Harbin part 3: finding the chi (qi) in China

Stamping and walking in circles with arms circling drawing in energy from the universe for about 20mins didn't draw a crowd, but created a real buzzy qi sensation in my hands and my whole body felt alive. Anything goes in the name of Yangsheng (health preservation). We may look like an untrained tango troup but the Dao Jia (daoist home) exercise is just one of many crazy Hunyuan (primordial chaos) forms that I have been learning here.

I'm back in Harbin after Simone's visit and our seaside trip to Dalian.

There's a very different feel, less expectation and more resolve to experience as much as I can in the remaining two months. And everyday is another day where I can only expect the unexpected!

61 days could sound like a bit of a sentence, but on the first morning back I was out at 5am for standing qigong with 2 of the most dedicated of my taiji group. One morning I ventured out at around 4.20am and there was already a solo croquet player, a couple playing badminton and of course my two old boys doing Zhanzhuang (standing qigong).

The uni taiji communist taiji teachers have taught us the taiji fan - as well as 24 hand form and 32 sword form. A bit of a whizz through.

I've just finished a brisk stroll thro various departments: a week in each of the following (if me and my chinese classsmates survived that long!): rehab, skin, cosmetic, gynaecology & Oncology.

Gynae was pretty harrowing and wonderful. Very western approach with chinese herbs. On the one hand i witnessed amazing Chinese herbal prescriptions or western procedures to unblock fallopian tubes and on the other I braved a 'elective miscarriage' condoned here as part of China's one child policy. The downside of that policy is that for when this generation get to middle age they'll have to look after their parents single-handedly, which may bring the western concept of old people's homes to China. For now they are out there enjoying park life at dawn and dusk when qi fills the air.

Oncology was a normalising and fascinating. My sharp learning curve slackened fortunately by the arrival of Pie (my Malaysian friend who I introduced to park taiji). She not only sniffed out the oncology clinics when many teachers denied their existence but she snuck out of cardio and nephro clinic to translate for me. The teacher had no idea how basic my Chinese is. I think my accent must be quite good as I can say a few set phrases and then they're off. The first afternoon I thought my head would explode as the teacher went into lengthy explanations of each case and the 4 causes of cancer in Chinese medicine - damp, phlegm, Liver Stagnation or Blood clots.

Fortunately Pie arrived on day 2 and my Chinese bluff was called! It was fine but he invited us to stay for 2 afternoon clinics and if I wasn't overheating I was falling asleep. One afternoon the heat and pressure from patient's families got all too much and the doctor left his desk, sat on the bed and lit a CIGARETTE! The highest risk factor for cancer!

Apparently Dr Zhang Jia Kang was calling me XiNing 'lasohi' (teacher - which is a sign of respect - not just because I'm old 'lao'!). I must be getting used to my Chinese name as several times the doctor calling me woke me out of a doze whilst taking a patient's pulse!

That's what happens when I miss my after lunch 30 minute power nap when I'm wired up to my TENS (transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation) machine or pincushioned by a selection of needles.

Deadlines for essays are 21 July so big push with my Breast Cancer journal article. Then I'm free to learn at my leisure for the last month.

Entertainment this month:
Guy's birthday (same day as sister Sarah's) - sushi lunch and basketball match CBA - China's NBA league. Guangzhou (her home town) beat Harbin and the cheerleaders were belly dancing!
Alex's leaving do Guo Bao Rou without the karaoke thankfully.
Stone erected in front of fountain in famous Dr park - 40 yr anniversary. Big celebrartiin today with prolonged chinese opera music blaring!

Dalian delights

Can't believe 7 nights and 8 days have whizzed past and I'm another year older and wiser or more foolish?

As promised I heralded a new year with a pretty painful rendition of Madonna's 'Like a Prayer'. Alex helped keep some sense of harmony and we skipped between Chinese and English 'toons' and amused ourselves for hours on the night of the 15 June 2012.

I thought I was 35 and then shocked at the idea of being 46 then sobered by the realization of reaching 45. This is half dad's age when he died. I was eerily awoken at 7am by my phone telling me Dad is 92 today!!!

Dalian was 'underinspiring' and gradually as we learned to lower our expectations of secluded sandy beaches and settle for pedalocycles and endless stream of wedding couples grimacing thro photo shoots then we began to relax and enjoy the Chinese beach holiday experience.

The group highlights were practicing taiji fan in various parks, going through 42 & 24 move form and being corrected by an 82 year lady, our Korean BBQ, dim sum bithday lunch in posh resto, and braving a blind massage and finding an elbow sadistically pressed into my neck, shoulder, occiput and then the agonising twanging of tendons. I should have followed Alex's lead and said it didn't hurt in the hope that the man would move on to a less painful area to torture. Actually o had faith that my gall bladder headache an 'jing zhui bing' neck and shoulder pain would be worse then better the next day and so it is, fortunately or else thus hard sleeper back to Harbin 9hrs15 would be agony.

Simone and I had our last 24hrs alone together - or so we thought... - before her 6 months sejourn in SE Asia ends and I return for my final 61 days in Harbin! For the first time it felt like we were actually on holiday together. We found great baskets of steaming dumplings at a pedestrian market, found some Chinese herb spray for Simone's rhinitis, went back to the wedding beach for a little lie down only to have some men walk up the beach proudly flaunting their sea kelp bounty and rock up right next to us to dissect and sell their wares. This drew a crowd of health seeking buyers and suddenly we also became a item of interest. Before long a group of 15+ doctors and anesthetists on holiday from Tianjin joined us for an hour. Great for my Chinese but exhausted me. As I succumbed to sleep Simone was engaged in discourse with a sweet history teacher my age who was retired due to nervous health problems. The only problem I could see was his belief in Christianity and that Cortez and his men had freed Mexicans from the tyranny of Aztec rulers - who were like the North Koreans. He even knew more History of Helvetica than Simone!

The other interesting local we met was on a light rail link to seaside development hell - the beach was made of crushed rubble and washed up rubbish and the backdrop was a tired-looking Disneyland complex and random tourist trains and horse and carriages (with attached poo baskets).

It's funny how locals talk to us in Russian - thankfully my Chinese is better than my Russian!

Ooh! Lights out so it's Pimsleur Mandarin level 3 or sleep!

Dalian or Dull-ian: verdict still out

We're lying in bed after exhauting night in stinky, burpey, snorey hard sleeper train carriage - no chicken's feet this time, only sickly sweet scent of peaches. Sim gave me her iPhone to listen to some Desert Island discs she'd downloaded. I fell asleep with David Attenborough who'd turned black as when I woke it was Kwame Kwei-Armah. I managed to listen to most of Michael Mansfield who like me went to Keele but thought I'd missed vital info about our Dept prime minister as Nick Clegg had a wife and kids then when I woke up again had a boyfriend who looked like John Travolta - but iTunes had moved on to Peter Ackroyd!

Anyway, that distraction took me through the twilight hours from
3-6am when the ticket collector woke me to swap the credit card-like train token (it was a metal slab with a bed number when I was last in China in 2006 traveling from Beijing to Wudang Mountain and Shaolin temple on my taiji trip).

Our initial experience of Dalian was not promising. The taxi driver called the policeman and various passers-by and other cabbies over but noone could understand /locate Hotel. Eventually we found the word for square - Guang chang and Zhongfang Guangchang is the nearest landmark we could find. Eventually after missing the wrong exit off this roundabout - where a bit of The Last Emperor was filmed and where at 7.30am there was still a group of taiji ladies fluttering their fans - and then finding that it was in fact the wrong exit and the previously wrong exit was right (never trust Googlemaps!). We miraculously rolled up to reception only to find a total B who asked for too much money, claimed there was no wifi or internet access and booked us into un-cleaned rooms.

This is where the Swiss Miss took over. (We should have booked into Dalian's SwisH hotel instead - even if it was just for the glaring typo! At least they won't get sHued for copyright!!). Within 10 mins the stroppy Swiss was back up on the 13th floor with the receptionist's minion and master key card and we'd moved up 2 floors to 1505!

On returning for an afternoon nap the staff had changed shift and not only did Alex get Internet cable conection which he then broadcast up to our floor so we can get wifi in our room - so no excuse for not skyping me on my bday - but I also got a cube refil for mini water machine and two tea cups so I'm happy not to have to go to Costa Coffee again for 28 yuan (£2.80) pot of tea. May not sound a lot but that is five meals in my uni canteen!!!

Also Great to have a view of mountains (hills) and we're up in the clouds. Fortunately they gave way to hazy sunshine as we hit the beach, tho it was definitely a Russian version of Margate with hideous 'Dreamland' funfair and a Harbour promenade. However the lovely ride on old-fashioned and modern trams made up for the disappointment on arrival.

Guye has booked KTV (karaoke) for Fri 15th when she and Xinhong arrive for my birthday after visiting her Granny in nearby (4hrs away) Anshan. The other great leap forward in my Chinese is that with the help of tranlations for hard sleeper and middle and bottom bunk from Lonely Planet, I managed to book 3 beds back to Harbin for my classmates on 18th June and me a day later. We thought it would be easier and nicer for Simone to spend her last (hotel) night in China with me in Dalian rather than another overnight train to Beijing for her third visit to the Three Legged Frog hostel. Instead she'll spend from 12.30am - 7.30am at Beijing airport and return via Dubai to London. I think after 5.5 months she's ready for home comforts and pussycats.

Reishe (Swiss) in Harbin

It's been a hospital heavy week on both sides of globe. Tues 29 May Sarah had her op in Parkside hospital in Richmond. All went well and she was out in time to wave flags in Chelsea Harbour. She got a new iPad so it was a relief to be able to skype her on the morning of the op and the day after. Her upbeat attitude has been inspirational. And Anna my 12 year-old niece has started a blog for her mum which is so heartening: http://loveumummysarah.blogspot.co.uk

Here in Harbin I picked up Simone who returned fr Mongolia (via Beijing) with a suspected torn ligament in her ankle. That week i started inpatients neurology clinic and also helped Simone hobble to tuina clinic with the sadistic Dr Wang Jun and his equally harsh students. The x-ray showed no broken bones and the Dr didn't see the need for an MRI or a pair of crutches. He sent me back to my inpatients clinic and luckily a lovely Malaysian translated - but none of Simone's cursing or tears I hope! After the pain of the hissing girl's tuina massage Simone said yes to the doctor's needles!

For most of the first week she's was holed up in my room as the bruising was brought out and swelling subside. It's been a week of late April rain storms so Simone's been helping a top student prepare for an English exam. I pushed her on my bicycle to the Korean for a ban fan across the busy Heping Lu (Heping Road) and as we were leaving the sweet smiley waiter in the matching pink hawaiian shirt and shorts kindly took Simone home in his electric tricycle. I printed the pictures and took them round the next week when we returned for another meal. Ordering is still a challenge and I hope we avoided the gao (dog)!




It's been life in the slow lane for the Harbin tourist apart from a trip to town last weekend to get my Chinese brush characters and painting by my cousin's husband framed and purchasing various apparatuses for my Chinese doctor's toolkit - plastic suction cups and TENS/Electro-acupuncture. It's been full on action back at the liuxuesheng (foreign student) accommodation. I've been treating Alex with slide cupping and a 5" needle in zhu bian for his sciatica and using the TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) on Simone's ankle, then joined Guye to treat the Ayi (aunty - who actually is not my aunty as she's only 35 and I'm almost a decade older....) receptionist for oedema and to lose weight with points in her feet, hands and under her chin!!!! I haven't progressed to the pricking palms of hands and tongue that I saw a doctor do on a mute and hemiplegic patient! Though I did give a classmate a treatment for weightloss of 24 needles on the stomach. However, my blood-letting and fire cupping needs to improve before she returns to London.

Talking of which, I'm glad I managed to miss the jubilee mania - couldn't even bare to listen to Radio 4 all week! The best image I have is of Sarah in hospital after her op wearing a crown, union jack and sporting a blow-up corgi!! Two days later she was out watching the Queen go past her friend's Chelsea Harbour flat and then a day later she was out til 9.30pm PLAYING TENNIS!!! That's my big little sis for you!

The other dramas for the treatment tourist in her second week was the Hong Tou Fa (Red head/hair = Simone's new Chinese name) was a trip to the hairdresser on the first floor of my accommodation and a visit to Dr Cheng (neurology outpatients) to see what he could do for her rhinitis (swelling inside the nose that causes blockage in nasal passages at least 4 times a day). Immediate relief that there were no needles, but the 15 herb concoction (including Chrysanthamum, Honeysuckle, Licorice and various other roots and rhizomes) that was boiled and put into 14 bags for a 7 day course are pretty vile. I now remember why Chinese herbs are not so popular in the West.



The good news is that after 2 months my parcel finally arrived: Thai green curry, chocolate and dental floss. Thanks mum :-)) What more could a girl want for her remaining 2 months in Harbin (though I doubt the chocolate will make it to my birthday and we enjoyed 2 packets of curry that Simone cooked up in the 7th floor kitchen for my two remaining classmates.


Off to Dalian in 2 days and leaving my computer and 4 essay deadline behind for a week or so!!!