Monthly Archives: April 2013

The search for Nanjing Museum and more farewells

Hot sunny weather for the last day in Nanjing. I decided it was time for some culture, so I set off just after 9am to find Nanjing Museum which according to the Rough Guide was well worth seeing with clear guides in English, open daily 9-5pm. I pitched up at the correct metro stop, and checked with a passer by that I was in the right place. No museum reared its head, only hoardings shielding a huge building project in the “British” style. I tried a rather posh hotel along the road which had English speaking staff only to learn that the museum was closed until the building works were finished.

Random lion, small

Random lion – large

Thwarted, I executed Plan B and set off for the Presidential Palace, which is next to the 1912 area where we ate recently. Once again my plans were foiled – it is supposed to be open 8-5 daily according to the Rough Guide, but again building work was going on around it so no entry to the rather nice looking gardens inside for a sit down.

Nanjing street food

Busking Chinese style

Recycling collection Chinese style

Time for a rethink. I revisited Aqua City mall in Fuzi Miao for retail therapy. My real downfall occurred later on the second floor of the Xinhua bookstore in Xinjeiku which has a most interesting art section. I will not live this down at home, but I succumbed to a couple of books on drawing and painting in the Chinese style. Thoughts of being careful with the potential effect on the weight of my suitcase vanished somewhere to a parallel universe where luggage limits do not exist.

Modern Chinese style

Back to the hotel around 445 for a rest before going out for the last meal out in Nanjing. We returned to Studio 21 where we ate on the first night, and Eileen joined us for the occasion. Addresses and hugs were exchanged. Veronique, the French TCM student, came to see us in the hotel lobby to wish us bon voyage.

A good way to round off a very full two and a half weeks in Nanjing.

My travelling companion!

The Clinic for the Gentleman who seeks Harmony in the House

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It was a quiet day in the hospital clinic, at least until the toddler with facial palsy came in for another treatment and filled the room and corridor with heart rending cries. There was another chance to see the amazingly young looking Dr Jong doing facial treatments with great precision. Brief flights of fancy dallying with the notion of asking her to do one on me were dashed when she made it clear via an interpreter that treatment would have to be three times a week and accompanied by facial massage, not very practical given that we return home in four days. Some of the medical students were doing final exams at the end of the corridor. I met one of the students who had helped us in Dr Sun’s clinic, he was hopeful of passing although he had a patient with five different problems and wasn’t sure of the needling method for all the points. I hope he succeeds.

During the lunch break we collected the train tickets for Shanghai and discovered an enormous book store beyond Xinjeikou. The sort of place where you could spend an entire day.

Book Mart 1

Book mart 2

We were hunting for acupuncture texts in English, but there was nothing available other than a few pocket size acupuncture charts. The store is a bibliophile’s must see.

The afternoon was spent with Dr Tao in the Jian He Tang clinic. This is a rather upmarket establishment where people are seen as outpatients, stylishly decorated and kitted out. We were told that the patients who attend here are better educated, yet while they may pay more Dr Tao gave exactly the same level of care to the patients in the less well off hospital clinic. Curtains around each bed provided privacy, and the decor and fittings were of hotel standard.

Dr Tao’s desk Jian He

: The venerable Dr Tao at work

Dr Tao’s desk and chair, Jian He Tang clinic

Wall decoration Jian He Tang clinic

Hi tech extractor

The equipment was very modern, including a very hi tech extractor fan which dealt extremely effectively with the moxa fumes. One patient had moxa applied in a spectacle frame (for facial palsy) with the treated eye protected by a walnut shell.

Ancient acupunture needle

View of Jian He Tang pharmacy

Jian He Tang entrance

Interesting to see a different side of Chinese medicine, and to speculate whether the better off patients are more demanding than the poorer patients attending the hospitals as they are better informed and might have higher expectations of the doctor.

Once the clinic was over we headed to Fuzi Miao near Confucius Temple. We set out to look around the vast Aqua City shopping mall, arranging to meet up in an hour. There is a huge water feature on the lower floor of the mall but it had been drained presumably for maintenance and cleaning. The place was so enormous that an hour would allow you to see a small fraction of it. There were a lot of Western chains there, Mango, Zara, H&M and so on with Western prices. After a rendevous we trawled through the bustling shops and stalls near the temple. We ate in one of the many restaurants in the basement of the Aqua City complex. We ordered fish, cabbage with pork, deep fried pork dumplings, sweet potato with cheese and green beans with garlic and seaweed. A busy place, the food was nice though the potato dish was sweetened potato and not sweet potato which made it inedible.

Deep fried pork dumplings and ‘”sweet potato” with cheese

Pork and cabbage

Fish

Garlicky green beans, each one tied in a knot

Walking back to the station we noted street traders and shops selling “designer” bags, purses and wallets, Vuitton, Chanel, Burberry and several others. The price seemed to be subject to the time honoured tradition of haggling. Bargaining is rather more complicated when neither party speaks the other’s language, but calculators can be used as an intermediary!

Visiting 1912

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Warmer temperatures permitted a reduction in the number of layers to be worn. Dr Tao’s clinic was less busy than the previous day, and we were treated to a learned discourse on a topic we had queried the previous day about treating heat syndromes with heat, a practice we had been told by another practitioner was not a good idea, but is done by Dr Tao. He gave us the history of the use of moxibustion, and indications for using it. The conclusion we drew was that different doctors have their own views on moxa in heat situations. He had clearly remembered and thought about the issue, and went to some trouble to speak to us about it.

During the lunch period we met with Erica, a Taiwanese medical student, student of TCM in the university and girlfriend of Igor, the Portuguese TCM student from the hospital clinic. We were looking for tickets to Shanghai for the weekend, and Erica kindly showed us where the train ticket booking office was in Xinjeiko, and did the transaction for us. Being without the language is truly a handicap, and Chinese is a difficult one to master. My speech and language therapist daughter informs me that people who don’t learn Chinese as their mother tongue will never become properly fluent in it. Now there’s a challenge!

Random stone lion

: It’s the one you’ve secretly been waiting for.

Nanjing pooch

The afternoon clinic was an interesting mix. A little boy of six came in for treatment of eczema, and played cat’s cradle with one of the Chinese medical students. A baby of about 18 months came in for treatment of facial palsy, and she did not like the experience one bit, protesting very loudly. Facial palsy is one of the commonest presentations to the TCM clinics, and the doctors say it resolves very quickly with acupuncture. One cannot imagine treating very small children in this way in Ireland for fear of being prosecuted for child cruelty. Different social mores, values and perception of life generally, plus the fact that there is a tradition of acupuncture in China.

Visiting the acupuncture clinic as a patient in China is a long drawn out process. Histories are taken at the doctor’s desk in full view of and clearly audible to the entire clinic. The old hands position themselves on the bed exposing the relevant bit of the body. Newbies perch looking uncertain. All ages wear many layers of clothes, and both men and women wear thermal leggings or granny bloomers under their trousers to preserve modesty, essential given the lack of privacy and that patients and their relatives may decide to have a look at what treatments are happening in the next bed. Glamorous designer undies remain at home. Needling with electrical clips applied to certain points lasts 30 minutes. Following this the treated area is cupped using bamboo cups. In Dr Tao’s clinic the area is given a Tui Na massage with moxa and herbs wrapped in fireproof cloth after cupping. Given that many patients come in two or three times a week, and some every day, there is a big time commitment.

Dinner was in the 1912 area, one stop from Xinjeiko on the metro. It is near the Presidential Palace and Nanjing library, the latter a colossal modern building. Huge amounts of construction were going on, even more so than in the rest of Nanjing. The metro is being extended to provide more than the current two lines, and more and more shopping malls seem to be being built. Rather reminiscent of Ireland in the era of the Tiger, albeit on a larger scale.

The 1912 area is a complex of “repro” buildings meant to look like old structures, but not quite carrying it off. It is full of eateries of every sort, and nightclubs. We ate in a Thai restaurant, sampling yellow and green vegetable curry, yellow prawn curry and a beef dish accompanied by fried and plain rice. The food was lovely and beautifully presented.

Yellow vegetable curry

Yellow prawn curry

Green vegetable curry

Beef dish

For once the proprietor had good English and he came to speak to us as we were ordering to find out a bit about us. He was interested to learn we were in Nanjing to study acupuncture, and rather perplexed as we weren’t drinking.

We passed several nightclubs on the way back to the metro station, but reporting on them would have to be carried out by someone in the right age bracket with nocturnal tendencies.

Cultural observations

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Another cold day, and another morning with the venerable Dr Tao. His clinic was busy, but the same sense of calm prevailed. Dr Bumptious appeared briefly early on, pushing his way to the front of every gathering. Thankfully he disappeared off to the staff changing room to play with his laptop. Dr Tao graciously answered questions and delivered a couple of mini lessons on diseases and treatments. His patients didn’t seem to mind waiting for some time to see him, indeed one lady occupied his chair while he was treating patients.

Investigations are done very quickly. One young woman with neck symptoms was sent for an X ray. She returned in under 30 minutes with the Xray and the report. A woman also with neck symptoms who was in the previous day similarly had Xrays and CT scans, all done on the day she came to the clinic and reported on. Compare that to the scandalous delays that apply in Ireland.

Consumption of tea goes on throughout the day everywhere. Almost everyone carries their tea container with them, this can be anything from a screwtop glass jar to a purpose made container with inbuilt filter to keep the leaves at bay. All the hospital clinics have a couple of large flasks of hot water near the doctor’s desk; periodically people top up their containers from the flasks. Boiling water is available in many public places, including train stations. Supermarkets and department stores and humbler retail establishments carry unbelievably large ranges of containers for tea.

Girly tea container

Later in the day during a break in the ear acupuncture lecture we discovered grotesquely realistic models of tongues in the classroom, presumably used as teaching aids.

Tongues 1

Tongues 2

Tongues 3

There were more, but I will spare the readers’ delicate sensibilities.

Following the lecture we dined in the Irish bar in the Sheraton – fish and chips, soup, spaghetti carbonara, prawn curry and caesar salad. It is the only place we have encountered apart from the other Irish bar we visited where each person is given a menu. Chinese restaurants seem to allow only one menu per party. There’s a thesis in that

Teacher Tao and Ears

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A slightly different timetable for the second week; a morning with the revered Dr Tao in Qin Huai TCM Hospital some distance from the university. Transport was provided from the university and we had not only a new colleague in our little group in the shape of Christophe, a young French man living in Brussels, but also a Chinese student to translate for us. Dr Tao is in his seventies, silver haired and bespectacled, and almost Buddha like in his demeanour, almost always smiling broadly, giving everybody time, and never appearing fazed. People are said to travel long distances to see him, and the busy clinic reflected this. He clearly loves teaching, and had us looking at patients’ tongues and feeling their pulses as well as observing the acupuncture. The picture of the Buddha bears no resemblance to Dr Tao who is a slight, compact man, but note the long earlobes, considered very lucky in China.

A minor irritation erupted in the form of a visiting doctor, one of those bumptious individuals who delights in telling everyone about their practice and their way of doing things. It is intriguing how egotists like this evoke such a powerful reaction (sheer annoyance) in others, irrespective of nationality. He informed us that we would get nowhere unless we learned Chinese and had all the Chinese names for all the acupoints, as we wouldn’t understand the meaning. Never mind that the there is an agreed standard nomenclature for the points drawn up by the WHO in conjunction with the Chinese authorities.

Lunch in the Blue Gulf coffee place near the university was jasmine tea and a exquisitely pretty platter of fruit

Back to the First Affiliated hospital for a session with Dr Hu. More progress as we were allowed to put in a few needles, rather nerve racking when being watched like a hawk. Walking up to the university for a lecture in ear acupuncture was almost like being in Ireland, it was cold, overcast and raining.

The ear acupuncture lesson was given by a doctor who trained in China in the 1950’s, and translated by our interpreter from the previous week. Her teaching style was rather dry, but she did have a short break midway through, during which she spotted the auricular needles Dr Hu’s students had put in our ears to demonstrate what they were like. She was very interested in my ear, declaring the needles to be in the wrong place, and proceeded to examine the ear, finding a small nodule I never knew was there. She then felt my pulse and pronounced it as thready with possible cervical vertebral problems. If truth be known I was cold, tired and hungry, so no wonder I was “deficient”! I will reserve judgement on the neck – it seems fine to me.

For dinner we returned to the Blue Gulf coffee place. Two chose beef tenderloin with vegetables and rice, one had little sweet potatoes and I ordered spicy tofu with vegetables. The meals were presented with some style on individual trays, accompanied by a pot of clear soup, a little dish of ginger pieces and a couple of pieces of watermelon. The beef was deemed really tasty though quite spicy, and the sweet potatoes were small and filling.

There were a couple of problems with the tofu dish. It took forever to arrive so that everyone else had almost finished eating when it was finally put in front of me. It was delicious, though delving into it revealed some horrific fragments resembling small tentacles, not a welcome find in a supposedly vegetarian meal. I discarded these mini monsters and carefully checked every chopstick morsel for unwanted ingredients. Caveat emptor!

Sunday in Suzhou

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A day trip to Suzhou provided an opportunity to experience train travel Chinese style. We opted for a taxi to the main railway station – not for the fainthearted or nervous passenger. Getting train tickets is a complex affair. In the first instance tickets are sold in a separate area of the station, and the staffed ticket office is separate again from the automatic ticket machines which looked off putting and fearsome. The staffed ticket office seemed a better option. Armed with the Chinese characters for “Suzhou”, “Nanjing” and “express train”, we managed to get “soft seat” or first class tickets despite neither party knowing the other’s language. The process involved handing over passports so that the passport number could be put on the ticket. The bureaucracy is unbelievable.

The concept of a return ticket is unknown in China, all tickets are one way. Interesting to speculate on the psychology of this, does one travel not hoping or expecting to go back?

The “soft seat” coach with assigned seats was very comfortable, and though the train was travelling at over 270kph, it was very smooth and the journey lasted about an hour.

Suzhou is an ancient city and famous for silk production. It has a different flavour to Nanjing being slightly smaller (population about 5 million vs Nanjing’s 7 million) and coming across as more provincial. It is very pretty, criss crossed by canals and waterways, and more museums and ancient gardens than you could possibly visit in a day. A big negative point was the harassment by tour touts at the station trying to persuade people to go on their tours. One woman latched on to us as we were figuring out which way to leave the station and wouldn’t leave us alone, even loitering to catch us when we escaped into the toilets hoping that would shake her off.

We took a taxi to the Silk Museum which has write ups in English. It was surprising to learn that silk was made in Neolithic times – unless that is a “lost in translation” issue. A few pairs of women’s silk shoes were displayed, being made for bound feet it was painful to look at them.

Passing the nearby Suzhou silk factory we were inveigled in by one of the staff who took us on a mini tour of the factory, showing us the cocoons and how they are separated from the silkworm chrysalis inside. The discarded chrysalises are considered a delicacy, and were on sale in the factory shop. Wonderful presents for those at home! Stir frying is recommended for the best results, so those reading this blog should prepare their woks.

This mini tour was of course a means of getting people into the store to shop for clothes and gifts. There weren’t any bargains to be seen, silk scarves and dresses weren’t what you might call cheap. We emerged with lighter wallets bearing gifts for home.

The nearby Pagoda Temple provides fabulous views from the top. We took tea in the garden area behind it overlooking a small lake. The tea was disconcerting as it was made in the cup with the leaves floating about, true Chinese style, takes some getting used to.

Next stop the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the biggest of the ancient gardens in Suzhou and thronged throughout with Sunday visitors. The colourful displays of azaleas and the small trees and bonsai are wonderful. There were several different patterns in the stonework on the pathways. To do the garden justice would require at least half a day, preferably midweek, but the pictures give a flavour. Detail is everything, from the designs in the walkways to the bins made to resemble bamboo.

Dinner was in the Lotus Flower restaurant near one of the canals. A protracted discussion with the maitre d’ ensued over vegetarian food which seemed to be incomprehensible to him, at one point he was reduced to phoning a friend and asking the friend to speak to us; unfortunately the friend’s English wasn’t up to it and the call was abandoned. Help came in the shape of a nearby diner who had good English and interpreted for us. We ordered a really nice looking dish from the picture selection which clearly showed a rice dish with decent sized chunks of pineapple artfully arranged around the rice and several big prawns, and a plate of raw mixed vegetables and tofu we spotted on a neighbouring table. When the rice dish arrived it looked nothing like the picture and was devoid of prawns, and the pineapple pieces were minuscule. The vegetable plate came with a pot of simmering water which was placed on a hotplate set into the table so the vegetables could be dropped in and cooked. Other tables seemed to be getting deliveries of nice looking hot food to the extent that there was no room for the latest dish to arrive. Our dishes didn’t satisfy and we left feeling hungry.

Luckily there was a taxi outside so off to the station to catch a train for Nanjing. This time we had to stand in the second class carriage as all the seats were taken. Back to the hotel via the metro and a most welcoming bed.

Confucius he say wear warm clothes in cold!

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The mercury plummeted even lower today. The interpreter for our Tui Na lessons told us that springtime in Nanjing is like having four seasons in one as the weather is so changeable. It was about 7 or 8 degrees when I set out for a morning of retail activity and exploring, mainly around Xinjeikou where there are lots of department stores, trendy designer stores and the usual mix of street traders. Here and there blood donor buses on street corners awaited clients; Saturday must be a good day for pulling them in. There’s a picture of the “blood bus”:

Mooching around the Grand Ocean department store was unnerving. A Westerner is clearly a rara avis, and whenever I looked at or (heaven forbid) touched items a store assistant would instantly materialise right next to me talking in Chinese. The layout of the store was intriguing – the usual terrifyingly made up assistants on the first floor guarding their exotic and expensive cosmetics and perfumes waiting to pounce on potential customers, then up through ladies clothes, teen clothes young girls clothes, children’s and baby’s clothes, mens clothes and home appliances. Unlike stores in Ireland the store was teeming with staff. Paying for goods was amazingly complicated. First the goods were brought to a counter and a docket written up, then one was accompanied to a cashier’s counter with the docket where payment was made, then back to the first counter to collect the goods. Many clothes in the department stores weren’t exactly cheap even by Western standards, and a quick check in H&M proved that prices were pretty much the same as in Europe.

The notion of personal space in China is rather different to Europe. Store staff come and stand right next to you, at a distance which would be considered intrusive in the West. Perhaps living in a very crowded environment desensitises one to being cheek by jowl. The sense of disgust is not the same in China – we foreigners seem to offend them sometimes judging by the “you smell” incident on the metro, but hawking and spitting which would induce revulsion and rebuke in Europe is part of the quotidian soundtrack in China and passes unremarked.

Retail therapy was followed by a group expedition to Confucius temple via the metro. The area is a mix of old buildings and enormous shopping malls, tourist shops, street food stalls and restaurants. The temple itself is nothing like Jinming temple; it’s a tourist site. The river view near the temple is impressive, and there’s a shot of old Confucius himself:

Having been round the temple and trawled through the tourist stalls and shops we were frozen so repaired to the Pacific Coffee Company to thaw out with jasmine tea and an intriguing little tart possibly made with bean curd. We passed by another coffee place with a slightly bizarre name

The next port of call was Finnegan’s Wake, an Irish bar a short walk from Confucius temple. It is owned by a Scot from Dundee who came and talked to us while we had a drink. He has lived in China for almost 10 years and set the bar up in 2008. According to him the Chinese are the most racist people on the planet, which might be exaggerating just a bit. The prices in the bar for food and drink were the same or higher in some instances as at home. The surrounding streets were a mix of attractive newer houses and older ramshackle buildings which seemed to be a mix of residential and trade. One shop had a fascinating collection of aged electrical appliances.

Finnegan's Wake bar i

Tired and flagging at this stage we headed back to the metro and to the Golden Wheel for a pick your own meal. The restaurant was heaving, we hit peak dinner time so the food took a while to arrive. I have put in pictures of some of the stranger items on display; we did not sample these! Everyone had a vegetarian meal, and it was excellent. Big chunks of garlic and generous slices of ginger livened the dish up, and peanuts mixed through added a crunch to it. Perfect fuel for the walk up Hanzhong Lu to the hotel. I visited the supermarket for water, and couldn’t resist capturing an image of a group of stoically disconsolate frogs sitting on top of each other in a tank in the fresh produce area, presumably awaiting their fate as someone’s dinner.

Windy City

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Cooler temperatures combined with dust and grit whipped up by the wind made the mask wearing citizens of Nanjing look like paragons of common sense, so I made the cultural leap and bought a pack of masks in the supermarket.

The morning hospital session was less busy so there was time to talk with Dr Hu. There were new techniques to be seen too, herbal medicine being injected into acupoints, a moxa box being placed on the abdomen of an elderly man with rectal cancer, and a treatment for psoriasis (a heat condition in traditional Chinese medicine) involving taking a small amount of blood from the patient and injecting it into three specific acupoints in the leg. The hierarchy of this procedure was fascinating. A nurse was summoned to take the blood. The syringe was handed to the doctor who then injected the points. No protective gloves used at any time.

We had a quick lunch in Costa Coffee (no it’s not very Chinese but the title My Delicious Life is real Chenglish).

The afternoon session was less satisfactory – very busy and everyone rushing to attend to the doctor. It is interesting how the personality of the doctor makes such a difference to the atmosphere of a clinic.

Dinner in the Golden Wheel complex was tasty, three of us had broccoli and mushrooms and one had a beef and noodle dish.

The evening Tui Na session comprised more hands on practical demonstrations which provided some welcome hilarity here and there when our techniques were assessed. Being taught with an interpreter introduces another dynamic into the teacher-class relationship – there is the chit chat between the teacher and the translator when one wonders what on earth they are saying about the foreigners.

The end of another full day and back to a welcome bed

Midweek musings

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It was noticeably cooler for the morning walk to the hospital serenaded by the frantic beeping of cars and motorbikes. The eerie thing about the motorbikes and mopeds is that they are electric and therefore acoustically undetectable until you are practically under their wheels. Crossing the road is quite an art; even though the pedestrian light may be in your favour, two wheeled and four wheeled vehicles of all descriptions do not give way to people on foot. Use of the footbrake seems to be a last resort for most drivers. Beep not brake must be a maxim of learning to drive here. Interestingly foreigners are not allowed to rent cars here, only in specific cities, and no alien is allowed to drive outside these cities. Why anyone would wish to join the wild charioteering that counts as city driving is beyond me, in any event public transport is pretty good and inexpensive.

The hospital sessions were spent with Dr Sun in the morning and Dr Hu in the afternoon. It was fascinating to observe the degree of deference accorded to various consultants. Dr Sun was trailed assiduously by his students who handed him everything and disposed of the wrappings and swabs. Dr Hu was accompanied by the same students but the atmosphere was different, as often as not she fetched her own needles and swabs from the stand and didn’t seem to expect people to wait on her hand and foot. Perhaps an element of the male consultant being looked after more? Or is it that women just get on with things and don’t hang around waiting for the acupuncture fairy to tend to them?

Yifeng is acupoint SJ17!

Lunch was at Costa Coffee (again; the coffee drinkers get loyalty cards, free coffee after the sixth purchase which is more generous than in Ireland I think). Dinner was in one of the multitude of restaurants in the Golden Wheel. This one displayed its food on an open counter, so ordering was simple enough. Food was cooked immediately for each customer and served with a bowl of clear soup and a bowl of rice. We ordered different things and it was all excellent.

The evening session in Tui Na was good, with more emphasis on practical technique and how to treat different areas. We got the opportunity to practice on each other which was a nice way to end the day.

First day in Nanjing University First Affiliated Hospital

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Today being a Monday the city was teeming at 745 in the morning. The usual soundtrack of demented car horn beeping was amplified several times, and the traffic was much heavier, making crossing the road even more of a gamble with one’s life. Red lights don’t necessarily mean stop to drivers of motor vehicles, and riders of bikes, motorbikes and mopeds completely ignore them, frequently taking over the pavements when the congestion on the bike lane makes progress too slow or they want to go in the other direction. No self respecting two wheeled vehicle rider wears a helmet or uses lights in the dark, and when a moped rider came off his bike when the front wheel skidded on a stone, the only people who stopped to see if he was ok and give him a few plasters for his amazingly minor injuries were the foreign devils. No one else turned a hair. Presumably it happens all the time.

This was the first clinic day so we set off armed with the regulation embroidered white coats to the hospital where we met Dr Wang and a group of students from the Czech Republic. Off to the acupuncture clinic then on the 5th floor of the hospital. It is quite unlike anything in the West. Patients come in for their acupuncture from early in the morning – before 8am. They line the acupuncture corridor until their turn to see the doctor comes.There are about 14 doctor’s rooms in the corridor, totally unlike a Western consulting room. The room has 8 beds, a doctor’s desk and an Xray viewer. The patient sees the doctor first, then goes to a free bed (no niceties with fresh covers) where the doctor needles them. One of the many Chinese medical students then applies TENS clips to designated needles and the patient in some cases can adjust the machine themselves. In all a treatment takes up to an hour as often patients are treated with cupping after needling.

The morning was busy between 8 and 11, and the doctor in our allocated room spoke no English so he ignored us. One of the students had some English and helped with point identification. There is a lot of facial palsy in China if today is anything to go by.

Armed with ID badges from the admin department once the morning session finished it was time for a light lunch nearby before the next session at 2. The afternoon was better, Dr Hu spoke good English and took time to teach us.

Dinner was rather early due to the timetable constraints – in a restaurant near the Posh establishment we had visited two nights previously. Another slightly fraught negotiation with pictures and gestures and the odd word of English trying to negotiate what we wanted. Eventually a huge cooked fish materialised on a platter adorned with vegetables and seasonings, accompanied by heaving wooden tubs of rice, bowls of mixed salad, a plate of unidentifiable chewy stuff cut into diamond shapes, and a dish of spicy dried tofu which was very hot indeed. The fish was judged to be very tasty, and the vegetables were extremely well cooked.

The day was rounded off with the first in a series of talks on Tui Na, the ancient Chinese treatment with physical therapy and manipulations. The class was given by Dr Jian Wang (not the same Dr Wang as before) via an interpreter, though it turned out Dr Wang actually had quite a lot of English. The practical session produced the class dunce as I couldn’t get the hang of the basic movement despite repeated pleas to “relax the wrist – wrist too stiff!” I suspect they wondered why on earth four foreigners would think they could learn Tui Na in a week when the real thing takes three years to study. Still a little taste is interesting.

The end of a long and experience filled day. I will probably be smelling moxa in my sleep tonight.

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Monthly Archives: April 2013

The search for Nanjing Museum and more farewells

The Clinic for the Gentleman who seeks Harmony in the House

Visiting 1912

Cultural observations

Teacher Tao and Ears

Sunday in Suzhou

Confucius he say wear warm clothes in cold!

Windy City

Midweek musings

First day in Nanjing University First Affiliated Hospital