I am feeling much better these days. I have a freshly brewed cup of coffee from my new french press sitting in front of me, Starbucks House Blend with a little sugar and a little milk and I am now ready, poised at the computer, ready to go into detail about my excursion into yet another Chinese hospital.
First off, I know that most of you have never had the problem of having a kidney stone. I encourage you to take a moment and google it-- so that you can see that what I am about to tell you in not a lie or exaggeration of any sort.
I felt as though I was going to die in a Chinese hospital last Wednesday afternoon. The pain began Tuesday night as we left Lucy's, an English style pub with Western Food in one of the nicest districts in the Canton. It is a french like compound with blocks of nice buildings--very cool place to just walk around in and take in the sights and scenery. By the time that we arrived at this place, both Fiona and I were really hungry and tired--we had forgotten to eat any food throughout the day because we were too busy taking in the sights. By the time we had arrived at Lucy's I was feeling almost weak from not eating. When I looked at the menu, nothing really stood out on the menu-- even through there were potato skins, steaks, pasta--the whole gamut of food that I normally would salivate over.
I pondered going somewhere else, but Fiona protested--she wanted to dine here because we were so hungry, so I ordered two beers-- corona, which they were out of, so I went with the Carling on draft, which they proceeded to bring two big pint glasses at 40rmb a piece (5.00usd) and I ordered a steak and chicken enchiladas for Fiona. The steak was as good as it gets in China, a little thicker than usual, a little fat on the edges with a mushroom glaze--delightful. Served with Ketchup (a big deal here) and gasp! A-1!! I should have been in heaven, but I didn't feel like it. I blamed it on the overall tiredness I felt from such a busy day--meanwhile Fiona was going strong with her Chicken enchiladas-- the first time she ever had Mexican food and she liked it--although it wasn't what I was thinking when I ordered it-- I had dreamed that it would be the Neil Smith family recipe, but alas, it wasn't.
We soon finished up and decided to take a little walk around the center of the district, taking in the evening air and watching all the people stroll by. I started to feel a little under the weather and opted to get a cab back to the hotel--it was getting close to 1am by this time and we both seemed tired.
As we arrived back at the hotel, I began to feel this warm feeling in the right side of my back. It was a strange feeling, not painful, but alarming as I had never felt such an odd sensation before. Fiona could see that I was thinking about something--perhaps I had that look when a small child has to crap in his diaper and doesn't really know what to do about it--it was the same feeling....
She asked me if something was the matter and I didn't want to tell her anything because these people worry about me too much as it is-- with all the sickness that I have had, they are always on the watch to see if I am okay. I tell her that I just feel a little strange, but it should be okay in a moment or two. She accepts this explanation and goes back to watching tele. I continue to think what the hell this could be and find myself getting a little shorter and shorter of breath--and now I am getting a little more worried but try to keep my cool so as not to alarm Ms. Fiona.
I begin to experiment with sitting in different positions to see if it helps and I finally find that laying on my tummy helps out quite a bit. After 20 minutes or so, the pain seems to go away and I feel better. I soon drift off to sleep with no problems at all.
The next morning I wake up and I remember not remembering the pain at all. We are a little rushed because we have both slept in, so I quickly hop into the shower room and take a quick shower--when the wired sensation returns once again. Shocked, I stand in the warm water, knowing that if this is back, I probably need to have it looked at. Over the course of several minutes, the pain begins to worsen, becoming more of a dull thud. Fiona, now out of the shower, sees that I am again looking like I am making doody in my diaper and asks me what the problem is. I explain calmly to her that I am not sure what it is, but it is a little more painful than it was last night and that maybe we need to see if there is a clinic nearby--because I need one. As predicted, the word clinic produces panic and she begins to fire off an arsenal of questions in broken english. I answer a few and then direct her to go ask someone if there is something close by--I assure her its nothing to be worried about, but we need to go have a look because I am not going to be able to function throughout the day like this.
She agrees.
Luckily, there is a hospital right across the street, so we quickly head over to the building and check in. By this time, the pain has begun to get worse and my mild concern has no turned into alarm. I can begin to feel a little faint and because of the lack of air-conditioning, I begin to sweat profusely. My body's nervous system is kicking in. We go into visit the admitting doctor, who has a nice disposition. He speaks a little english and asks me what kind of pains are going on in my body. As the descriptions require more and more translations, Fiona begins to ask me the questions-- How do you pee? What color is it?
He then wants a urine sample and I can almost immediately tell that I am not going to be able to pee in the cup. I can't feel the normal twitch if you can take a pee and I know something is wrong. We are told to go to the second floor, where there is a WC (wash chamber) and for the next 30 minutes, I try to pee, but no dice. I go back downstairs to tell the doctor that he needs to do something else -- I can't pee and the pain, the pain is getting to be so bad at this point--sweat covering my body in a thick coat, my mind drifting off into the abstract....
Moments later, I am on a table pulling my pants down and the nurse gives me a shot in the ass-- this should make me urinate within 5 minutes, which at this point seems like a lifetime. I head up to the WC to await the moment, but instead I throw up--mainly just water, but it is a painful convulsion, one that knocks out my front tooth implant--right into the WC and down the drain. There I am, missing a tooth, puking water. It can not get much worse than this...
It does.
Eventually, I am able to piss into the cup--no more than an once of the yellowest urine my body has ever produced--cloudy, thick and smelly, I hand the cup over to the waiting nurse who looks at the urine and asks me to sit and wait for the results--but I head back down to the doctor--sure at this point that I am going to die in a Chinese hospital with no way to say goodbye to my family and friends....
The doctor tells me to lay in his office-- I groan with pain as my kidneys, liver or whatever it might be pulsates what I think must be its final moments as a living, function in my body. I begin to think about wanting there to be a god, moaning and moaning like the sick--and the whole time the doctor is seeing other patients who look over at me--the big westerner moaning like an old dying man in a corner, but I don't care.
Finally the nurse comes down with the results and the doctor removes everyone from the room and asks me to turn over and gives me another shot in the ass--with Fiona watching--this is more than she needs to see--we are just co-workers--she doesn't need to see my ass!
They begin speaking in Chinese to each other--I wait patiently to ask her what they are speaking about and they continue as I lay there, clueless into what they could be talking about--but the conversation is long.
"What is he saying?" I finally burst out. I do not want to die here because they were having a nice chat about what we have gone to see thus far in our visit to Guangzhou.
Fiona ignores my request for a moment and then turns to me, not smiling, and says that there is either something wrong with either my liver or my kidneys. I stare at her in amazement.
"It's nice that they have narrowed it down--could you ask him when I am going to die? I need to call people. I have things to do before I die. Do I have enough time?" I say this to make her smile--it will reassure me, but she doesn't smile.
"They are not sure just yet." THIS IS THE WRONG RESPONSE. This happens a lot in Chinese--because although they can speak the language, often they don't know what exactly the meaning is. Her meaning of 'they are not sure yet' simply meant that they don't know how long it will take for me to feel better-- but used in this context meant that they did not know how long I was going to live--which I didn't like.
I decided that just sitting and moaning felt much better--and they continued their discussion.
Eventually, I was transferred into a proper Chinese hospital room, where there were five other people ranging from the temporarily sick and ill to the soon to be departed from this world death bed sick. I felt better that I was placed with some of the sick for just a little while crowd, but I still didn't know what was wrong and when I was going to die. The pain at this point had become almost laborious and I thought that perhaps I was about to deliver a child into the world when they finally hooked me into a drip IV of what appeared to be saline--which didn't help and I told them in as many different ways that it was not helping, but there was no response except for the nervous smile and a nod.
When the saline packet was about half empty, the nurse came back into the room with a large bottle of light green syrup and hooked that into the IV. I thought it must be formaldehyde--they knew the end was near, so why not speed the process along! Fiona had a look of suspicion that matched how I felt. I told her to go and get the doctor and ask him what the hell he thought this thing was. She did with no hesitation.
He came into the room and looked at the odd looking bottle of sauce and nodded. Fiona seemed to ask him what was going on and as he explained it, she began to nod and smile.
"He says that you have a kidney stone. This will tell your kidney to function the right way and it will more than likely pass the stone into your bladder where it might dissolve. He said that you should feel better in half an hour--if you don't than they are going to need to run further tests.
Further tests? I wondered if my body could actually accept such a thing. I began to feel drowsy from all the work my body was doing and drifted off. I awoke several minutes later and felt that the pain had given way a little and I felt relief for the first time in several hours. I nodded to Fiona, who was wide awake, staring at me.
Within half an hour from that point, I was able to leave the hospital--the total bill was about 120rmb ($15) and I was given medication to take to aid in the possibility that the stone passes.
Here is what I have deduced what happened to cause the kidney stone...
There are several factors that cause kidney stones to happen--most importantly, they are usually not really stones, but mores pieces of crystal that form when your body does not have enough fluids available to process what it needs to formulate into urine from the blood. This can be due to several factors: hot, humid climate--which southeast Asia has--a recent bout of food poisoning, where the toxins that are from the bacteria come into the system and the kidneys flush them out--which happened--and dehydration--which happened because of all of the walking and traveling we had been doing--and finally--weight loss--your body is losing so much matter and most of it travels through the kidneys and it processes the excess into urine and sweat-- which has also happened....
So, just about every cause of the kidney stones, I have had something to do with... So, its no wonder why I got them. Now I just have to hope that my bladder breaks them up so that I don't have to pass it through my-- well you know....
Read more!
08 October 2005
If you see an ad that you might like, please feel free to click on it for more information! A simple click of the ads, lifts the total count for the day higher, which blogger then uses to send more people to my little corner of cyberspace-- So click away.
I will add more content tommorow as I have most of the day free and will not be as tired as I am right now...
I hope all is well.. Read more!
I will add more content tommorow as I have most of the day free and will not be as tired as I am right now...
I hope all is well.. Read more!
07 October 2005
Statues outside of the Chen Clan House in Guanzhou.
A Ming Dynasty bell still installed in its original foundation on top of one of the temples in Guanzhou.
This is the best looking Buddha I have seen yet-- at the Guangzhou Museaum of Art.
The Ming Dynasty Mauseloum site-- these are the protectors.
I really want to take one of these back to the United States with me, but I think it might weigh a little more than 70 pounds. Read more!
A Ming Dynasty bell still installed in its original foundation on top of one of the temples in Guanzhou.
This is the best looking Buddha I have seen yet-- at the Guangzhou Museaum of Art.
The Ming Dynasty Mauseloum site-- these are the protectors.
I really want to take one of these back to the United States with me, but I think it might weigh a little more than 70 pounds. Read more!
Memories of Canton
I prefer the name Canton to Guangzhou, so I will continue to refer to the area as Canton. The food is called Cantonese, the people are Cantonese, so its Canton.
And, as I think I said last night--although things were a little groggy as 2:45am, things went well, despite the fact that I was again hospitalized for most of the afternoon.
Well get to that...
The trip began as a hurried rush to do something for the holiday, as I feel every available moment in the country needs to be spent either writing or traveling--no time needs to be wasted on idle things like being bored. As Joe widen said, live close to the bone--which I can tell you is happening more and more as each week passes into the memories. I was, if you have been following, supposed to go to Shanghai for the holiday where everyone with a bit of free time seemed like they were on their way to-- more than four times the normal city size, Shanghai was supposed to simply explode with people, but I got sick with a nasty round of food poisoning or something closely resembling it and decided to rest for a while and ride out the storm in the comforts of my own western toilet.
When the darkness cleared, I decided to head off to Canton and possibly sunshine with one of the people in the foreign affairs department, fine. She is a sweet girl from the North of China who seems to have a bit more edge to her than most of the people at the university, so I was glad to have such good company that I got along with. She agreed to go because the Foreign affairs department is worried about the foreigner a little more than I am sure that I would find in another place. I think that having the honor of going with a westerner is a big one and she has more than happy to serve as my guide to such a modern city.
We chose to spend the extra money and take a bus down to Guangzhou. I should note the different prices for things now--even though I am sure that throughout this blog I will notate it again and again and again.
(Actually, I am just going to remind myself to make it as its own special posting and maybe devise a link for it.)
The bus is about double to the destination as a seat on the train, but seemingly more comfortable--a little roomier and it feels a little safe as well, but it has the potential to take much much longer than if you were to board a train.
And it did take much longer to get to Canton via bus. The roads in China are not the best, but the trucks that drive the products around the country are by far in the worst shape of the transport. A truck broke down on one of the roads and it looked like the driver was either trying to get over because he knew that he was about to break down or he decided to cause as much trouble as possible and crash right there, blocking the only two lanes that passed by in a section where no one could just get by--because in China, all bets are off when it comes to driving and the highways are no exception.
The jam took more than an hour to clear, maybe closer to two hours, but it was a relief to get moving again once we did. Then, about 20 minutes later, we stopped in a random spot along the highway and had a "rest" for about 30 minutes near a cantina, which was obviously still in the Hunan province because of all the peppers that were on peoples plates that bought the food--buffet style from the food vendor. My stomach was still questionable, so I held off. Once the driver was finished with his dish, he sat smoking, eyeing the place and me on occasion, no doubt a common experience on this run from the North to the South.
We arrived in Guangzhou more than 2 hours off schedule, which put it at just before 11pm on a Monday evening, but we had called ahead and booked a room in the same place that housed the youth hostel, so we figured it would serve the purpose it needed for us. Upon arrival outside of the gate, we were mauled by people trying to hauk us a room in one of the local motels--everything from not even good enough for a star to the garden hotel downtown, known throughout the land as the Hotel that the real George Bush stays when he comes to Canton. We proudlt breezed through these Cantonese paper pushers, we had no use for them--we had a joint.
Or so we thought.
Upon arrival, we were not greeted with the happiness that I am normally met with--these people looked at my with no concern in my stay and immediately began to look to Fiona for what was supposed to be going on at the moment. She explained of our registration--they nodded in approval. She asked me, not smiling, in English, for my passport, which I proudly handed her. She then asked for something in Chinese, which Fiona seemed to take personally. She laughed slightly, a sign of nervousness and looked at me and said Amerigua--which is American, the woman nodded at my passport and gestured to Fiona for her papers, which she gave her Identity card, a makeshift communist card with a black and white picture of the person identities on it and a hologram that simple says CHINA all over it.
The woman took the identity and motioned for more. Fiona, puzzled, looked at her and began to ask (I think) in Chinese what else this woman wanted.
The woman, in the closest tone to a Russian order, commanded something in Chinese. Fiona laughed more nervously from this request. The two argued as the Chinese do with each other, each getting as loud as possible while still retaining a respectful tone.
"We will not stay here." Fiona said flatly.
I was tired and didn't feel like lugging my stuff somewhere else. Surely they must be trying for more money, which was fine. I just wanted to go up to the room, drop my things off and get some food that wasn't going to give me dysentery.
"We can not share the same room. We are not married and this hotel does not allow such behavior."
I stood there for a moment, taking this information in. It was difficult to process. At first I thought that this must be a ploy to get more money out of me. Surely this couldn't be the case.
"How much more do they want for us to share a room?"
She duplicates the same look of wonderment I have just given her.
"I am sorry? I don't understand?"
"How much is it going to cost us?"
The hotel woman magically begins to speak English. "You can't be in the same room if you are not married, Mr. Do you have a marriage certificate?"
"No, no. You are misunderstanding. We aren't married. We are colleagues at a University in Hunan."
She looks back at Fiona and says something in Chinese and ends it with 80 yuan. Fiona nods and both turn to look at me.
"I can stay in the hostel for 80 yuan, but your room is 160yuan. No exceptions and I am forbidden to go upstairs."
Amazed at what is happening, I stand for a moment taking this in. Fiona, who I know somewhat well, is not kidding. She likes to mess with me to a certain point, but this is beyond the territory she knows where to go.
"Maybe we need to find another place." She suggests.
I am the most angry I have been in a month, maybe longer, but I am holding it in to the best of my ability. As we walk outside, she immediately begins to bargain with the first paper pusher outside of the hotel, who says that the hotel across the way has rooms for 140yuan, which I find to be a good price, so we begin the trek over to check out their hotel. Fiona continues to speak to this woman in Chinese, probably trying somewhat to work her to give us a lower price, but moreso to not have to listen to my growing anger over the previous hotel. Halfway to the place, their conversation ends naturally and Fiona looks over at me with a cautious smile.
I unleash my thoughts.
"What the hell was that? We can't stay in the same room because we are not married? This is China, the country that has no official religion--that claims to be a godless society, but they have rules about who can sleep where and under what conditions? That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! We are just friends touring the country! Is this going to happen everywhere? Was it a bad idea to come with you because of your gender?"
All of these questions were confusing to her, but she understood the point, which was that I was angry. I was also worried--if this was the case everywhere we went, I was going to be in trouble when I traveled because most of the people here at the Uni are women--women who I have no desire to have them be anything but good friends and guides around their own country. As we walked to the next hotel, I wondered if it was going to be the same story as what we had just witnessed.
"This is China and the government frowns upon a man and a women sharing the same area if they are not family. That place is run by the government which is why hostel is there. I do not think that this hotel where we will be going will give us any problem."
I pondered this for a moment--the government, the Chinese government, runs the hotel. The Communist Chinese government is in the hotel business. The atheist, Communist Chinese government runs a hotel and a hostel and decides who gets to stay where. I laughed at the overall absurdity of what I had just discovered.
This is China.
After some negotiation with the hotel, we finally were allowed to live in sin for the night--two double beds for 18yuan per night, a small price for the nice room we ended up getting. When it comes down to it, we should have stayed at this place for the remainder of the time that we were in Guanzhou-- the overall cost of the place was a little more than the other places that we stayed, but when add in time lost and cab fares to get to and from the different locations, it would have made more sense to just stay near the train station.
Once we were checked in, it was time to find something to eat--quickly. We went back and forth about where we should go to eat--it was getting late--about 11:30pm by the time we got to the room and there didn't appear to be all that much in the way of nightlife outside, so we decided to roll it with the cab--which turned out to be a great choice.
For all of those of you that have traveled here, you''ll understand what I say more than people who come here for a vacation--when you arrive somewhere new, there are two different schools of thought-- to sample the regional Chinese food and to sample the regional attempts at Westernized food. For me, after spending the last month in a small city with nothing western to offer but a crazy KFC and the occasional big mac, I was excited to give real cuisine a roll.
I had Fiona tell the cab driver to find a decent western restaurant that was still open this late at night-- and he selected, amply titled, "Italian restaurant". I beamed with a cautious joy. Surely, this was an oasis. There wasn't even a Chinese name next to this place.
The restaurant itself was inviting, warm lighting, bottles of real Italian reds, whites and even some gasp!! from California!! I didn't feel much like wine, but still ordered a glass of Italian red, which tasted like the best droplet of booze to graze my tastebuds in a millennia. The menu was dynamic, lots of different dishes from pastas to lasgna to traditional Chinese. A smile spread widely across my face.
I ordered:
French Onion Soup (which didn't come with the baked cheese and croutons on top, but good nonethe less)
Beef Lasgne (baked in the traditional dish, smothered with real cheese, another thing I had not had the pleasure of tasting in a long time)
Chicken Fettuchine Alfredo with tomatoes and pasta (Buttery perfection)
It was perfect--such a nice detour from the constant Chinese diet that had been rattling so ruffly through my system for the month. Fiona, who had never dined with Italian food was equally blown away at the taste and flavors of western food.
*She ate nothing but western food the entire time we were gone and like everything else, but throughout the trip she kept asking me if I knew how to make the lasgne.)
We went back to the hotel and feel asleep quickly due to our full stomachs of western food.
tomorrow-- Day 2--Hotel shopping and Clan Trekking. Read more!
And, as I think I said last night--although things were a little groggy as 2:45am, things went well, despite the fact that I was again hospitalized for most of the afternoon.
Well get to that...
The trip began as a hurried rush to do something for the holiday, as I feel every available moment in the country needs to be spent either writing or traveling--no time needs to be wasted on idle things like being bored. As Joe widen said, live close to the bone--which I can tell you is happening more and more as each week passes into the memories. I was, if you have been following, supposed to go to Shanghai for the holiday where everyone with a bit of free time seemed like they were on their way to-- more than four times the normal city size, Shanghai was supposed to simply explode with people, but I got sick with a nasty round of food poisoning or something closely resembling it and decided to rest for a while and ride out the storm in the comforts of my own western toilet.
When the darkness cleared, I decided to head off to Canton and possibly sunshine with one of the people in the foreign affairs department, fine. She is a sweet girl from the North of China who seems to have a bit more edge to her than most of the people at the university, so I was glad to have such good company that I got along with. She agreed to go because the Foreign affairs department is worried about the foreigner a little more than I am sure that I would find in another place. I think that having the honor of going with a westerner is a big one and she has more than happy to serve as my guide to such a modern city.
We chose to spend the extra money and take a bus down to Guangzhou. I should note the different prices for things now--even though I am sure that throughout this blog I will notate it again and again and again.
(Actually, I am just going to remind myself to make it as its own special posting and maybe devise a link for it.)
The bus is about double to the destination as a seat on the train, but seemingly more comfortable--a little roomier and it feels a little safe as well, but it has the potential to take much much longer than if you were to board a train.
And it did take much longer to get to Canton via bus. The roads in China are not the best, but the trucks that drive the products around the country are by far in the worst shape of the transport. A truck broke down on one of the roads and it looked like the driver was either trying to get over because he knew that he was about to break down or he decided to cause as much trouble as possible and crash right there, blocking the only two lanes that passed by in a section where no one could just get by--because in China, all bets are off when it comes to driving and the highways are no exception.
The jam took more than an hour to clear, maybe closer to two hours, but it was a relief to get moving again once we did. Then, about 20 minutes later, we stopped in a random spot along the highway and had a "rest" for about 30 minutes near a cantina, which was obviously still in the Hunan province because of all the peppers that were on peoples plates that bought the food--buffet style from the food vendor. My stomach was still questionable, so I held off. Once the driver was finished with his dish, he sat smoking, eyeing the place and me on occasion, no doubt a common experience on this run from the North to the South.
We arrived in Guangzhou more than 2 hours off schedule, which put it at just before 11pm on a Monday evening, but we had called ahead and booked a room in the same place that housed the youth hostel, so we figured it would serve the purpose it needed for us. Upon arrival outside of the gate, we were mauled by people trying to hauk us a room in one of the local motels--everything from not even good enough for a star to the garden hotel downtown, known throughout the land as the Hotel that the real George Bush stays when he comes to Canton. We proudlt breezed through these Cantonese paper pushers, we had no use for them--we had a joint.
Or so we thought.
Upon arrival, we were not greeted with the happiness that I am normally met with--these people looked at my with no concern in my stay and immediately began to look to Fiona for what was supposed to be going on at the moment. She explained of our registration--they nodded in approval. She asked me, not smiling, in English, for my passport, which I proudly handed her. She then asked for something in Chinese, which Fiona seemed to take personally. She laughed slightly, a sign of nervousness and looked at me and said Amerigua--which is American, the woman nodded at my passport and gestured to Fiona for her papers, which she gave her Identity card, a makeshift communist card with a black and white picture of the person identities on it and a hologram that simple says CHINA all over it.
The woman took the identity and motioned for more. Fiona, puzzled, looked at her and began to ask (I think) in Chinese what else this woman wanted.
The woman, in the closest tone to a Russian order, commanded something in Chinese. Fiona laughed more nervously from this request. The two argued as the Chinese do with each other, each getting as loud as possible while still retaining a respectful tone.
"We will not stay here." Fiona said flatly.
I was tired and didn't feel like lugging my stuff somewhere else. Surely they must be trying for more money, which was fine. I just wanted to go up to the room, drop my things off and get some food that wasn't going to give me dysentery.
"We can not share the same room. We are not married and this hotel does not allow such behavior."
I stood there for a moment, taking this information in. It was difficult to process. At first I thought that this must be a ploy to get more money out of me. Surely this couldn't be the case.
"How much more do they want for us to share a room?"
She duplicates the same look of wonderment I have just given her.
"I am sorry? I don't understand?"
"How much is it going to cost us?"
The hotel woman magically begins to speak English. "You can't be in the same room if you are not married, Mr. Do you have a marriage certificate?"
"No, no. You are misunderstanding. We aren't married. We are colleagues at a University in Hunan."
She looks back at Fiona and says something in Chinese and ends it with 80 yuan. Fiona nods and both turn to look at me.
"I can stay in the hostel for 80 yuan, but your room is 160yuan. No exceptions and I am forbidden to go upstairs."
Amazed at what is happening, I stand for a moment taking this in. Fiona, who I know somewhat well, is not kidding. She likes to mess with me to a certain point, but this is beyond the territory she knows where to go.
"Maybe we need to find another place." She suggests.
I am the most angry I have been in a month, maybe longer, but I am holding it in to the best of my ability. As we walk outside, she immediately begins to bargain with the first paper pusher outside of the hotel, who says that the hotel across the way has rooms for 140yuan, which I find to be a good price, so we begin the trek over to check out their hotel. Fiona continues to speak to this woman in Chinese, probably trying somewhat to work her to give us a lower price, but moreso to not have to listen to my growing anger over the previous hotel. Halfway to the place, their conversation ends naturally and Fiona looks over at me with a cautious smile.
I unleash my thoughts.
"What the hell was that? We can't stay in the same room because we are not married? This is China, the country that has no official religion--that claims to be a godless society, but they have rules about who can sleep where and under what conditions? That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! We are just friends touring the country! Is this going to happen everywhere? Was it a bad idea to come with you because of your gender?"
All of these questions were confusing to her, but she understood the point, which was that I was angry. I was also worried--if this was the case everywhere we went, I was going to be in trouble when I traveled because most of the people here at the Uni are women--women who I have no desire to have them be anything but good friends and guides around their own country. As we walked to the next hotel, I wondered if it was going to be the same story as what we had just witnessed.
"This is China and the government frowns upon a man and a women sharing the same area if they are not family. That place is run by the government which is why hostel is there. I do not think that this hotel where we will be going will give us any problem."
I pondered this for a moment--the government, the Chinese government, runs the hotel. The Communist Chinese government is in the hotel business. The atheist, Communist Chinese government runs a hotel and a hostel and decides who gets to stay where. I laughed at the overall absurdity of what I had just discovered.
This is China.
After some negotiation with the hotel, we finally were allowed to live in sin for the night--two double beds for 18yuan per night, a small price for the nice room we ended up getting. When it comes down to it, we should have stayed at this place for the remainder of the time that we were in Guanzhou-- the overall cost of the place was a little more than the other places that we stayed, but when add in time lost and cab fares to get to and from the different locations, it would have made more sense to just stay near the train station.
Once we were checked in, it was time to find something to eat--quickly. We went back and forth about where we should go to eat--it was getting late--about 11:30pm by the time we got to the room and there didn't appear to be all that much in the way of nightlife outside, so we decided to roll it with the cab--which turned out to be a great choice.
For all of those of you that have traveled here, you''ll understand what I say more than people who come here for a vacation--when you arrive somewhere new, there are two different schools of thought-- to sample the regional Chinese food and to sample the regional attempts at Westernized food. For me, after spending the last month in a small city with nothing western to offer but a crazy KFC and the occasional big mac, I was excited to give real cuisine a roll.
I had Fiona tell the cab driver to find a decent western restaurant that was still open this late at night-- and he selected, amply titled, "Italian restaurant". I beamed with a cautious joy. Surely, this was an oasis. There wasn't even a Chinese name next to this place.
The restaurant itself was inviting, warm lighting, bottles of real Italian reds, whites and even some gasp!! from California!! I didn't feel much like wine, but still ordered a glass of Italian red, which tasted like the best droplet of booze to graze my tastebuds in a millennia. The menu was dynamic, lots of different dishes from pastas to lasgna to traditional Chinese. A smile spread widely across my face.
I ordered:
French Onion Soup (which didn't come with the baked cheese and croutons on top, but good nonethe less)
Beef Lasgne (baked in the traditional dish, smothered with real cheese, another thing I had not had the pleasure of tasting in a long time)
Chicken Fettuchine Alfredo with tomatoes and pasta (Buttery perfection)
It was perfect--such a nice detour from the constant Chinese diet that had been rattling so ruffly through my system for the month. Fiona, who had never dined with Italian food was equally blown away at the taste and flavors of western food.
*She ate nothing but western food the entire time we were gone and like everything else, but throughout the trip she kept asking me if I knew how to make the lasgne.)
We went back to the hotel and feel asleep quickly due to our full stomachs of western food.
tomorrow-- Day 2--Hotel shopping and Clan Trekking. Read more!
06 October 2005
Obviously Someone thinks the bird flu is real...
Scientists re-create virus from pandemic of 1918 to help fight today's bird flu
By MIKE STOBBE
ATLANTA — It sounds like a sci-fi thriller. For the first time, scientists have made from scratch the Spanish flu virus that killed millions of people in 1918.
Why? To help them understand how to better fend off a future global epidemic from the bird flu spreading in Southeast Asia.
Researchers, who used the remains of a Spanish flu victim to reconstruct the virus, think their work offers proof the 1918 flu originated in birds and provides insights into how it attacked and multiplied in humans. In addition, this marks the first time an infectious agent behind a historic pandemic has been reconstructed.
The scientists involved in the project contend there's no real risk to public safety. The vials of the frightening virus — about 10 of them — are locked away at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, said Terrence Tumpey, the CDC scientist who constructed the virus.
However, at least one ethicist thinks there should be a broader public discussion before scientists take such steps.
"There isn't much input from the public. I think there should be," said Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.
Like the 1918 virus, the current avian flu in Southeast Asia occurs naturally in birds. In 1918, the virus mutated, infected people and spread among them. So far, the current Asian virus has infected and killed at least 65 people, most of them in Vietnam, and killed millions of birds but has rarely spread person-to-person.
But viruses mutate rapidly and it could soon develop infectious properties such as those seen in the earlier one, said Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger of the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
"The effort to understand what happened in 1918 has taken on a new urgency," said Taubenberger, who led the team that did the gene-sequencing for the project.
The research involved everything from excavation of human remains to application of the latest laboratory technology. "It's the sort of story you could tell high-school students to get them excited about science," said Dr. William Schaffner, a vaccine specialist at Vanderbilt University.
"It is a big day for science," said Schaffner, who was not involved in the project.
The Spanish flu of 1918 was a worldwide contagion that in a few months killed 20 million to 50 million worldwide, including roughly 550,000 in the United States.
In severe cases, victims' lungs filled with fluid and they essentially drowned. The illness was known for being particularly dangerous to young adults, a group usually less susceptible to flu complications than older people.
Some public-health experts think the virus also was devastating because of the malnutrition and poor living conditions that existed in the period at the end of World War I.
The reason the scientists think their reconstructed virus poses no public-health threat is that, based on previous research, modern-day medicines are effective against the 1918 flu. Scientists also think most people today are at least partially immune to it.
The subtype of virus that caused the 1918 pandemic is common and so would not be as unknown to the immune systems of people today and would not be as deadly, said Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, microbiologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
"In each pandemic, it's been a new subtype of virus," not an existing one, said Garcia-Sastre, who helped reconstruct the virus.
In research detailed yesterday in the journals Science and Nature, the scientists explained how they reconstructed that 1918 virus.
Using the remains of a female flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost in 1918, federal researchers sequenced the virus's genetic information. They shared it with Garcia-Sastre and others at Mount Sinai, who used the coding to create microscopic, viruslike strings of genes called plasmids. The plasmids then went to the CDC, where they were inserted into human kidney cells for the final step in the virus reconstruction.
"Once you get the plasmids inside the cell, the virus assembles itself," said Tumpey, the CDC scientist. "It only takes a couple of days."
A flu virus has eight gene segments. Taubenberger and other researchers previously had published the sequences of five of them; the new work completes it.
The three new segments appear to be crucial in explaining how the bird-based virus adapted to humans, Taubenberger said.
The gene-sequencing information from the new research is being placed in GenBank, a public database operated by the National Institutes of Health. Sequence information for smallpox and other deadly infectious agents is also stored there. It is accessible to scientists and others, including some who may have harmful intent.
But it won't be simple for terrorists or anyone else to reconstruct their own versions of the 1918 virus, said Diane Griffin, chairwoman of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"These are not easy viruses to reconstruct," she said. "You're not going to do this in a cave in Afghanistan."
Researchers say their work was carefully reviewed before they were allowed to complete the reconstruction. Among the signoffs was an approval from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, a panel created last year to advise federal health officials on biological research that might threaten public health.
That panel includes appointed experts who are outside government, so there was important public involvement in the process, Garcia-Sastre said.
Caplan, the ethicist, said he'd like to see more, but he added that the public until now hasn't been particularly interested in the kind of science that allows reconstruction of infectious agents.
"The power of synthetic genomics to make and re-create life is astounding," he said. But policy-makers and the public have been far more interested in human cloning, a development believed to be years away. Read more!
By MIKE STOBBE
ATLANTA — It sounds like a sci-fi thriller. For the first time, scientists have made from scratch the Spanish flu virus that killed millions of people in 1918.
Why? To help them understand how to better fend off a future global epidemic from the bird flu spreading in Southeast Asia.
Researchers, who used the remains of a Spanish flu victim to reconstruct the virus, think their work offers proof the 1918 flu originated in birds and provides insights into how it attacked and multiplied in humans. In addition, this marks the first time an infectious agent behind a historic pandemic has been reconstructed.
The scientists involved in the project contend there's no real risk to public safety. The vials of the frightening virus — about 10 of them — are locked away at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, said Terrence Tumpey, the CDC scientist who constructed the virus.
However, at least one ethicist thinks there should be a broader public discussion before scientists take such steps.
"There isn't much input from the public. I think there should be," said Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.
Like the 1918 virus, the current avian flu in Southeast Asia occurs naturally in birds. In 1918, the virus mutated, infected people and spread among them. So far, the current Asian virus has infected and killed at least 65 people, most of them in Vietnam, and killed millions of birds but has rarely spread person-to-person.
But viruses mutate rapidly and it could soon develop infectious properties such as those seen in the earlier one, said Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger of the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
"The effort to understand what happened in 1918 has taken on a new urgency," said Taubenberger, who led the team that did the gene-sequencing for the project.
The research involved everything from excavation of human remains to application of the latest laboratory technology. "It's the sort of story you could tell high-school students to get them excited about science," said Dr. William Schaffner, a vaccine specialist at Vanderbilt University.
"It is a big day for science," said Schaffner, who was not involved in the project.
The Spanish flu of 1918 was a worldwide contagion that in a few months killed 20 million to 50 million worldwide, including roughly 550,000 in the United States.
In severe cases, victims' lungs filled with fluid and they essentially drowned. The illness was known for being particularly dangerous to young adults, a group usually less susceptible to flu complications than older people.
Some public-health experts think the virus also was devastating because of the malnutrition and poor living conditions that existed in the period at the end of World War I.
The reason the scientists think their reconstructed virus poses no public-health threat is that, based on previous research, modern-day medicines are effective against the 1918 flu. Scientists also think most people today are at least partially immune to it.
The subtype of virus that caused the 1918 pandemic is common and so would not be as unknown to the immune systems of people today and would not be as deadly, said Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, microbiologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
"In each pandemic, it's been a new subtype of virus," not an existing one, said Garcia-Sastre, who helped reconstruct the virus.
In research detailed yesterday in the journals Science and Nature, the scientists explained how they reconstructed that 1918 virus.
Using the remains of a female flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost in 1918, federal researchers sequenced the virus's genetic information. They shared it with Garcia-Sastre and others at Mount Sinai, who used the coding to create microscopic, viruslike strings of genes called plasmids. The plasmids then went to the CDC, where they were inserted into human kidney cells for the final step in the virus reconstruction.
"Once you get the plasmids inside the cell, the virus assembles itself," said Tumpey, the CDC scientist. "It only takes a couple of days."
A flu virus has eight gene segments. Taubenberger and other researchers previously had published the sequences of five of them; the new work completes it.
The three new segments appear to be crucial in explaining how the bird-based virus adapted to humans, Taubenberger said.
The gene-sequencing information from the new research is being placed in GenBank, a public database operated by the National Institutes of Health. Sequence information for smallpox and other deadly infectious agents is also stored there. It is accessible to scientists and others, including some who may have harmful intent.
But it won't be simple for terrorists or anyone else to reconstruct their own versions of the 1918 virus, said Diane Griffin, chairwoman of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"These are not easy viruses to reconstruct," she said. "You're not going to do this in a cave in Afghanistan."
Researchers say their work was carefully reviewed before they were allowed to complete the reconstruction. Among the signoffs was an approval from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, a panel created last year to advise federal health officials on biological research that might threaten public health.
That panel includes appointed experts who are outside government, so there was important public involvement in the process, Garcia-Sastre said.
Caplan, the ethicist, said he'd like to see more, but he added that the public until now hasn't been particularly interested in the kind of science that allows reconstruction of infectious agents.
"The power of synthetic genomics to make and re-create life is astounding," he said. But policy-makers and the public have been far more interested in human cloning, a development believed to be years away. Read more!
Return from Canton
I have just returned from Guanzhou, Canton, Guandong Province. Big City, very modern. Lots to chat about, but I am off to bed. Don't worry, I feel just fine. I did, however, go to the hospital again in Guanzhou as I thought I was having kidney failure!!!
--but, before you freak out like I was, allow me to say that it was just kidney stones, which have quite possibly been taken care of! Yeah! Note to those who have never had this happen--it sucks more than anything--especially when you are in a third world communist country such as, say, China! They literally allowed me to just lay there in pain until they could figure out what was wrong--which seemed like more than a lifetime and then they hooked me up to a drip and all was okay in about half an hours time.
More on this later. For now, I am fine, glad to be back in my flat with fresh cheese and starbucks coffee!
Look for some great pictures and stories in the coming days! Read more!
--but, before you freak out like I was, allow me to say that it was just kidney stones, which have quite possibly been taken care of! Yeah! Note to those who have never had this happen--it sucks more than anything--especially when you are in a third world communist country such as, say, China! They literally allowed me to just lay there in pain until they could figure out what was wrong--which seemed like more than a lifetime and then they hooked me up to a drip and all was okay in about half an hours time.
More on this later. For now, I am fine, glad to be back in my flat with fresh cheese and starbucks coffee!
Look for some great pictures and stories in the coming days! Read more!
02 October 2005
On Education (revised and much more "on education"
Before I came to China, I was increasingly concerned about the state of the educational system in the United States. After attending University at the age of 28 in Pullman, Washington, I quickly discovered that there were some significant changes in not only the level of energy on the college campus, but that there was a general disconnect among students and their education. I frequently ran into immense apathy at Washington State University--a culture of middle class students who thought that by either having parents who were fortunate enough to be able to afford for their offspring to go to college or they were made the decision to chose debt over debit, who seemed to feel that they might be entitled to the piece of paper.
They do a little work in order to make it, but since the workload rarely, if ever, interferes with their drinking, it is all okay. Instead of education being the last moment in your life to suck up the free flowing thoughts that were supposed to so token of the University experience, people seemed to be more interested In ways to forget about them and escape the realities of getting up late and studying. There is more emphasis in what kind of financial success it is going to bring them in the post graduation world than what they are learning.This rings true in the types of graduates that WSU and many other institutions like it throw into the population--more communications students (which I once was) than biology or neuroscience. (Although, the Sciences get more research funding from than any of the other disciplines). Liberal Arts at a conservative University like Pullman is a total figure of speech. When I left college, I had a plethora of college experiences that few could match, especially at my age. I seem to bridge the gap between ages and be somewhat accepted by a large group of students, even going so far as to live in a fraternity house which was not my own and help advise these boys to try to think and be like men. It was a struggle at times, moreso with me trying to act my age, but we there were few complications along the way. Some of them will no doubt do some good things with their lives while most will get out into reality and realize that the real world is a different and abrasive place and you need to be very careful about the choices you make. For me, coming out into reality for the second or perhaps third time in my short life is a crazy time. I found myself much more out of shape from the epic nights of drinking than I had previously thought. I immediately felt withdrawals of the freedoms that the college life brings and I felt depressed at how the marketplace for work not looks, even though the news is constantly trying to tell us all that the jobs rate is rising, yet all I manage to see is gasoline going up.The American workforce is in deep shit--especially in Seattle, where it took me several months just to find a job that paid more than 10 dollars an hour--not quite the college graduate experience that we are dubed into thinking when we begin to sign off the student loan checks for thousands and thousands of dollars each semester of college. During the time I was in college (and W. just happened to be in office) I watched my fees for school increase by 18, 21, and 15 percent every year I was at University. The price tag when I was finished is close to $50,000usd, yet when I got out of college, the only jobs to be found, paid about 22,000 a year. The point of throwing all those numbers out there is that perhaps America needs to begin to consider if it is worth our money to get the education and more importantly, if that piece of paper is actually worth the amount that you pay for it? Are we getting fair market value for our education dollars or is it just another cost of being an American? Does the world still think that the American educational system is at the top of its game and is worth the security issues and the hassle to send their children of privilege to these learning institutions?Part of the reason why I chose to come to another country to teach is that I could find opportunities abroad that I cannot get in the United States. Here, I am a University professor who is beginning to develop lesson plans and curriculum for Chinese students who are majoring in English. This is an opportunity that I could not have in the United States without more schooling, so teaching in another country became of immediate interest to me.
Thinking about education has always been a pastime of mine.
For the people in the world that benefit from the University system in America, the system works well. However, as the richest country (in some minds) in the world, it would seem that our higher educational system could use an overhaul. It would seem that Universities have begun to discover what the private medical groups and hospitals have been doing for years—charging people the most you can for something of value doesn’t keep people from still buying it, it just makes it unavailable to all that need it.
In China, which is, for all intents and purposes, a quickly developing 3rd world underdeveloped country with over a billion people that has a desire to become wealthy enough to compete in the global market, the higher educational system is not equipped to handle the demands that the newly developing marketplace will have ready for them in the next decade. (That may very well be the longest sentence I have ever written) Upon my hasty arrival here to teach for the term, I arrive to discover that classes for the term are postponed for a week because most of the chairs of the departments are in charge of translations and arrangements for a diving competition to be held in the city the next week after classes are due to start. So for one week, no students had classes, then the next week for three days, about 25% of the students still served as volunteers and were excused from class.
As class begins, I am happy to be here, taking in all the new experiences that go on daily. I do, however, notice quickly that the students are not as advanced as I thought they were going to be. In fact, after a couple of weeks, I begin to feel badly for this country in how behind the students actually are. I teach students who are working to get their degree in English, one that carries a lot of weight for certain jobs in this country—one that I also think is an important one for the Chinese because as the markets continue to open up, so will the need to have the right kind of translators around for the important business decisions that take place between these different companies. Engineers who will help China build into the powerhouse that it will eventually be need to have a premium education so that China protects itself from tragedy—in short, people here need to be brought to the next level and study the mistakes the west is making and make the adjustments to its infrastructure while it still can.
What boggles my mind especially here is the amount of pure study that students undertake—they should, by the amount of time that they spend on their studies, be walking geniuses, philosophers and be capable of accomplishing greatness. Students who attend primary and middle school attend from 5-6 days per week, 6 hours a day. The rest of the day is spend studying for their classes. Most students even have classes on Sunday, but everyone is off on Sunday afternoon. This is the time when students shop or spend time with their friends. Amazing.
Yet for all of this, when they leave their education behind, most of them will go to low paying jobs, so there is not the false reality that Americans have. There is no credit system, so if you don’t have the money, you don’t have it.
Starting teachers at this University makes 1,000rmb (I make about 4 times that) per month, are given a small room, a toilet and a thermos to boil water in, and are required to sign a minimum 5 year contract with the University where they will not be paid more of given any more opportunity. My flat is two rooms with a dvd player, plasma television, computer, two bathrooms, a western style and the Chinese one as well as a shower room and a working kitchen among other things. These University jobs are still highly sought after and the competition is very high. The average peasant makes about 100rmb per month.
This is relevant to education because although these students do not have a large amount to be thankful of on the post grad set, they still work their very best to learn about everything, they spend countless hours in the library going over their materials but in the end – what they are being taught is dated and doesn’t have any real time meaning—something that I think the Chinese, given their penchant for electronics and gadgets, are not liberating themselves.
What all of this means is that I think both countries are suffering from the same cancer—the United States sits happily at the food chain and doesn’t pay close enough attention to the education and lessons its children are being taught—its got other things to worry about. The Chinese, still paranoid about too much western influence both from paranoia as well as wanting to control its populace, are not looking at other systems of learning to help its children to be taught to be competitive in the world market—it has other things to worry about. Read more!
They do a little work in order to make it, but since the workload rarely, if ever, interferes with their drinking, it is all okay. Instead of education being the last moment in your life to suck up the free flowing thoughts that were supposed to so token of the University experience, people seemed to be more interested In ways to forget about them and escape the realities of getting up late and studying. There is more emphasis in what kind of financial success it is going to bring them in the post graduation world than what they are learning.This rings true in the types of graduates that WSU and many other institutions like it throw into the population--more communications students (which I once was) than biology or neuroscience. (Although, the Sciences get more research funding from than any of the other disciplines). Liberal Arts at a conservative University like Pullman is a total figure of speech. When I left college, I had a plethora of college experiences that few could match, especially at my age. I seem to bridge the gap between ages and be somewhat accepted by a large group of students, even going so far as to live in a fraternity house which was not my own and help advise these boys to try to think and be like men. It was a struggle at times, moreso with me trying to act my age, but we there were few complications along the way. Some of them will no doubt do some good things with their lives while most will get out into reality and realize that the real world is a different and abrasive place and you need to be very careful about the choices you make. For me, coming out into reality for the second or perhaps third time in my short life is a crazy time. I found myself much more out of shape from the epic nights of drinking than I had previously thought. I immediately felt withdrawals of the freedoms that the college life brings and I felt depressed at how the marketplace for work not looks, even though the news is constantly trying to tell us all that the jobs rate is rising, yet all I manage to see is gasoline going up.The American workforce is in deep shit--especially in Seattle, where it took me several months just to find a job that paid more than 10 dollars an hour--not quite the college graduate experience that we are dubed into thinking when we begin to sign off the student loan checks for thousands and thousands of dollars each semester of college. During the time I was in college (and W. just happened to be in office) I watched my fees for school increase by 18, 21, and 15 percent every year I was at University. The price tag when I was finished is close to $50,000usd, yet when I got out of college, the only jobs to be found, paid about 22,000 a year. The point of throwing all those numbers out there is that perhaps America needs to begin to consider if it is worth our money to get the education and more importantly, if that piece of paper is actually worth the amount that you pay for it? Are we getting fair market value for our education dollars or is it just another cost of being an American? Does the world still think that the American educational system is at the top of its game and is worth the security issues and the hassle to send their children of privilege to these learning institutions?Part of the reason why I chose to come to another country to teach is that I could find opportunities abroad that I cannot get in the United States. Here, I am a University professor who is beginning to develop lesson plans and curriculum for Chinese students who are majoring in English. This is an opportunity that I could not have in the United States without more schooling, so teaching in another country became of immediate interest to me.
Thinking about education has always been a pastime of mine.
For the people in the world that benefit from the University system in America, the system works well. However, as the richest country (in some minds) in the world, it would seem that our higher educational system could use an overhaul. It would seem that Universities have begun to discover what the private medical groups and hospitals have been doing for years—charging people the most you can for something of value doesn’t keep people from still buying it, it just makes it unavailable to all that need it.
In China, which is, for all intents and purposes, a quickly developing 3rd world underdeveloped country with over a billion people that has a desire to become wealthy enough to compete in the global market, the higher educational system is not equipped to handle the demands that the newly developing marketplace will have ready for them in the next decade. (That may very well be the longest sentence I have ever written) Upon my hasty arrival here to teach for the term, I arrive to discover that classes for the term are postponed for a week because most of the chairs of the departments are in charge of translations and arrangements for a diving competition to be held in the city the next week after classes are due to start. So for one week, no students had classes, then the next week for three days, about 25% of the students still served as volunteers and were excused from class.
As class begins, I am happy to be here, taking in all the new experiences that go on daily. I do, however, notice quickly that the students are not as advanced as I thought they were going to be. In fact, after a couple of weeks, I begin to feel badly for this country in how behind the students actually are. I teach students who are working to get their degree in English, one that carries a lot of weight for certain jobs in this country—one that I also think is an important one for the Chinese because as the markets continue to open up, so will the need to have the right kind of translators around for the important business decisions that take place between these different companies. Engineers who will help China build into the powerhouse that it will eventually be need to have a premium education so that China protects itself from tragedy—in short, people here need to be brought to the next level and study the mistakes the west is making and make the adjustments to its infrastructure while it still can.
What boggles my mind especially here is the amount of pure study that students undertake—they should, by the amount of time that they spend on their studies, be walking geniuses, philosophers and be capable of accomplishing greatness. Students who attend primary and middle school attend from 5-6 days per week, 6 hours a day. The rest of the day is spend studying for their classes. Most students even have classes on Sunday, but everyone is off on Sunday afternoon. This is the time when students shop or spend time with their friends. Amazing.
Yet for all of this, when they leave their education behind, most of them will go to low paying jobs, so there is not the false reality that Americans have. There is no credit system, so if you don’t have the money, you don’t have it.
Starting teachers at this University makes 1,000rmb (I make about 4 times that) per month, are given a small room, a toilet and a thermos to boil water in, and are required to sign a minimum 5 year contract with the University where they will not be paid more of given any more opportunity. My flat is two rooms with a dvd player, plasma television, computer, two bathrooms, a western style and the Chinese one as well as a shower room and a working kitchen among other things. These University jobs are still highly sought after and the competition is very high. The average peasant makes about 100rmb per month.
This is relevant to education because although these students do not have a large amount to be thankful of on the post grad set, they still work their very best to learn about everything, they spend countless hours in the library going over their materials but in the end – what they are being taught is dated and doesn’t have any real time meaning—something that I think the Chinese, given their penchant for electronics and gadgets, are not liberating themselves.
What all of this means is that I think both countries are suffering from the same cancer—the United States sits happily at the food chain and doesn’t pay close enough attention to the education and lessons its children are being taught—its got other things to worry about. The Chinese, still paranoid about too much western influence both from paranoia as well as wanting to control its populace, are not looking at other systems of learning to help its children to be taught to be competitive in the world market—it has other things to worry about. Read more!
Shanghai Golden Holiday 2005 __CANCELLED
Sorry to say, but instead of being on a train looking for the golden city of Shanghai, I instead got the golden opporunity to lay in the hospital with what is presumably my second case of food poisioning since arriving in China.
Although I am not 100% sure where it happened, I would like to share with you a couple of interesting developments which lead my thoughts to think it may have been one of these instances.
Since arriving here in China, almost a month to the day, I have been trying to work with my body to get it back into the shape of a traveller and not that of a lazy, apathetic American. The climate is different here--and the adjustment to the climate is killer. Pretty consistant upper 80 degree weather with 90% humidity--hot, sweaty tropical weather with the occasional rainstorm. Really, its lovely. Much better than the Seattle weather that some of you are going through each day....
With this kind of weather comes the mosquitoes. Lots of them. I live in a fairly enclosed area in the campus and I try to keep my doors and windows shut most of the time so that bugs dont feel as though this is a vacation home. I try to keep my bedroom door closed off from the rest of the house so that if the occasional mosquitoes do manage to come in, they stay in the other parts of the house and not where I sleep.
Sometimes this work, mostly it does not.
The night that I got sick, there were about 5 in the room. I managed to kill all four of them at different points in the night. The first two I nailed before I went to bed, the third kept buzzing my ear as I tried to sleep and was killed quickly. The other two decided to wait to come out until I was deeply asleep and then, proceeded to bite me several times, which I didnt notice until I got up several hours later, feeling like complete and total shit.
As I woke up, I looked around and saw the little vampire cruising around--he was a very, very fat bug. I swatted at his largeness and he smashed against the wall, blood splattering across the swatter and about three inches from the mosquito.
Moments later, I saw another one flying and went to nail him as well, but no chance. After the near fatal blow, he hid and i went back to bed, feeling a little beat and feverish. About an hour later, I woke again to the feeling of being served up for dinner and got directly into attack mode on the bed--a funny site to be seen for sure. I saw the mosquito from before, lingering in the air. I watched him carefully--and then, woop-- and BAM.
A this one hit, he also splattered, but not blood-- something deep and black. I sat for a moment, wondering what it could be, what could smell like that. Then it came to me--it was shit, pure and simple. This mosquito had been in shit before making my home its home.
The next day, exhausted and wondering what the problem was, it came to me that perhaps I had been attack by none other than the shit bug.
More later.... Read more!
Although I am not 100% sure where it happened, I would like to share with you a couple of interesting developments which lead my thoughts to think it may have been one of these instances.
Since arriving here in China, almost a month to the day, I have been trying to work with my body to get it back into the shape of a traveller and not that of a lazy, apathetic American. The climate is different here--and the adjustment to the climate is killer. Pretty consistant upper 80 degree weather with 90% humidity--hot, sweaty tropical weather with the occasional rainstorm. Really, its lovely. Much better than the Seattle weather that some of you are going through each day....
With this kind of weather comes the mosquitoes. Lots of them. I live in a fairly enclosed area in the campus and I try to keep my doors and windows shut most of the time so that bugs dont feel as though this is a vacation home. I try to keep my bedroom door closed off from the rest of the house so that if the occasional mosquitoes do manage to come in, they stay in the other parts of the house and not where I sleep.
Sometimes this work, mostly it does not.
The night that I got sick, there were about 5 in the room. I managed to kill all four of them at different points in the night. The first two I nailed before I went to bed, the third kept buzzing my ear as I tried to sleep and was killed quickly. The other two decided to wait to come out until I was deeply asleep and then, proceeded to bite me several times, which I didnt notice until I got up several hours later, feeling like complete and total shit.
As I woke up, I looked around and saw the little vampire cruising around--he was a very, very fat bug. I swatted at his largeness and he smashed against the wall, blood splattering across the swatter and about three inches from the mosquito.
Moments later, I saw another one flying and went to nail him as well, but no chance. After the near fatal blow, he hid and i went back to bed, feeling a little beat and feverish. About an hour later, I woke again to the feeling of being served up for dinner and got directly into attack mode on the bed--a funny site to be seen for sure. I saw the mosquito from before, lingering in the air. I watched him carefully--and then, woop-- and BAM.
A this one hit, he also splattered, but not blood-- something deep and black. I sat for a moment, wondering what it could be, what could smell like that. Then it came to me--it was shit, pure and simple. This mosquito had been in shit before making my home its home.
The next day, exhausted and wondering what the problem was, it came to me that perhaps I had been attack by none other than the shit bug.
More later.... Read more!
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