shock of seeing human-sized figures, it was pretty impressive just how extensive this burial site is.There are three dome buildings built over top to protect the excavations. You can see in the middle picture all the fixed up figures on display (most were damaged when unearthed and then rebuilt). The picture on the left is what they looked like initially when dug out, but colors are gone due to a fire.

Here’s a close-up of the warriors, each having a distinct face. It was said that each sculptor who made a statue made the face their own, so that each one is unique.

The Han Dynasty tombs had some slightly smaller statues..

And a whole lot of animals, and bones of animals, and even dinosaur bones. The emperors seem to want to be buried with everything they can possibly be buried with.

For some reason we chose this place to finally take a picture of the bathrooms. In China, most public toilets are squat toilets. I tried explaining it to my Mom before we went but she didn’t really get the full picture until she saw them in person. So we took a picture to show people back home.

Hong did a crazy jump just outside the tombs. He actually did a lot of poses and jumps that we’ll put in a Facebook album eventually. It’s hard sometimes to get the timing just right with the camera..

Day 2 – Famen Ce (Buddhist temple) and the City Wall in Xian
The Buddhist temple we went to see was simply enormous. We didn’t even see the entire complex because of time constraints. The entrance is a huge building that leads onto a wide pathway with a bunch of large Buddha statues. You can buy incense to light and pray at each of the Buddha’s.

At the very end (it was long, there were even little trains you could ride) was the big temple to pray at, and through the large set of doors was the big Buddha statue.

We prayed so much, we actually levitated.

And here is a rare group photo!

We visited the ancient city wall which surrounds the center of Xian.

There were these guys in the front of it that were spinning tops by whipping them.

It was gorgeous up on the top of the wall. You could rent bikes and bike along the whole thing. We just walked around for an hour taking pictures. I could have stayed up there all day it was so nice.

And then Hong really walked the wall.

Beijing Food
The food, the food, the food. My parents were a bit overwhelmed by it. I was prepared after having been once before. We end up having epic meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day. The Chinese are very hospitable and every place we went to seemed to have multiple dishes that were special to that region. There was a lot of “You have to try this! It’s special!” but luckily everyone was very understanding of my dietary restrictions. Hong did a great job being stubborn and repeating to everyone (in Chinese) that I can’t have certain things. I wasn’t eating SCD-legal but I tried to stick as close as possible to it. I did have rice but tried not to at every meal. They really do push the congee on me though!

It’s amazing how many things have wheat in them, even in China. Soy sauce is used a lot, many dishes have fried breaded meats, wheat pastry wrappings and questionable sauces. I was definitely exposed to wheat in Beijing but only in tiny amounts. My stomach seemed to do pretty well though. In the mornings we ate at the hotel and it was usually congee, cooked greens, and hard boiled eggs. I would take a couple hard boiled eggs to carry in my purse during the day. I always had a Larabar each day as a mid morning snack as well. Lunches and dinners were quite extensive with many many dishes.

Lamb Hotpot
One of the special meals to have in Beijing is the lamb hotpot. The hotpot almost looks like a volcano with burning embers inside. Around it is a bowl of soup in which you cook meats and vegetables. Normally they add a ‘soup base’ but this time everyone agreed to only add some herbs for flavor. We had ginger, garlic, onion, mushrooms and some other herbs simmering in the pot we cooked in. I read the ingredient list on the package of soup base the restaurant had and it was just awful. I remember it saying a few ingredients in English including MSG, a thickener, “food additives” with numbers, and “etc”. ETC was actually on an ingredient list!  We did not use the soup base and I’m glad for it. This meal for me was completely SCD-legal. The others had dipping sauces with peanut butter and various flavorings.

The restaurant raises their own lamb and the chefs come out and slice it in front of you. They slice it very thin so that it cooks quickly. They usually give a few different cuts some with more fat and some more lean.

I love hotpot, it’s an easy meal to keep SCD-legal, especially if you have your own broth to use as soup base.

Peking Duck
The other Beijing specialty is the Peking Duck featuring the delicious perfectly prepared crispy skin. We went to a restaurant that specifically serves this dish. Here are the ducks and the chefs roasting them in ovens:

They present you with the certificate showing which duck you ended up getting – we got #331481. The ducks are raised on a farm owned by the restaurant and must be of a certain breed and fed a certain way.

Then they came in with our duck and sliced it up in front of us. First a layer of just skin is sliced and placed on a dish. Then some slices of skin and a bit of meat are placed on another dish. Finally the rest of the meat is sliced up for another dish.

The elements of the Peking Duck main dish: top left the wrapper, top right the duck meat (with skin), little dishes have some sauce, onion, cucumber, sugar and garlic; on the plate is it all wrapped up. The method: take a wrapper and place it on your plate, grab some meat and dip it first in the sauce and then either the sugar or garlic, place the meat on the wrapper and add some strips of onion and/or cucumber. Fold up the wrapper.

Here’s Hong demonstrating how to eat it..

Wash it all down with delicious watermelon juice (fresh pureed watermelon)

They also serve other duck dishes including the roasted duck heads (halved), duck liver, and duck meat minced with veggies and nuts in a lettuce bowl. I mostly stuck to these dishes since they were more likely to be safe for me to eat.

In case you didn’t fill up on duck, they ordered about a dozen other dishes.. From left to right top to bottom: dates, mushrooms with pine nuts on greens, sliced mushrooms, black fungus on greens, sweet and sour pork, sliced roast beef, soup, whole steamed fish, fried shrimp, some bean desert thing (3 kinds), sesame buns, another bean desert thing. The bean desert things are quite tasty

You know it’s all over when they bring out the fruit (the final dessert):

Beijing Sites
Beijing is such a beautiful city. It is like the Rome of China, full of ancient sites to see. This was the first stop of the trip and we spent 3 days at the start of our trip with our fantastic English speaking tour guide Loong. If you are ever interested in visiting Beijing, ask me for his contact. It is so hard to tour China properly without knowing the language or someone there. This tour guide was awesome! Hong’s Uncle is also amazing and has many connections in China. He organized everything for us and took us everywhere. Here is a picture of Hong Tao at his favorite place in China (not in Beijing.. but coming up in a later post):

Day 1 was Tienanmen Square, Forbidden City, the Hutongs, and a temple with a great view of the city.
The first time I went to China 3 years ago we toured Beijing so these were all places I had been to before. This time was much better with an English tour guide and a whole lot less people. The first trip was during a Chinese holiday and there were just so many people everywhere. So I was glad to be able to experience Tienanmen Square with less tourists and more free space.
From left to right: view of the square from the gate, my parents in the center of the square in front of the monument, and Mao’s mausoleum with some pretty flowers.

Forbidden City was next after we walked through the square and the gate. The Forbidden City is quite large and has a bunch of museum and displays in it. One was the clock and watches museum and it was fascinating! These were all clocks that had been given as gifts to the Emperors by different countries and royalty. Most of the clocks were elaborate fancy looking pieces with a smallish clock face on it. The one that stood out though was a very old clock that worked by water flowing through it.The water would flow into a basin where a boat would float pointing to the time.
From left to right: buildings in the Forbidden City, Hong with the water clock, one of many lion statues next to a rock carving.

After a quick lunch – supplemented by some meat on a stick – we next did a tour of the Hutongs. These are very old neighborhoods in the center of Beijing that have been protected by the government. They are not only the houses of some lucky families (they’re worth a lot of money) but also serve as an interesting tourist attraction. We had our little tour by bicycle rickshaw – these guys are lots of fun!

Some families still live in these houses, but one family has allowed tour groups to go through it and see the original structure of Beijing neighborhoods and houses. The houses are always 4 buildings facing into a square courtyard. Feng Shui is the rule here and everything is placed in a certain direction. You can tell a family’s social status by the color of their roof, the number of steps & beams at their entrance, and the lions at the front. It was pretty busy in the courtyard of the house we visited as you can see in the middle picture. Tao is holding up his hand.

We finished the day with a short hike up a hill to a nice temple overlooking the city. You can see Forbidden City and the smog. There is some blue sky above that smog though! Actually there were some sand storms in the distance that may have contributed to the smoggy look, but Beijing is definitely polluted.

Day 2 was the Great Wall, the Olympic Village and a Kung Fu Ballet Show
The Great Wall is always fun if you’re a foreigner. You become a celebrity and people actually stop you for a picture. Some Chinese people just love seeing Caucasians and wanted to have their picture taken with us. This happened a few times and made the day quite hilarious. Here are my Mom, Dad and I taking pictures with random people. My Dad sure didn’t seem to mind 2 cute girls following him around.

I love the Great Wall because of the gorgeous views, the nice feeling of having done a hike (it’s steep!) and the sheer size of it. When you’re up there you just feel like throwing your hands up in the air. From left: my Dad, Hong’s Dad (Tommy), Hong’s Mom (Min), Hong, Hong’s Uncle Tao

One last gorgeous view:

The Olympic Village was nice to see but pretty underwhelming after visiting the Great Wall. We saw the Bird’s Nest and the Cube and took some pictures. They’ll be on Facebook, not really worth posting here . The show we saw was a ballet and stunt show about Kung Fu. It was pretty darn good! The little kids are the craziest with their tricks. Unfortunately no photography allowed..

Day 3 was the Temple of Heaven and Summer Palace
The Temple of Heaven is set in a beautiful area where lots of people go to spend the day. Groups come to dance together, play games and write calligraphy on the walkways. I love visiting places like this in China because it gives such a feeling of community and friendship. People actually spend their time doing fun, healthy, outdoor activities together.

The Temple itself was pretty nice too:

We ended our 3 days in Beijing with the Summer Palace. I love this place it is so beautiful! It was built as a summer getaway ‘outside’ of the city but is now actually quite close to the modern Beijing downtown. The lake is entirely man made. There’s an outdoor corridor for walking along the lake and a temple high up from which to get a nice view.

Next post in the China series will be about Beijing food…

I got back from China just 3 days ago and boy do I have a lot to share! I went with my boyfriend Hong who was born in China and still has uncles, aunts, cousins and grand parents there. The two of us had gone with his best friend 3 years ago and had a blast. My parents and his parents joined us on the trip (yes we both have great relationships with our families!) and it was my parent’s first time going. I feel like I went for a month since we did so much touring around, so many cities, so many dinners.. It was really only 16 days. I think I will have a few posts broken up randomly so that I can get this all written down without feeling overwhelmed. There’s a ton of pictures to go through so after the posts I’ll share some Facebook albums. I don’t have pictures for the traveling there part, since I was pretty focused on packing and then was drowsy from motion sickness drugs for most of it! There will be plenty coming in the next few posts though.

Flying on SCD
I was feeling a bit nervous about the flight because of food availability. I don’t like airplane food and don’t trust that my stomach will like it either. Some people just don’t eat on the plane, but my flights spanned 16 hours so I knew I couldn’t go the whole time without eating. From my house to the hotel in China, it was about 20 hours. In my carry-on I brought a couple of Larabars, 4 hard boiled eggs, 6 frozen lamb meatballs, some beef jerky, individual snack sized hard aged cheese encased in wax, bananas and apples. Freezing the meatballs ahead of time meant they lasted quite a while at room temperature. They also kept the eggs cool while they thawed out. I highly suggest frozen meatballs while traveling especially for people who are sensitive to eggs. The cheese worked out well too and kept at room temperature for the entire 2 weeks since they were encased in wax.

There’s a lot of food I would have brought if it weren’t for the frustrating liquids restrictions in carry-ons. What I would give to be able to bring my yogurt on the flight. At least what I brought was more than enough to get me through the 16+ hours of travel. I did pack some yogurt and coconut oil in my checked-in luggage for when I arrived, along with enough Larabars to have one each day. I wasn’t going to have access to a kitchen or fridge at all for the first week so I didn’t plan on bringing food for then. The yogurt I finished in the first day there. The Larabars lasted the entire trip. My new favorite flavour has to be the coconut cream pie. I love that it has some coconut fat in it for energy and the flavour is really nice! I don’t normally eat Larabars at home, but rely on them heavily while traveling.

I ate a big bowl of beef stew with zucchini before leaving my house the morning of travel. I ordered the gluten-free airplane meal option which is never SCD legal as they almost always give rice, potatoes and put questionable sauces on stuff. Oddly enough, Hong got fresh fruit with his meals and I ended up trading him some weird fruit cup type food for that. They also gave me margarine while he got butter, so I stole his butter and ate it plain. BTW the margarine was not just vegetable oil suitable for someone with dairy allergies, it was “hydrogenated vegetable oil with milk proteins” blech.

Motion sickness was also a big worry of mine as I get really nauseous on planes. I tried homeopathics, ginger and Sea Bands but nothing worked. The first flight was only 1.5 hours but left me so nauseous and dizzy I couldn’t carry my bags when we landed. For the next 12 hour flight I had to rely on dimenhydrinate known in Canada as Gravol every 4 hours which put me to sleep immediately for at least 2 hours at a time. I really don’t like taking any medication but knew this would only be for flights so I tried not to worry about it too much. My entire flight there was literally sleeping for 2 hours then stuffing my face with the food I brought, then sleeping again. One thing very noticeable, this was my first ever flight without feeling pressure, cramps and gas in my stomach. Flights used to be uncomfortable to sit through but this time I felt nothing other than the motion sickness.

We arrived in the late afternoon and went to the hotel briefly to change. We had dinner that was as close to SCD as possible, with stir-fried plain looking meat and veggies, and a bit of rice which I had done ok with in a test before leaving. After a nice dinner we returned to the hotel for showers and were in bed by 10. I did fine sleeping and didn’t feel too jet-lagged. Traveling to China always seems to be this way. We arrive exhausted in the evening, eat a big meal and sleep through the night. The travel home is a bit harder.

So I made it, safe and sound with a happy tummy ready for the touring ahead. Stay tuned for the next post which covers the sightseeing in Beijing.