Nothing can upend your expectations and preconceived notions more than travel. When I found myself in Beijing this fall, I was expecting it to be crowded, it was. I was also expecting to eat lots of rice and noodles, which I did. But I was not expecting baked goods and absolutely amazing baked goods at that. 

I was meant to stay until May, but the Coronavirus had other plans. I left at the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, with the expectation (again with the expectations) that I’d be away for ten days. Then back to the life I had just starting fitting into in Beijing. When the reality set in that I would not be able to return, I did what we all do. I began reliving memories and retrieving those precious, almost nostalgic moments of what we will miss and long to have again. For me, it’s the baked goods in Beijing.

I ate a lot of great things in China that I’ll miss. The dumplings from the local place, the lamb hot pots, and the cafeteria food at the high school where I was teaching. And yes, the cafeteria food was amazingly good as well. Although the school made a change, their canteen had been “in-house,” and then they decided to outsource their food providers shortly before I left. No one was happy with the decreased quality of the food and this became the main topic of conversation for days. Food, as with most cultures, is always a central focus and matter up for debate. But what I will miss the most is a simple sesame roll bought from small shops with walk-up service on many street corners in Beijing.

My first encounter with this roll called a Shao Bing, or Beijing Biscuit happened on an early Saturday evening after a visit to the Panjiayuan antique market. The shop opened to the street with the baked goods coming hot directly from the oven in the small space behind the woman running a seemingly solo operation. Steam poured out into the evening air, and a crowd lined up to get small plastic bags of the buns as they came fresh out of the oven. My companion for the day bought us a bag of ten or so. The Shao Bing was still hot to the touch, and when I took that first bite, I can honestly say it was one of the most delicious biscuits I’ve ever had in my life. It’s hyperbolic, perhaps to say, but the memory is so bright and intense. It was a moment frozen in time by a bite into a perfect sesame biscuit.  I will never forget that slightly salty sesame flavor combined with the texture of the bread. Perhaps this "nostalgic in the moment response" was triggered by standing on that street corner after spending a day looking at the various beads on display from the hundreds of vendors inside the market or exploring the Chinese memorabilia posters in the back corners of the tightly packed dealers in the interior buildings. Whatever it was, it made an impression on me, and it was a little bit like the feeling of recognizing that you are falling in love with a place.

I miss the biscuits, and I’m sad that I may never taste anything quite like it again. The biscuit is a metaphor, a feeling transferred to something concrete. What I really miss is the place and the people I met there. It’s a longing to return to a place and a moment that I’ll never get back. My visa has been canceled due to the coronavirus, and Beijing seems further away than ever. My journey to Beijing began as a last-minute opportunity. It ended with a virus blocking the way back to relationships just begun. But what always remains is the food. Instead of “we’ll always have Paris,” the saying should be changed to, “we’ll always have the…(insert the place specific food here relevant to your individual experience shared with the people you met there.)”