Fun diversions during acupuncture course

May 9-20

Best meal in China

After school one day, Ashley and I set off to navigate the Beijing public transportation system. Megan had left school early that day with our faculty advisor and one of our other classmates to tour the Beijing Raptor Rescue Center, where Megan would be working for the month of June. So the plan was to meet up with those folks at the Temple of Heaven for some quality sightseeing and then find a good spot for a meal.

We went to the closest bus stop with a list of buses that would take us to the closest subway station. After waiting for a while with none of our listed buses appearing, a friendly student asked where we were going. To our surprise, he nicely told us that any bus would take us to the subway station! So we got on the next bus. To our surprise, any bus does not take you to the subway station, which we realized after we turned off the main road, heading away from the where we knew the subway station to be. (Thanks for trying, nice student.) So we got off at the next stop, crossed the street, and starting making plans for a new route. There were many people who spoke English in Beijing, especially this close to a university, so we asked lots of people for help. The general consensus was the next subway stop was “too far” to walk. Yet still… when we looked at our maps, this just didn’t seem to be true. So we walked, and checked our maps, and checked streets signs, and walked, and there you go – we made it to the subway! We never were sure why our Chinese helpers were so adamant that it was “too far.” It was several kilometers, for sure; maybe that is “too far” for the average Chinese person on the street….

Anyway, we were very proud of our successful navigation to the subway, but when we got in touch with Megan et al., we found out that the Temple of Heaven was already closed for the day! (One more acupuncture course gripe: getting out of class too late in the day to see cultural sites before closing.) So we instead made plans to meet up for dinner in a hutong somewhere near Andingmen. Ashley and I wandered around, looking for several different bars/restaurants that had been recommended to us. We ended up stopping for a drink outside an unknown place and got to chatting with some Canadian ex-pats outside. They told us we had happened upon one of their favorite places in Beijing! When Megan et al. arrived, we let our new friends order for us since the menu was entirely in Chinese (no pictures here) and they seemed to know their stuff. We ended up enjoying some of the best food of my entire trip! In addition, our new friends were in a band and invited us to their show at a local music club in a few days.

On our way back, we got to appreciate the out-in-the-boonies aspect of our current lodgings. We caught the last subway cars just a little before 11pm. When we got off the subway, we were still a good 20-30 minute walk to our hotel, which we didn’t want to walk in an unknown neighborhood that late at night. We went through a bunch of cabbies before we finally found someone willing to take us home.

Live music in Wudaokou

Several of us headed out to hear the Canadians we met a couple of days ago play in their band. They were playing at a club called D-22 in a neighborhood called Wudaokou. Wudaokou is close to several big universities, has a large international student population, and is supposed to be a pretty cool place with lots of bars and clubs. Even though we had the exact address, when our cabs deposited us on a street corner nearby (one of many instances where the cabbies seemed to prefer dumping us off close to where we were going instead of taking us all the way there) we had some trouble finding the place. After turning in circles a few times, we asked for help. This resulted in one of the many instances where we were amazed at how helpful people were! The couple we asked literally spent 15 minutes with us to send us off in the right direction. They didn’t know exactly where it was, but they accompanied us to a store to ask for help, asked other people for help on our behalf, etc. It was truly amazing. (Although I have to admit, there were a few times in China I asked for help and was frustrated with how helpful people were – “Dude, just admit you don’t know what I’m looking for and let me go so I can ask someone else!”)

We eventually did find the bar and spent the evening drinking, playing foosball, and listening to the bands. A few nights before, a couple of our friends had gone out in Wudaokou and had a hard time getting back to the hotel – the same old no-cabs-want-to-go-to-your-stupid-hotel-in-the-boonies problem. Since Megan, Ashley, and I had been in China longer and were pretty confident navigators/phrasebook users/cajolers, we figured we wouldn’t have as much trouble. Still, it was interesting to see how much the neighborhood shut down at night. The streets were happening when we got there around 8ish. When we left around midnight, the place was deserted – and this was supposed to be a bar/club neighborhood! It was weird. After several cabs refused, we were eventually able to find a ride back to the hotel.

Silk Market

One day after class, another friend of mine and I headed downtown to the world famous Silk Market. The Silk Market is a 5-story building filled with vendors ready to sell you silk (duh), cashmere, jewelry, luggage, clothing, and on and on and on. The vendors are fairly aggressive and haggling is the norm here. As an example, I looked at a small hand painted silk scroll that “cost” 260Y (about $45); I eventually bought it for 50Y. After tolerating as much haggling as we could take and spending as much money as we were comfortable spending, we were ready for dinner. And as much as I loved the food in China, I seriously, totally, utterly, and completely missed cheese. We decided to satisfy that craving by splurging for pizza for dinner. It actually didn’t have as much cheese on it as an American pizza would have, but it totally hit the spot.

Getting Chinese Students Drunk

We had two social/celebratory gatherings with the Chinese students towards the end of the course. The first one was a party where there would be food, music, and alcohol, but it was also supposed to be a kind of exchange of cultural entertainment: the Chinese students were going to show us some stuff and we were supposed to show them some stuff. As a group, we were a little stumped about what “American entertainment” we could put together, especially on such short notice. We settled on singing a few songs, putting on a skit or two, and drinking games. The drinking games were THE hit of the party. I have never seen more enthusiastic and excited Flip Cup players ever.

Goodbye Dinner with the Chinese Students

On the next to last night of the course, we had a goodbye dinner and gift exchange with the Chinese students. We had brought vet school T-shirts, etc. to give to them and they gave us various Chinese good luck favors. We had a huge and yummy multi-course dinner served family style on a big Lazy Susan at each table. It was very nice to spend some more social time with the Chinese students and very sad to be winding down our time left in China.

Acupuncture course

May 9-20

The two week veterinary acupuncture course was the reason I was in China. It was ostensibly the reason, anyway. In reality, the acupuncture course presented a fabulous opportunity for me to travel to a country that I might otherwise never visit. I got to see and do amazing things in an amazing country. I was getting elective credit for the class, and hopefully I will get some retroactive funding from a couple of school groups for educational travel expenses. Now I just had to sit through some acupuncture lessons. I’m not extremely interested in so-called alternative medicine but I still thought it would be a kind of cool learning experience.

I don’t have that much to say about the acupuncture class. I didn’t really enjoy it. There were good parts and bad parts. Briefly,

The good

• Interacting with Chinese vet students. They were fun and friendly and as interested in learning things from us as we were from them. (I’ll write some more later about some of the fun things we did together.)

• The food in the university cafeteria was quite good. And cheap.

• The opportunity to go to China and hopefully get some of my expenses back.

• Hey, I was in China! Sleeping in a Chinese bed, eating Chinese breakfast, walking on Chinese streets…. Pretty freakin’ cool!

The bad

• Slow paced instruction.

• Eastern approach to acupuncture. I knew the class would be taught from the eastern perspective. Duh! I just didn’t expect how much it would bother my scientific, I-need-proof mind.

• Physical discomfort. Hard wooden stools that literally bruised your butt. Stuffy, non-air conditioned room. Construction right outside the windows that sent whirls of dust into the classroom and jackhammers that made it impossible to hear our soft-spoken teacher. Some days it felt like we were being punked.

• Not enough hands on stuff. I got to poke one donkey one time with one acupuncture needle.

• Location. The university was far from downtown Beijing. It was a pain to go anywhere fun in the evenings to shop, eat dinner, see the sights, etc. It could be quite the challenge to get back at night since the buses and subway stopped running at 11 and no cabs wanted to take us so far out where they wouldn’t be able to get a fare coming back in.

And that’s all I have to say about the acupuncture class.

It's hard to be too disappointed when you get to have delicious dumplings (for less than a dollar) for breakfast every day.

Adorable patient

I loved this kitty. He just hung outside this window and begged to be petted.

Our donkey, and Alex, one of our new friends

China Agricultural University

Course completion certificate

Our new friend Andi

Hanging around Xi’an

May 8, 2011

When we awoke Sunday morning it was hot in our room and noisy in the courtyard. This effectively killed any yearnings to stay in bed all day, so we checked out of our room, left our bags behind the front counter, and left for the day to explore Xi’an a little on foot. It was another blazingly hot day (made worse by my continuing fever) so we walked slowly and stayed on the shady sides of streets. We ended up in the Muslim Quarter, which is known for its good trinket shopping. I spent most of my time loitering in stalls with oscillating fans or hanging out under shade-providing trees. 

Finches for sale in Xian: decoration, pet, or food?

After walking for a bit, we stumbled upon a shadow puppet museum/theater. Shadow puppetry originated in Xi’an over 2000 years ago! We were invited in to see a show, and I have to admit I was pretty skeptical about how enjoyable the experience would be. I was sick, hot as hell, and have never been a fan of puppets. Megan and Ashley were really excited, however, so I relented (a couple of refreshing adult beverages helped with this) and we were ushered in to the small theater. I remained a skeptic for the first several minutes of the show, but it actually turned out to be pretty cool!

After the show, we wandered and shopped a little bit more, but were really dragging after our whirlwind tour of the sights the last few days. So even though we had several more hours to kill before we needed to head to the airport for our flight back to Beijing, we decided to call it quits on our Xi’an tour. We headed back to the hostel to hang out for the rest of the afternoon.

Hanging out at the hostel

The hostel staff advised us to get to the Xi’an airport about 2 hours early. Not knowing what to expect, we decided to take their advice. We hired a taxi to take us to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Checking in turned out to be a breeze, so we were there way, way too early. Still, we were in a well air conditioned place, so it wasn’t a horrible spot for our tired butts to hang out in for a bit. Sadly, it wasn’t long before we found out our flight to Beijing was going to be delayed. From the best we could gather, there had been some weather somewhere that screwed up air traffic control. Our flight was one of the last flights of the evening and we were already going to be getting to Beijing quite late, so we did our best to wait patiently, fervently hoping we would just get to Beijing sometime that night and not have to spend the night in the Xi’an airport.

We fit the requirements

I was feeling quite ill at that point and made several trips to the bathroom just to splash cold water on my face and neck. I wanted more than anything to be lying down in a bed somewhere! So we were very happy when our flight took off only 1.5 hours late! It turned out to be a fairly unpleasant flight – quite bad, but in a different way than my epic New York-Beijing flight. I spent the entire flight sweating like crazy and turning various shades of green. I have never before even come close to throwing up on a plane, but for this flight, I spent most of the time with a barf bag in my hands, ready to use if needed. There was a little bit of turbulence, but nothing too extreme, so I blame most of my problem on pre-existing sickness and exhaustion. Ashley suffered on the flight as well. She had some head congestion and one of her ears just wouldn’t pop – so while I held my stomach and moaned, Ash held the side of her head and tried not to cry. Thankfully, we managed to land without Ash’s head exploding or me barfing all over the place.

From the Beijing airport, we hailed a taxi to make two stops. We first headed towards downtown to pick up our large bags from the lobby of the Drum Tower hostel. We then headed back out to the boonies to check in to our new hotel where we would be staying for the acupuncture course. By the time we got to our new hotel, it was sometime around 2 am and we were very eager to climb into bed!

Sadly, our check in experience at the hotel was a nightmare. The staff did not speak English. (Yes, we were in China and all, but this hotel was chosen for us as a good place for 25 English-speaking Americans to stay. You’d think English would have been on the menu.) So fine, we’ll use our phrase books and the smattering of Mandarin we’d picked up over the last week. Except the front desk girl was also dumb as a box of rocks. We went round and round and round, trying to explain that we had a reservation already. Unfortunately, we didn’t know what name our rooms were reserved under: Our names? Our school? Our faculty advisor? Our Chinese host? We finally had a light bulb go off when we mentioned the name of the other student I would be sharing a room with during the course. She had checked in earlier that evening. So they took my information and gave me a key to my room. It was very late, and I didn’t want to wake my roomie, but we really needed help to get Megan and Ashley’s room sorted out. So I trekked off to my room to wake my roommate. Except my key wouldn’t work in the door. So I went back down to the front desk for help. The door man went back up to my room with me but he couldn’t get my key to work either. So he woke up the housekeeping man; his key also didn’t work! So we tried knocking on the door and calling the room – no response from my roommate, who the next day said she didn’t hear a thing!

Back down at the front desk, we finally accepted we weren’t going to get the whole “we have a reservation” thing through to the staff for Megan and Ashley’s room, and although I had a room, I couldn’t get in. So we booked one room for one night, and all three of us would sleep there. This baffled the staff, as the rooms are equipped with two single beds – not designed for an extra person. After repeated rounds of pantomiming sleeping on the floor and requesting an extra blanket and pillow, they finally got it and left the three of us in peace.

By then, it was 3:30 in the morning and we had no idea what time we needed to show up in the lobby for school the next day. We checked our email and our Chinese phones for messages from anyone in our school group, but there was no information to be found. So I slid a note under my roommate’s impenetrable door to wake us when she got up. To be safe, we set an alarm for 7 am. Utterly exhausted, we turned out the lights and conked out for our 3 hours of sleep.

The neglected blog

I've been so busy lately! A week in San Diego with college friends; a week in the Caribbean with my family; a weekend at the beach with my vet school friends -- I know, my life is so rough! Anyway, now that my summer vacations are over and my Summer Vacation (from school) is nearly over, it is time to wrap up the China trip blogging. End of China - coming soon!