China Day 2

This morning we ate and then headed to a room in the hotel where we were given a demonstration by Master Wei. He is Shifu's disciple who "swallows" objects and opens his meridians with them. He circulates these objects, ranging in size from sand to 1/4" ball bearings (which we saw), to golf ball size, inside his body and then they come out when he's ready at his eyes, ears, or nose. I didn't bring my camera to this demonstration because stills of this process didn't seem like it would be too interesting. Luckily, many of the other students brought camcorders and recorded everything.
Many other students found this demonstration to be life changing and beyond belief and I was a little discouraged, but not surprised to not really be affected by it. I mean it is pretty nuts to see a man swallow four ball bearings, do some Qi Gong, and then slide a chopstick along the side of his face to guide out 2 balls out one eye and then 2 balls out the other eye. As I'm explaining it here it's more interesting to me than it was while it was happening. Very cool, but I wasn't really to yell, "WHAT THE __!!!" at the top of my lungs afterward.

After the demo we asked the 3 Masters questions and signed up for treatments from them. We ate lunch and then headed out the the Beijing Haidian Maternal and Child Hospital where we were given a Q and A period with 3 women doctors and a small talk by the president of the hospital, followed by a tour of the facilities. The facilities were very interesting because they deliver an average of 12,000 babies per year. I have NO idea how this relates to hospitals in the US, but it seemed like a pretty big number. The highlights of the tour were the "specimen room" where they keep (in jars) the remains of miscarried and malformed fetuses (many people found this acceptable, but again I was surprised that it didn't bother me) and the room where they put newborns in a pool and let them swim. I had gotten lost with a handful of other kids when this part was going on, so I didn't get to see it, but apparently it was really cute and fun to watch the little one kicking around and whatnot.


After the tour, the board members of the hospital took us out to eat at the most famous Bai Jia Da Yuan restaurant which I was told by one of the people from the hospital is the most expensive, famous, and best restaurant in all of Beijing. I told her I wasn't surprised. The place was amazingly beautiful. I wish I had had time and a tripod! All the staff were dress in the style of the Qing dynasty I could not believe the waitresses carrying platters and all types of things in the stilt shoes! Their dresses were so beautiful and the girls were so cute!
The hospital people got us "wine" which was similar to the alcohol that we use to make the Yuk Jiao... not very delicious and it burned my esophagus all the way down into my empty stomach and then into my empty intestines - which surprised me in the middle if dinner with a sharp pain - if Polly hadn't reminded me of the shot, I'd have thought I was having some kind of food poisoning.
Speaking of the food, it was beautiful. Bowen took pictures of every dish that came out and I will post them as soon as I can get my greedy little fingers on them.
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and Val and I got talked into heading out on the town for a little shopping by Zach. He took us to this crazy market where we heard the best English since we'd gotten to China. I got a few gifts for people (which shall remain unnamed - hehehe) and barely got out of there with any money left.
After the market we headed to the lake (I don't know what it's called) and had a drink at one of the crazy bars. There was a band in there playing madonna, kylie minouge covers, etc with black eyed peas in between - it was ridiculous.