No, this isn't a call for chocolate! Though I'm giving up on China post as the choc and Thai curry paste still hasn't arrived…
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| Mimi and the fruit seller mum |
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| Liu Ying's mother making dumplings |
It's been a great weekend, coinciding with the end of our 2nd neurology clinic block. Panic is on as our assessments are piling up and we're bemoaning the fact they are putting an end to the natural enquiry of study and narrowing our experience onto topics for assignments that we have come to dread. A lot is to compare east and west and there is a world of difference between the two. My case study is a 14 year old with Bell's palsy (facial paralysis) and she has been coming to the clinic every day for 3 weeks for a face full of needles! She's so brave and so sweet. My other favourite patient is the "ge ju" = opera singer with the lovely purple "maozi" = hat.
Our weekend entertainment this was a trip to town to hear our Chinese classmate's dad play the "er hu" in the Peking Opera musical Saturday afternoon session. He also invited us to lunch, which was the best food so far... or on a par with my Chinese language teacher's husband and mother's dumplings! The opera really is acquired taste and in an afternoon we didn't develop an appreciation, just saw ears or tinnitus! But the atmosphere was great with all these old characters singing, playing, watching and sleeping.
After that Wanting took me to 18 street to buy a second hand bicycle. I found "heiselee" (hei=black se=colour + swiss diminuitive -lee=little) with wobbly wheels but pretty good brakes and then peddled off ignoring or missing all the directions that Wanting showed me on her googlemaps. My phone doesn't work without wifi, so I had to stop half a dozen locals, including a traffic policeman to ask for Heping Lu (street) and my uni Zhongyiyao daxue. The 30 minute ride was interestingly doubled.
I had a few days off to rest my cycle gluteals and then today got back on that donkey - but not the one in the photo I saw pulling a cart on the city street! After a very late and leisurely taiji session with the old Chen teacher and group I decided my mission was parks and blind massage schools. I was very successful on the park front. It being May 1st everyone was out. I was going well off the map but was drawn to the second park by the sound of festival music. Two characters on stilts towered above a flurry of fan and cap wavers in bright colourful outfits. This went on for well over an hour as I made a round of the park and the environs in search of a "bing" (pancake or egg McMuffin equivalent). I ended up with a chocolate ice lolly which hit the spot. Every corner of the park had a different activity, chinese ballroom dancing, taiji with a small tennis bat and ball(!!! a first for me!), opera singing, table tennis, swan pedalos, giant sized hamster balls rolling on the little artificial river with children rolling around inside them, crowds gathering round mahjong tables with serious betting going on...
I managed to find a massage place, or at least the characters looked the same as on my chinese-english translation iPhone ap, but there was just a dusty stairwell and closed doors with bright chinese good luck characters stuck on them. I did eventually find a very professional and clean massage institution, which I'll return to on another day.
So, after the break I'm ready to start the next block - Tuina Chinese massage. The doctor needles really deeply, even the whole shaft of the needle disappearing into the skin on a point "jian jing" = shoulder well that western books give a shallow needling only warnings due to the proximity of the lungs! In fact the horror stories you hear of lung puncturing is in fact GPs and osteopaths, not qualified acupuncturists!
So. I'm looking forward to the next 3 weeks…
Our weekend entertainment this was a trip to town to hear our Chinese classmate's dad play the "er hu" in the Peking Opera musical Saturday afternoon session. He also invited us to lunch, which was the best food so far... or on a par with my Chinese language teacher's husband and mother's dumplings! The opera really is acquired taste and in an afternoon we didn't develop an appreciation, just saw ears or tinnitus! But the atmosphere was great with all these old characters singing, playing, watching and sleeping.
After that Wanting took me to 18 street to buy a second hand bicycle. I found "heiselee" (hei=black se=colour + swiss diminuitive -lee=little) with wobbly wheels but pretty good brakes and then peddled off ignoring or missing all the directions that Wanting showed me on her googlemaps. My phone doesn't work without wifi, so I had to stop half a dozen locals, including a traffic policeman to ask for Heping Lu (street) and my uni Zhongyiyao daxue. The 30 minute ride was interestingly doubled.
I had a few days off to rest my cycle gluteals and then today got back on that donkey - but not the one in the photo I saw pulling a cart on the city street! After a very late and leisurely taiji session with the old Chen teacher and group I decided my mission was parks and blind massage schools. I was very successful on the park front. It being May 1st everyone was out. I was going well off the map but was drawn to the second park by the sound of festival music. Two characters on stilts towered above a flurry of fan and cap wavers in bright colourful outfits. This went on for well over an hour as I made a round of the park and the environs in search of a "bing" (pancake or egg McMuffin equivalent). I ended up with a chocolate ice lolly which hit the spot. Every corner of the park had a different activity, chinese ballroom dancing, taiji with a small tennis bat and ball(!!! a first for me!), opera singing, table tennis, swan pedalos, giant sized hamster balls rolling on the little artificial river with children rolling around inside them, crowds gathering round mahjong tables with serious betting going on...
I managed to find a massage place, or at least the characters looked the same as on my chinese-english translation iPhone ap, but there was just a dusty stairwell and closed doors with bright chinese good luck characters stuck on them. I did eventually find a very professional and clean massage institution, which I'll return to on another day.
So, after the break I'm ready to start the next block - Tuina Chinese massage. The doctor needles really deeply, even the whole shaft of the needle disappearing into the skin on a point "jian jing" = shoulder well that western books give a shallow needling only warnings due to the proximity of the lungs! In fact the horror stories you hear of lung puncturing is in fact GPs and osteopaths, not qualified acupuncturists!
So. I'm looking forward to the next 3 weeks…
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