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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

Today we arranged to meet with Dr Wong to have a look at some notable places. It was a huge help having a native show us how to use the metro and the bus. Public transport is very efficient, everywhere is extremely clean, and to ride anywhere in the city costs RMB2. The metro issues you with a blue token instead of a ticket. On the bus you just put in the coins when boarding. Here and there in confined spaces you could see people pulling away from us, or when on the metro one young woman near me waved her hand in front of her nose which was worrying!

The first place we travelled to on the metro was Purple Mountain, an extensive green area with fabulous trees which is home to the mausoleum of Dr Sun Yat Sen, the first president of China. The mausoleum is reached by 392 steps, representing the population of China at the time of building (1929), then 0.329 billion, now 1.6 billion. Purple Mountain also has other sites of interest including an aquarium. Next up was a ride on the no 20 bus to Jinming Temple, a substantial Buddhist temple near Nanjing City Hall. On paying RMB7 for entry, you are entitled to three incense sticks which can be lit and placed near the base of the pagoda. You can pray or wish at this time to meet your soulmate, which might explain the substantial numbers of young people devotedly setting their burning incense in place. It was intriguing to watch people approaching the various rooms containing representations of the Buddha to pray – old and young. One also wonders what happens all the fresh food that is left for the Buddha – if it is distributed to the needy at the end of the day by the resident nuns. The temple has a restaurant, vegetarian of course, and costs from RMB15-28 for a dish of rice and accompaniments or noodles and accompaniments.

The final place we visited was Xuanwu Lake, an enormous natural lake with five islands which at one time were named for the five continents but now sport Chinese names. As in Purple Mountain there were families out enjoying the sunshine. Kite flying was much in evidence. The lake is very attractive and a popular spot for renting pedalos. Apparently it is safe to swim in but it is not allowed. According to Dr Wong the lake park is lit up at night and is a popular romantic venue.

After all this sightseeing we decided to call it a day though Dr Wong offered to take us somewhere else if we wished. He is indefatigable and a great source of information.

Dinner happened in a restaurant near the one we patronised the previous night. I would tell you the name if it weren’t written entirely in Chinese characters. This was the sort of place where you are presented with a platter of raw meat and cook it yourself on the integrated hotplate in the centre of the table. It was a mixed success. The staff were extremely friendly and helpful, consulting Google Translate on their phones, but when we had ordered everything it turned out to be a time consuming business cooking food for four people on the hot plate, and vegetables were much slower to cook. I ordered mixed vegetables accompanied by Chinese potato cakes (these were rather nice), the others ordered beef, pork (like bacon) and fish (slices of fish skin which didn’t appeal at all). Other accompaniments were slices of raw garlic and pepper, a relish of shredded cabbage (I think), endless cups of Chinese tea  and a little dish of chewy beans. Everyone had their own dish of seasonings – a sweet sour sauce and a mix resembling 5 spice powder. The bills came to RMB242, and the staff refused a tip which was very nice of them. Mind you we probably provided them with their “highlight of the week” to share with their friends.

This is my first blog post. I have decided to set up a sort of online journal which will contain odds and ends from my life. I am a full time domestic engineer living in Ireland. My interests are many – cooking, literature (especially fantasy and crime fiction), film and TV, and animals, especially dogs (I own three – an elderly male English springer spaniel, a four year old female springer-rottweiler cross and a five month old female rottweiler) and cats (I own a seven year old ginger tom).

I am currently studying acupuncture, this is my final year, and to put some finishing touches on this I am travelling to Nanjing in China tomorrow for two and a half weeks, abandoning my household and family. I will try to update the blog while I’m there depending on internet access, so watch this space!

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