A little more

As I said, it's been interesting working in the clinic/ hospital here in Tianjin. Yesterday, I got to see several people get Jinjin and Yuyao punctured. (They're on either side of the frenulum, underneath the tongue, and you puncture about 5 cm deep.) Sheer acu-geeky happiness... along with the "Sheaf of Wheat" needle the instructor pulled out to show off, 35 cm long! Two of the CP kids came in, along with one I hadn't met before... they're pretty funny, because they put up a huge fight with crying and yelling while the needles are being inserted... and then once it stops, there's nothing. It's as if there was no problem at all.

I seem to remember acting the same way when I was getting vaccinations as a kid.

We got a memo yesterday afternoon that said that on Monday, the hospital saw 8,177 patients. Not too shabby for the first day back from vacation!

So, I've been meaning to post my first impressions of what an AIMC student would want to be sure and have if coming to study in Tianjin... so here's the list, subject to revision.

1. Lots of Chinese. I mean, a TON of Chinese language. Don't skip this, or you're going to feel like a dummy most of the time. Both conversational and medical. If you're willing to feel a little like a dummy, then the amount I showed up with was probably just about enough for this environment. If there were more people, and it was reasonable to slow everything down, then just the basics might do.
2. A fair knowledge of the names of acupuncture points. Even saying "手阳明大肠经四" (Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian Four) will get you pondering looks. If you say "合谷" (He Gu, "Union Valley"), they'll instantly understand.
3. At least a passing familiarity with Chinese characters. It's one of the reasons I keep on practicing them here in this blog.
4. A willingness to realize that not all places in the world are HIPAA or Clean Needle compliant. More on this later.
5. Good books, other ways to occupy yourself, something mindless but engaging and in a familiar language. Even if you love everything that's going on around you, your brain needs the occasional break from all the foreign experiences. In some ways, you're absorbing information as fast, and just as lost, as a baby. Only with the adult hard-wiring behind it making it more difficult. And babies sleep almost half the day to process everything.

I'm sure there's more... but that's a decent start. And now.... the first of the pictures!

This is the view from my apartment on the tenth floor of the Tian Zhong Hotel. It's usually hazy like this, except right after it rains. Right down at the bottom of the image, you can see a corner of the athletic field -- a football (soccer) field surrounded by a track. Every morning at 6:30, music plays across the city, followed by some sort of calisthenics routine that seems to be performed mostly by women.

The hospital, right next door, would be directly behind me if I could walk through the building.

I tried to take some photos of the apartment itself, but it's impossible to get an idea of the scale. It just looks like I took pictures of the corners of the room. Maybe I'll try again later... but here's where I stayed in Beijing:

The entrance to the courtyard. There's a more conventional-looking hotel across the street, but that's not as cool as this.





The floating globes are not lights, or aliens.... they're just water droplets on the lens. I still think you get the idea. It was raining, the day I left, and I was about to go squelching all over Beijing for a second day in a row.





(Chinese Medicine geekery note: two vials of Yin Qiao Pian, the first all in one go, and the other at four tabs every four hours, did the trick for my incipient Wind-Heat attack the next day. I probably should have used a third vial to be safe, though. Funny, too, when I realized that the stuff was made in Tianjin. Well-travelled tablets, just to wind up a few kilometers from where they started.)

This is the view right after you turn the left-hand corner at the back of the previous picture. Those are grapes overhead, the courtyard is over to the right through the red gateway, and the toilets are to the right, mercifully neither shown nor smelled.

This is half the courtyard... I don't know why the other half didn't really come out. Imagine another two tables on the other side, anyway. That's the tourist office and so on through the door under where it says "Internet Access"; through the doorway you can just barely see on the right is a landing leading up and down to the dorm rooms (not much to speak of, two double bunks). From the landing, you can also go left to the computer room for your 8元 per hour access, or right to some kind of meeting room that usually had a staff member watching TV there.

That didn't seem as bizarre at the time as it might sound now.

The restaurant connected to the hostel, where I didn't eat once because it catered mostly to Western palates. A few people ate their breakfasts there, but I got mine on the street.

It's not precisely the Inn of the Weary Traveller... but it's close.

I've got some street scenes, and some Great Wall photos... but you'll have to wait! I can't dole it all out at once!