China Day 4

This morning we left our main bag in Beijing and headed to to a TCM school/hospital. It was located part of the way to Tianjin and was pretty different from thethe western hospital. It was located in a pretty shady part of town to our uneducated eyes, but no one did anything more than gape at us.

This hospital experience was much more fun than the first one and we actually were interested in what they had to say and had more questions than they had time to answer.
On the way into the hospital forour tour, I saw the cutest little kid peeking at me from behind a post. Luckily, he like me enough to smile!

We got a tour of the hospital (which specializes in orthopedics) and I went pretty crazy taking pictures and impressing the doctors with my herbal knowledge (smarty pants) in the pharmacy area. The also had a 1000 year old tree in their courtyard and a clairvoyance room- all of us want to know what goes on in there!

After the hospital we headed out for the long trip to Tianjin. Apparently it's only 90 miles from Beijing, but the roads are crappy in some arts so it takes4 hours to get there. This long in th small bus with overnight bags definitely wore on people tempers and I'm now wondering ow long it will take me to get mad at absolutely everyone. The fact that no one got lunch didn't help. I could hav taken a bunch of picture along the way of some really run down areas and smog and muslim looking buildings, but I was grumpy and the windows were dirty.
The hotel we got to was a lot nicer, but still had hard beds - at least the only thing that bothers are my shoulders which have been very sore since we got here, I think from carrying my bags..

After dinner we headed out to the night market and walked around in a tent city the only sold clothes,shoes, and watches. I didn't find anything I was interested in, but Val, Zach, Bowen, and I hooked up with Master Wei and after he bought the perfect pair of sunglasses for Val we went around to all the street vendors until we found a beer. It was great that Bowen was with us since he's 1/2-1/2 Japanese-Chinese and although he couldn't speak Chinese, he could write on a tablet and for the most part we could communicate.


It definitely seems like the other masters enjoy us and are frustrated that we can't have conversations. They were very excited when Carl was here because he could translate for us and he could hold dialogs with them. While we were sitting on the street cornet drinking giant beers with Master Wei, we were quite a spectacle. The kid sitting behind us at the register was blatantly reading the tablet that was passing between Master Wei and Bowen. I thought that was pretty funny, especially because he only tried to hide it when he saw me looking at him.
We had to rush back to the bus because we were supposed to meet back there at 8pm. Master Wei was with us though, so we weren't too worried that they would leave us, but when he detoured so he could buy a watch it was kind of funny. I was wondering if we were late and got scolded if he would say he wanted a watch or that he had to help us cause we got lost.. =) Master Wei ended getting a rolex.. not too sure if it was real or not, but it looked pretty cool. On the way back to the bus he said that he showed the seller his ID saying that he was a Taoist master and got a big discount. Something like Kama'aina, huh?

When we got back to the hotel the private lessons with Master Wei were organized and conveniently for me got assigned to my room - free lesson for me!! Zach, Bowen, drew, matt, and I now have to practice together for a 1/2 hour in the morning and before bed for 30 days.