After coming back from our big adventure to the Hanging Monastery, we rested for a bit at our hotel. We decided we weren’t very hungry but should eat anyway around 8 p.m., so we went to the hotel next door. It had a pretty nice restaurant (we had eaten there the night before). We ordered some vegetables, xiao chi and dao xiao mian (knife-cut noodleds), a regional specialty. It was very good and a lot of food. You may recall that we weren’t hungry. We stuffed ourselves silly. At the end of the meal, Catherine starts telling me about how southern Chinese people traditionally believe that there are compartments in our stomachs for each flavor and that her sweet compartment is still hungry. I told her mine was, too. It was bingqilin time.

See, the night before, Catherine and I had asked one of the waitresses at the restaurant if there was any bingqilin around the area. She said no. We walked down a few streets, and after half an hour, we decided the waitress was telling the truth and we had to settle for store-bought ice cream. We wandered into the little convenience shop on the other side of our hotel (i.e., not the side with the restaurant). All they had were the individual popsicles/ice-cream-on-sticks that are in freezers everywhere around China. Sigh. OK. I picked what I thought was a chocolate/vanilla swirl thing on a cone, which turned out to be taro and white. But Catherine hit jackpot: she got a popsicle called Strawberry Empress. Pink strawberry popsicle with vanilla cream on the inside — it looked and smelled like ice cream royalty.

Anyway, after our big dinner, we decided to go back to that shop and get us some Strawberry Empress. Except — it wasn’t there! We were like, WTF? Luckily, the side street next to our hotel was a row of little convenience stores, one after the other. We started at the first store and checked every single freezer. Shopkeepers stared and looked confused. Some of them asked what we were looking for. “You bingqilin ma?” I asked to save time. Some of them said no. Some said yes, and we were shown their stock. But no Strawberry Empress.

After 10 stores or so, we wandered into a shop with an upright refrigerator (like a normal home refrigerator instead of the industrial rectangular boxes). Catherine hesitated. “This can’t be good,” she said.

That’s when I noticed the duck! It was just waddling around outside the shop on the sidewalk. I got really excited and whipped out my camera. I started snapping pictures. The shopkeeper started making noises to try to get it to come over. “Na shi shei de ya?” I asked him.

“Wo de,” he answered.

I squealed with delight. “Jiao ta guo lai!”

He tried, but the duck was hungry and looking for food, he said. It was the cutest thing ever. Then I remembered our mission. “You bingqilin ma?”

He opened his refrigerator and pulled out a drawer. “Yao shenme zhong de bingqilin?” he asked as he started showing us his bingqilin.

“You mei you caomei de?”

He pulls one out. No, not it. Another one. We peer at it. Wait–this was it!

“Yes, zhei ge! Zai lai yi ge!”

He searches and searches. No more.

Because I hadn’t yet had the greatness of Strawberry Empress, Catherine let me buy the popsicle. It was delicious. We wandered down the street, now asking the shopkeepers if they had “this kind” of popsicle. No.

Finally, we saw another store with an upright refrigerator. It was a sign. What kind do you want? Strawberry flavored. Oh, here are some. No, this kind. But this is also strawberry. No, yiding yao shi zhei zhong de.

This kind? Oh, yes! — a Strawberry Empress for Catherine.

So we asked the shopkeeper to take a picture of us with our popsicles. We are still pretty certain we bought the last two Strawberry Empresses in Datong that night.