China Day 5

Today we went straight away to the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) First Teaching Hospital Tianjin. Shifu was very picky about our appearances today and wanted to make sure we all looked sharp. Otherwise, she said, no one would take us seriously and we'd get treated like crap. No one wanted to upset Mama Ducky!

This hospital was really interesting. The were renovating most of the place and building new buildings. It was nice to see that they were getting some money for such things. Especially after the other hospitals we've seen. It amazes me that the bathrooms are here are ALWAYS disgusting and never have TP - they are troughs in the ground unless you're in a hotel and even at the hospitals stink like an outhouse.

Anyway, we went straight into a meeting with the president of the hospital which, nicely, was a woman, and then started our tour. They have all types of medicine here ranging from Tui Na (TCM massage, picture with the baby), acupuncture, herbal medicine, rehabilitation for stokes and injuries, and western practices such as surgery and lab testing.
To me the integration of the TCM with the labs was so exciting. Say they have a stroke patient come in - apparently if a patient can get acupuncture within 2 hours of having a stroke, their chance of recovering is at least 25% better than without - so if the patient comes in they will receive fast treatment and then get sent down to receive an MRI to pinpoint the location of the clot or whatever (I don't really remember what causes strokes) then they go back and do more acupuncture and other therapy and then take a second MRI to show the improvement. This was so cool! We got to go into the MRI room where they were looking at the scans on the computer. They showed us a number of before and afters which were pretty amazing! Too bad we can't do this in the US!
After the tour we headed to lunch where we booted people from 2 big tables (that was a bit embarrassing) and ate more chinese food. It was good to walk around a bit, although the smog levels are definitely disconcerting. We've been having black boogers for a couple of days now.

After lunch we headed back to the conference room and received a few lectures on OBGYN treatments. I now know how to turn a breach baby (in theory) and stimulate production of breast milk (that on'es a little scary) and know which herbal formulas to prescribe of all types of morning sickness! So Erin, if you haven't popped yet when I get home and she's still flipped, I can try it out on you!

After our lectures, we met another president of the hospital (maybe some kind of translation problem here - or my memory) who was going to meet with Shifu about working out some kind of exchange program between ours and theirs so that some of us could come here for internships and study. I think that would be really great, but I wouldn't want to breathe this air for any longer than I already am!


We left the Presidents office and went out for photo ops in front of the Hospital. Our third Master friend (Who we picked up on the side of the road yesterday on the way to Tianjin - he was in full costume), who's name I never got, would be leaving us here so many people wanted pics with him (pictured is part of the group, and then Master Wei, Rhonda, #3, and Master Xian).
We had a long trip back to Beijing in the dark now, and the bumpy roads and everyone's short tempers made it less than rosey, but we handled it well (especially after Master Xian gave us some creampuffs).

Master Wei learned how to say my, Bowen's, and Zach's names last night (and we made up one for val since they don't have a V - although today her leaved how to say her last name) he really gets a kick out of it.



Once we got back to Beijing we got our other bags and ate a late dinner. I think Shifu's getting annoyed with the beer drinking that's going on, but what can you do? We're not all monks.
I decided to not go out tonight but to try and sleep and get some practicing in.
Shifu gave us a little incentive to dress appropriately since she said that Aadrien came down in a tight tanktop with no bra and she had to scold her to send her back up to her room to prevent her from getting arrested. This is information that would be useful to know before it's an issue, but maybe she thinks we already know?

I was still up until 2am, but I definitely needed a break from the group.