Today

Today was a good day. I got to chat with a really nice lady at the gym, who said I reminded her of her daughter. How sweet is that? We talked about inner beauty and how everyone seems to want to look different, not realizing how lovely we are on the inside. Just another day anticipating a whirlwind tour of Asia.

I have a vague idea of what I'll be seeing and sensing - it's hard to predict how everything will be different from the U.S. and how things like my old places in Beijing have changed in six years. Wow, I can't believe it's been six years since I last crossed the Pacific.

Not surprisingly there will be a lot of noms. I will be stuffing my face with you tiao (cruellers) and jiaozi (dumplings) and an amazing tomato-apple juice blend that I've only seen in China. In Shanghai, I will hunt and seek xiao long bao (little dragon buns) with the determination of a bird dog. I will get stomach problems and remember why I came back to the United States. But no stomach problems shall stand in the way of my noms. I am determined to keep eating, no matter what. Come to think of it I need to brush up on foreign medical terms.

I looked up top-rated restaurants in Beijing as compiled by Time Out Beijing, expecting to see Quanjude or other standards heralding back to hundreds of years of Chinese cuisine. Most of the "best" restaurants in the Time Out guide are non-Chinese imports. Things like California-style sushi, Japanese kaizen sushi, and Italian fusion cuisine took top honors, as decided by the hip young things who write and read Time Out guides. That's cool - it means that foodiness has opened up a lot in China. Still puzzled by the "Italian" (read: Flemish) outfits I saw at a chandelier-bedecked Pizza Hut in Beijing six years ago. But franchises occupy their own strange world, and things might have changed.

Now I will dream as visions of pickled plums dance in my head.