In my last post, I mentioned that Josh and I dip our raw fruits and vegetables in a bleach solution to clean them. We also boil our water and milk. We are very careful with all of our food, and so far we haven't gotten sick from anything that we have made ourselves. Unfortunately, you can never tell what goes on in the back of a restaurant. Yesterday we went out to lunch with our friend Kristen. We ordered salad and a kilo of jao zi (potsticker dumplings) and washed them down with lots of Harbin Beer. A few hours later, Josh and I were both feeling pretty bad. We were light-headed, nauseated, and we went to bed early. The next morning, we knew we were sick. To put it delicately, I could go an hour without a trip to the bathroom, whereas Josh had to go every half-hour. I had to cover Josh's classes for him. In China, everyone gets food poisoning eventually. They don't sell immodium in the Middle Kingdom, so many expatriates keep personal immodium caches. Unfortunately, we are not among them. Without immodium, we have two options: we can use traditional Chinese medicine, or we can take antibiotics. We both like to avoid antibiotics. We believe they are over-prescribed and overused, leading to new strains of super-bacteria, and nobody wants that. Instead of taking the strong suff, we are taking goldenseal. It is one of those traditional Chinese meds that has been proven (somewhat) effective in modern clinical trials. We are also drinking a lot of juice and bottled water, trying to stay hydrated. If we don't get better in a few days, we will return to the 21st century and embrace antibiotics. Cipro is easy to get here. You can walk into a pharmacy and buy twenty pills for 2 kuai (US$0.25) without a prescription. Hopefully, we will feel better tomorrow, and the Cipro won't be necessary.