A dayy or so after the hutong tour, the fam and I decided to mosy on over to tiananmen square, because, hey what is the point of a tourist attraction if there are no tourists there to see it, right?

The workers memorial in the center of tian an men square, ironically enough, under construction. Tian an men translates to square of heavenly peace.

The square is flanked by several important structures…on the east is the government building. You can tell by all the black audis, which is the unofficial govt car of china. No kidding…every one we saw had govt plates

At the south end is The entrance to the forbidden city, which you will not see pictures of today

At the north end is mao’s mausoleum. Inside are two mao’s. Not because even the chinese cant tell each other apart, but because in the spirit of lenin and stalin, the chinese opted to preserve mao’s body by pickling it and displaying it in a pressure sealed airtight glass chamber so it could be observed. However, the natural process of decay and the years have begun to take their toll on pickled mao, and since his neck was kind of melting, the govt made a wax version that is on display while the real mao is under reconstruction. Heh. Plastic surgery on a corpse. creepy. However, it was still a pretty awe inspiring experience to walk in and observe. Whatever you may think about mao, the man accomplished a lot given his beginnings, and love him or hate hiim, the chinese respect that (most of them actually love him, if you were wondering…there were many flowers brought in and laid at the entrance to the observation area)

And here is me at the west end of tiananmen in front of the national museum and the olympic countdown clock. We decided to step in, to check out the jade burial suit the museum had on display

Please note the jade crotch…this guy wasn’t insecure about the chinese being “so small” was he?

And while we were there, a visit to the wax museum was already included in the price of admission, so why the heck not?

Lunch followed…i sadly was unable to squeeze the juice out of the watermelon, so i settled instead for shark fin soup…which disappointingly did not have the jaws fin sitting on top like i pictured in my head

Next stop was wang fu jing, a well known shopping mecca

Seriously how old do you think this guy is…15-16?

Goods of babies? man they dont mess around with those sweatshops do they? then why do you supposed air jordans are still so dang expensive

Given as how i was studying traditional chinese medicine, i figured i should check out a traditional chinese pharmacy. Not like a western one at all, full of sights and smells nd so not sterile looking (i mean this in terms of personality, not cleanliness)

This is an asthma lizard…if you have respiratory problems, you are supposed to brew this sucker in some tea, inhale the vapors, and drink it.

This is jew medicine. Actually i cant back that up, but unlike the asthma lizard, no empoyee could pantomime to me what this was for

The last of those pics is the entrace to the wang fu jing night market. Let’s take a look shall we?

I have eaten everything you see in the above pictures

well not the people, as that is generally frowned upon, but the bugs and sweets and stuff. proof to come soon mary. Well, soon for me anyway

-J

After the stop in the hutong, we left the compund got back into our rickshaws, and continued on through the back streets until we reached sycee bridge

I dont know the particular significance of this bridge, seeing as how the informative sign was all in chinese except for the name (is that some way to screw with every tourist-chinese people know the history of the bridge, but not what it is called, and non chinese get to know the name?)

Oh well, there were a ton of outdoor bars on either side of this river and they had super cheap beer which i availed myself of at a later date

Up ahead, is the drum tower, located directly across from the bell tower, pictured below

Our guide figured if you’ve seen one tower, you’ve seen em all, so he only paid our admission into the drum tower. We then climbed up very steep and very narrow stairs. I will be mentioning this in future posts, but for a race of people stereotyped for being short, the chinese sure do put a lot of height in between each stair…probably why they all have those crazy acrobatic abilities

That pic still doesnt accurately convey the steepness, but hopefully you get the gist

what would a drum tower be without drums? just a tower, that’s what. The first pic is the largest drum in all of china. The second one is a pic of chinese people performing the drum ceremony, wherein during the workday from 9-5 every half hour or hour, I forget which, i think it is hour, the drums are beaten. In olden days this was done to remind court functionaries of appointments with the emperor, since they could be killed to death if they were late. Merchants and commoners began taking advantage of it too, since the drums could be heard all over the city.

And just how big was the city? Well china was originally laid out in a ring road system, with the first ring being the forbidden city, containing the emperors palace and all that jazz, and then the 2nd ring road covering most of what we consider history book beijing. China is up to a 6th ring road by this point. but here are some views of the the city from the top of drum tower…

Where you see all the sky high apartment buildings is the domain of the 3rd ring road, and the demolished hutongs and little buildings the 2nd

After the drum beating ceremony, it was back on to the rickshaws one more time to go to Gongwanfu, or Prince Gong’s Garden for a traditional chinese tea ceremony. The garden itself was pretty darn neat. Bats are apparently a lucky animal in china, and thus gongwanfu was peppered with bat imagery

The builder of this garden compound was very impressed by the japanese idea of bonsai, and thus tried imitate their form in rock arrangement

Inside the compound we were served several kinds of tea.

C’mon now people, you didnt think i was going to come to china and NOT have tea, did you? damn skippy

Thus concluded the tour. Until the next china post folks
-J

While again, the stated purpose of my trip was for study, you don’t travel to and live in a foreign country (however temporarily) without at least exporing some of the sights, sounds, and smells. For the first week or so of the trip, both my mother and brother were with me, so we tried to do things together as well as with the group. One of those family fun time events was a rickshaw tour through the hutongs and some other sights of old china

We started off by hailing a cab over to houhai jouba (houhai club street and the lotus market)

You know, for a nation known for drinking tea, starbucks seemed to be doing pret-ty well for itself judging by the sheer number of places i saw it in china (and of course i photographed severa of those places b/c i am a consumer whore)

Houhai was a street of mosty bars and clubs with a few restaurants all alongside a lake

After a pleasant little stroll, we went to the corner where we met our rickshaw driver and the tour began


Those rickshaw drivers are strong! this guy was biking at quite a turn of speed considering he was carring a coach and 2 peope attached

The first stop was a brief tour and introduction to the hutongs (a derivative of a mongolian word for waterway) hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan,
traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by
joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one
hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such
neighbourhoods.

Next we actually got to go inside one of the compounds

This particular compound hd been lived in by members of this family fo ove 100 years. 8 people happened to live in this particular compound, all related by blood or marriage, but in other compounds, there may be up to 4-5 families who have no close connections with each other all sharing the same living space

The family now supports themselves by prodcuing and selling paper cut art, such seen above

The particular cut he is working on has taken him almost 7 weeks to complete to this point…

Next post, on with the tour—-

-J

Well after a mere week of lectures, the acupuncture education international group began sending us off in groups of 4 to the clinics…so it would be 4 hours of clinic in the morning, followed by 3 hours of lecture in the afternoon, and the remainder of the day off to have to ourselves. Now in the last post i just showed a bunch of the lectures together, those were not all from one lecture.

But let’s be honest here…given that we usually got out of lecture at around 3 and most of the touristy things in beijing closed by 4 or 5, there were many days that several people in our group (including myself) left lecture early, or didn’t go at all…so clinic is where we got the majority of our learning done, by the hands on method as opposed to learning all the theory behind what we were doing…gotta love sink or swim learning, right?

Tongren Hospital was where i did my rotations, with fellow med school classmates Alex, Soo and Oliver (yes we were elitist and put our whole med school in one group–don’t worry I socialized with the others in separate settings )

Tongren had both a western medicine and a traditional chinese medicine (TCM) section. I obviously was rotating in the TCM section which was entered via this path

Dr Tan was not only a very knowledgable doctor, but also served as our translator when we were at clinic…telling us what the other doctor said when his gestures were not apparent, or talking to the patients and giving us feedback about their conditions or our performance on them

Here is the hospital ward we spent all our time in….patient privacy was simply a curtain that could be drawn around the bed…not to much different from western hospitals, except that there would be around 6-7 beds to a room instead of 2, giving the place sort of a pre-WWI feel, at least to me…adding to that feel was the fact that new patients would come in and just sit on chairs near the doctors desk waiting until a bed was available. Then when one opened up (the sheets were NEVER changed unless a patient bled profusely on them, which did not happen as much s you might think) the new patient simply went and laid down where the old patient had been. Forget about hospital robes either…you either stayed in your street clothes or stripped down depending on what was getting punctured..

Tangent: Chinese people do not understnd the concept of boxers, and tried to charge me for them as shorts when i went to do laundry…apparently they are a nation of tighty-whiteys

Here are the usual supplies in a typicl day at the clinic…the cups for cupping, the needeles for needling, two containers of cotton swabs, one dipped in alcohol and one dry, some matches, nd forceps. The forceps were for holding the cotton balls to apply pressure to the patient when we were removing needles. You would press the cotton ball down, then as you pushed the bll against the skin, you would pull the needle out, and the patient would usually not feel a thing…added bonus, if the patient began to bleed (which was a normal occurrence for some of the face points where blood vessels are very superficial) then you could tell the patient to keep pressure on the cotton for a few moments to halt the bleeding…handy, no?

Here is one of the patients at the clinic…he was being treated for back and joint pain

After the needling, the patient received cupping, which draws blood and qi to the area that was being treated, and incidentally leaves a large circular looking bruise

In the beginning, our main job was just to remove the needles from the patients, mostly from the extremities and trunk…as we got proficient and the doctors came to know us, we started removing needles from the head and face, and most frightennly from the canthus (corners) of the eyes…definetly need steady hands for that one

Now at Tongren Hospital, Monday, Wednesday nd Friday were the busy days, and tuesday nd thursdy there were very few patients…since we went to clinic every day, we used those off days to practice stuff on each other

That last photo, i am carrying out scrapiing, which involves pouring a few drops of some kind of plant ointment onto the back of whoever, and then using  tool called a scraper to literally scrape down their bck nd ner the spine. As you do it, you will notice certain areas take on  much more reddish cast than others, and depending where those areas are, you can make diagnoses…now of course we all remember the golden rule, right?

On that lovely close up of my back, the raised reddish areas represent heart and liver fire, indicating to Dr Tan, who came to check on our progress, that I had been drinking a lot in the last couple days (which was very much true)

Next came cupping…again, the trick is to create a vacumn, which sucks up the skin underneath the cup. This is accomplished by lighting an alcohol soaked cotton swab on fire, and then very quickly placing the swab inside the cup and pulling it out to suck all the air with it, then placing it on the patient…in order to do this, both the cup and the lit swab must be fairly near to the patient, further emphasizing the need for speed

Soo was the first to volunteer for such things

As I mentioned, it leaves some marks

Now while those are bruises, they usually fade within 5-7 days. Of course, if you are chinese and get this sort of thing done repeatedly, then the marks, while they will fade, will never competely disappear.

Now there was no way I was gonna let soo be the only one to have all the fun of free chinese medical treatment, So i hopped on the table next and told my classmates to do their worst

That raised skin under the cup looks awesome, doesn’t it? While this might appear painful, I assure you it is not so…basically you just get the sensation of a weight on your back, and the actual placing of the cup is much like putting a vacumn cleaner on a part of your arm or leg…a sense of suction without any real pain

To remove the cups, you gently edge a finger underneath the lip of the cup, and then press down hard to create a gap in between the cup and skin…the air rushes in, and the cup detaches itself with a moderate to loud sucking sound



Now if you leave the cups on too long, or create to much of a suction, the marks will be a little darker and take longer to fade away. Such was the case with the two you can see on my shoulders…now these spots were not more or less tender than the others…which is to say not at all…but they did remain on my shoulders for the remainder of the china trip and only disappeared completely recently, prompting several people to ask why i had 2 perfectly circular tan lines on my back

Videos of several of these techniques can all be located on my VIDEO PAGE which i strongly recommend you go check out…i will figure out how to put them in posts later

Next time, some of our non-class related beijing adventures

-J

Okay so I finally am getting around to posting a few pics, although not in any particular order because then I would never get anything done. However, here are some of my more memorable experience in China…

If you were following through the backlogs (catch up, Kelly! ) then you know that the original and stated purpose of my china trip was to study acupuncture. Now I already wrote about some of my experiences in the clinic (Physician, Stab Thyself and Let’s Get Clinical!) but I figured I woud actualy provide you all with some actual pics of what it was like

Let’s begin with some of the lectures, shall we? After all, I can’t show pics of my treating patients until you know that i actually learned the rudiments of how to…I will try and keep this pic posts short and sweet so as not to overload those of you with modem connections

Here are the original needles that used to be used when acupuncture first started…now, not so much

After learning basic theory, we began by practicing correct technique on gauze pillows…it invoves a straightening of your fingers, and flexing of your wrist, with very little arm motion at all

Then a number of lectures about where different meridians and needle placement points were…

Finally, it was time for us to start practicing on each other…

Finally left china the other day and i am once again bumming myself in japan at andy’s place. With the trip over, it is strange how i feel, like an eggroll of emotion with a lot of happy cabbage, a few disappointed carrot, some wistful pork, but a delicious crispy wrapper of new experiences that will stay with me for much longer than 30 minutes after i have eaten

I know i got pretty lax about updating toward the end there, but that is how vacations go, is it not? you will all know soon what i have been up to, those of you who still check the site and care anyway.

So on my last day o clinic in china, i was the only one of our group of four who showed p, so dr. tan let me do pretty much everything! I got to cup several patients, both placing and removing the cups, and i did moxa for dry eyes and joint pain, and i even was finally allowed to needle some patients (extremity and stomach points only, natch…no needles in the face, i dont trust myself that much) and even manipulate needles that the doctor put in. I feel like i learned a lot during my month here, even if not all of it was about acupuncture and tcm

however with what i did learn about acupuncture, i would like to perhaps find a way to work it into my future practice one day because it really does seem to treat a lot of things that western medicine simply has no way to handle

so the full trip of updates and china photos is forthcoming, but in summary here are some of the things i will most remember…

-The first day of class and realizing that we were going to be treating patients with less than a week of training in tcm

-the endless haggling for the price you want in the silk market, only to realize that you are fighting over about 12 cents us for something you may actually really want

-the multiple rounds of playing asshole, never have i ever, and other drinking games in the hotel room with the rest of the group, and the things we learned about each other while doing so

-the train trips to xian and yellow mountain, and the multiple defacing of various chinese monuments by taking degrading photos with people in sexual positions, or climbing on the statues or the like

-the random spontaneous bursts of karaoke our group had while just walking down the street

-Phil’s invisible booty slapping dance move that can be done to any song

-Meat on stick for ridcurous prices

-Being the best dancers in the club

-filtering all our questions through our 4 mandarin speakers, or trying to get our point across to people when we couldn’t

-bike riding through the streets of beijing, sometimes as much as 7 to 8 miles a day eitheir in the company of a pretty girl, or with her riding on the back of my bike (that’s right, i know what it’s like to be a rickshaw driver)

and while last mentioned, the most important thing i will remember on this trip is the fantastic girl i met out there…part of our acupuncture group, she and i managed to get our flirting and the chase accomplished in about a week and a half, and the remainder of the trip we spent dating/as a couple

it was definetly nice to be in a relationship again, and perhaps even a little more meaninful because we knew we had limited time together, which wemade the most of. For the moment, we are still dating and continue to do so, but not exclusively for reasons which i wont go into online (although i know jenn, mari, and mary will all want to grill me later, and you will have your chance to do so )

that’s okay, i love a challenge

now for the next week i am back in tokyo, and much as i love the city, i defiently intend on taking this week to just relax and recuperate…i have seen most of the sites before, i have no need or desire to go clubbing in roppongi or shibuya by myself, and think i could be content just sitting in a park, eating some quality street food, and thinking about hot content i am with my life and the decisons i made to get here

but enough waxing melodramatic…i am off to enjoy myself, and you will all hear about it later

i’ve waxed on, now it’s time to WAX OFF!

-J

Tuesdays and Thursdays are slow days at tongren hospital, so
oliver alex soo and I took the opportunity to ask the doctor questions and
ultimately we practiced needling, scraping and cupping on each other

Scraping involves putting a bit of seed oil ( I don’t know
what kind exactly yet) on the patient’s back or arm, and then using a thing
plastic board to scrape it along the entire back. What happens is basically you
are scraping hard enough to bruise, and the bruises appear in areas relating to
the zang fu organs and differential diagnoses. When I was being scraped, I had
bruised that related to heart and liver fire…meaning I had a little too much
yang and heat, and the proper tx would be to increase my yin and cool. The
liver fire appeared probably because I had been doing drinking the night
before, which the doctor guessed right away…pretty impressive considering I had
said nothing about it and she guessed merely from brusing me…or more accurately
letting alex bruise me

We all tied scraping each other and then it was on to
cupping. First was dragging cupping, where you place the cup to form an
airtight seal, then slide it down the person’s back and pull it off, making a
nifty little suction sound. After we all got an opportunity to try that, Soo
and I were brave enough to try the actual cupping where the cups remain on you
for several minutes, forming bruises from breaking blood vessels underneath the
skin… 

We both had it done for shoulder and back pain, and let me
tell you, it felt fantastic, although I have large circular bruises all over
for the next couple weeks probably…Thursday we will be needling each other, so
I better study up my acu points…now it is off to celebrate independence day by
doing something American…eating at micky d’s

p.s….they had taro pie…it was delicious

July 5^th

Wednesday is a slightly busier day at the clinic, so we got
to see more…I am getting much better at removing needles from patients and a
bit faster too…I guess that just s with anything else, practice makes perfect,
or at the least competent. I even got to treat my first patient today too! Not
with needles yet, just cupping, but still pretty exciting…I got the cups and
found the points almost entirely by myself, and then I placed the cups on her,
and set the timer, and ten minutes later I removed each one. The cups are
removed by placing a finger underneath the lip of the cup and pressing downward
to release the vacumn seal. Again, bruises are left, but they fade in 5 to 7
days and no one seems to mind that much anyway. I also talked to a gentleman
whose son was there for treatment of epilepsy…although not in the sense we
think of it. He said that four years prior, his son heard someone calling out
his name during his sleep, and woke up scared. Since that time, whenever he
falls asleep, he will usually wake up about one hour later with his heart
punding violently and he will suffer palpitations for 2-3 minutes. For three
years the man took his son, a male aged approx 28 to all sorts of western
doctors and none of them were able to do anything. Finally, the acupuncture
clinic at tongren hospital was recommended, and when we saw the man, it was his
son’s 3^rd acu treatment. At even only the 3^rd tx, he
noted that while his son still suffers from the condiiotn and wakes up with his
heart punding, now it only lasts 10 seconds. Pretty amazing, huh?

Sandra and I decided to rent bikes and start biking around Beijing
to get a feel for it from a locals perspective…that perspective being
suicidally insane J taxicabs buses bikes and pedestrians all share the
road, and lane signs and stopligts are more guidelines than actual rules. Our
first day was a little scary but fun as we got good exercise. Bike lanes here
are huge and run alongside the road. It is a nice feeling to be commuting
everywhere by bike and we are saving a ton of money on taxicab rides around the
city.

So we biked to beihai park where we met alex and soo, and
then we just walked around enjoying the day, warm but without being too hot or
humid. Toward the evening, we climbed up to the white pagoda in the center of
the park, but for whatever reason it was not open to the public. So like good
little Americans, we figured that meant everyone but us, and hopped the fence,
crawles under the posts and climbed around corners in super stealth ninja mode
until we made it up to the top of the pagoda, where I got  great picture of the buddhas inlaid into the
wall beside the pagoda, as well as an amazing view of the forbidden city!

 Then it was a bike ride back and out to karaoke for the
night where once again, much fun was had by all.

July 3rd, 2006
I haven’t really been keeping too many logs past those first couple,
figuring i will just remember based on the pics i have taken what i
did…so here is a little more info about the educational part of the
trip as opposed to the vacational

First day of clinic…got to remove needles from someone’s
face! Technique for removing acu needles is to twist back and forth slightly
for needles from the body, or just pull out the needles from the head…the idea
is to be gentle but quick, so the patient doesn’t feel anything. Taking the
ones out of the woman’s neck was kind of freaky since I had approx one week of
classes and already they have me playing with sharp objects so to speak.
Overall, I was told I had good technique however, which makes me feel happy. To
remove any needle, you take a cotton swab with the clamps, press it against the
skin, and then pull the needle out. The pressure prevents bleeding in most
spots. I did end up making my patient bleed a little bit from the face, but
since the doctor said that that particular spot usually bleeds, I didn’t feel
too bad. Most of the patients in tongren hospital are being treated for stomach
or eye problems, since that is what this particular hospital is known
for…however, we also saw cases of insomnia, lumbago, and just general soreness.

The hospitals are definitely different from western
style…sterilization does not seem to be as much of an issue here…aside from the
acu needles, which are autoclaved, nothing is washed in between patients, not
the clamps for holding the gauze or cotton, the sheets aren’t changed, and used
and unused materials are kept on the same tray, and often in the same
container…the Chinese doctors told us that when they go to America, our
physicians seem paranoid to them, always washing, and never using anything more
than once…quite the culture difference

Although, I guess it would be harder to put needles in
someone with as steady a hand if your’e wearing gloves, but still…universal
health precautions folks!

Speaking of the needling, the doctors here are so fast and
amazing at it…they don’t stop to feel for points or anything…they know their
business and they just take a needle and slide it in in a quick efficient and
amazing manner. The motion is mostly a straigtening of the fingers or forearm,
with each movement very precise. We learned this is at least partly because if
the doctors feel around for the acu points first before placing the needle, the
patient tends to think the doctor is not as experienced and will not go to him
or her again…crazy huh? 

At night we went to the acrobatics…all I can say is, after
watching that show, every athletic endeavor I have ever undertaken has been
entirely invalidated. And I don’t particularly mind

June 26th, 2006

Today was mostly just a day of shopping around the silk market and wang
fu jing street. The silk market is amazing. Pretty much anything you
could ever hope to buy from china can be found here, from calligraphy
to weapons, to perfume, jewelry, and even suits and dresses. Best of
all, everything is negotiable.

I love the idea that buying and selling is a game here. I have yet to
pay more than 1/3 to 1/2 the asking price of anything i have bought,
and everyone seems to walk away happy and feeling that they got the
better end of the deal.

Bargaining is a delicate process…if you start too low, the shopkeeper
wont bargain with you at all, but if you start too high, you dont leave
yourself room to bargain and you end up getting ripped off. I find
about 20% of the asking price is a good place that lets you and the
shopkeeper change your offers by the same incremental amounts.

Then come the arguments…I have done a lot of the bargaining for
people in my group cuz i used to play this game at the markets in
mexico. We argue that ladies who want suits made should be charged less
because they are smaller, and the shopkeeper counters that the bust and
hips take up more material. We argue that we wont have enough money for
lunch if we pay their price, and the shopkeeper retruns with we ought
to thank them for helping us to lose weight by dieting. Every reason,
no matter how ridiculous has it’s counter argument, and whoever can
come up with the most gets their price, or closest to it.

Later in the evening we ended up going to the night market, and i
finally got to start my iron stomach challenge. I purchased for about
86 cents per stick some fried scorpions, larvae, and sea horse, much to
the chagrin of my mother.

The scorpions by far tasted the best, almost like french fries, with a
bit of extra crispiness and a slight hint of butter. It was pretty
crazy to see a tail sticking out of my mouth, and on the whole, i would
eat it again.

The larvae pretty much tastede exactly as you might suspect…crispy on
the outside, with a soft mushy center…not pleasant, but not terrible.
If you were to close your eyes and didn’t know what you were eating,
you might just think it was overripe fruit with a thin crust or
something to that effect.

The seahorse itself was kind of nasty, very crunchy and brittle, with a
briny/fishy aftertaste, but hey you only live once, right? got to try
everything to know if you like it. Joining me in the iron stomach
challenge were phil, ted, jon, and sandra, so whatever other crazy food
we may come across we all have to eat together

-J

Okay so the following
are a coupe of my favorite photos that i have taken out in china thus
far, in no particular order and just pulled at random. I will post more
when i get a chance, but they can all be found at
photos.yahoo.com/somuchyang

Peacing out at Wang Fu Jing

Me on a unrenovated part of the great wall of china, which i most
certainly did not do anything illegal to get to, up to and including
climbing over the wall, barbed wire, and climbing hand by hand down a
drainpipe which is definetly not out of site of the picture frame

No wonder the mongols had such a hard time scaling this thing! HELP!

More to come when i get a chance

-J

P.S. I went swimming for the first time in 10 years today in the lake
of the summer palace in beijing china. Conquering my fears one step at
a time…next will be to swim with pirahanas…here fishy fishy fishy