Sadly, we are back in Toronto from an exotic adventure that ended too soon.  Only several hours have passed since the last leg of our 22 hour travel day that covered 12 time zones.

Jgirl is now sleeping quietly in an oversized and very institutional looking metal crib. The room is purposely darkened “for comfort” and dim lights that are just bright enough to illuminate the most required elements, glow dully.

It was only yesterday that Lilly, our Beijing guide, treated us to her enthusiasm for Chinese history and culture by giving us a tour of the awe inspiring Forbidden City.  If this place is not on your “Bucket List” then shame on you.  Add it now. 

Time for another temperature and blood pressure check.  Sleep is rudely interrupted for the required inspections.

After the Forbidden City Lilly’s government-owned employers invited our family, driver and of course Lilly to a compulsory dinner (which is usually hosted at one of Beijing’s finer traditional duck restaurants, but our vegetarianism added an unforeseen complication to this tradition).  Lilly was forced to search Beijing’s impossibly over-filtered internet for a suitable place to treat us.  She did very well.

We were brought to a tiny four-table restaurant on a small pedestrian lane, the name of which translates to The Black Sesame Hutong.  The atmosphere was a traveler’s dream: benches surrounded the small wooden square tables, two of which had to be squeezed together in the impossibly small restaurant to accommodate our group of six.  My first beer was served from the fridge; the second was just pulled from the case under the next table.  We order a “fish” hot pot, “chicken” hot pot, a platter of various “meats”,  pumpkin soup and several bowls of steamed rice to bind it all together.

She is being moved out of the ER to a room on the 7th floor.  More tests to come, but her breathing is much better now.

The fish hot pot comes first.  A definite show stopper.  Our multilingual conversation turns to the food presented to the table.  It is served in a large copper pan over a solid fuel burner. The broth simmers and waves of the intoxicating aroma hit you with a complex spice combination that I can only guess at.  Green onions, mushrooms, seaweed, bean sprouts, coriander seeds and neon red, dime sized slices of hot peppers (seeds in!), bobbing happily in this magical concoction.  Tiny threads of steam rise from the bubbles as they break the surface creating a heavenly fog that I could wander in for hours.  Then we find the simulated fish hiding just below.  Our driver is the first to break off a small piece of the braised beast. The skin is perfectly seared, the flesh is flaky and moist with the unmistakably salty taste of the sea.  My mind knows that this fake sea creature was fabricated using some secret wizardry in an apartment-sized kitchen hidden behind the flowered curtain at one end of the dining room, but I can’t help but look for bones in the surreal meat.  The taste and texture of the flesh reminds me of freshly cooked pickerel shore lunches after a day of fishing in my carnivorous bad-ol-days.  Even Jo loved it, and she’s never had a taste for fish.

I am being instructed on the hospital’s infectious disease protocols in case darling daughter’s partially collapsed lung is due to contact with tuberculosis. Pneumonia is the more likely cause as she doesn’t have a fever, but we have to be vigilant.  I am told by the admissions doctor that there are seven billion people in the world and 2.5 billion of those carry TB.  “If you”ve travelled outside of North America or Western Europe, then you HAVE BEEN exposed to TB!”  China, orphanage….raise the alarms.

Memories of the divine pumpkin soup will just have to wait.