When we arrived 3 days ago, we were met by friends of our principal and taken to our hotel that was 2 blocks from the famous, ‘Bird’s Nest Stadium’ & ‘Water Cube’. After dropping our bags, we were treated to our first meal. The presentation of the dishes could have been from a culinary magazine….a rainbow of colours, textures and flavours. The old saying, looks can be deceiving would apply here. Now, because I don’t eat meat, I could only look on with admiration as my friends dipped into the simmering pots to pull out chicken’s feet, long pieces of squid and other parts still unknown. Our friends were courageous, taking the typical Chinese cuisine by storm and savouring every mouthful…gulp. Not quite. There was as much laughter, shock and polite swallowing as there any eating happening. And, many of those brave souls remarked that they thought they’d eat vegetarian from now on…he he he.
The next couple of days we hit the tourist trail. After having spent close to 1.5 hours getting directions, trying to understand what they meant, and then following the various highways, underpasses and overpasses en route we finally found the metro station that was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel. A few stops later....Tian’ An Men square….as vast and grey and solemn as one might imagine. Buidings and monuments dedicated to the ‘people’s struggle’…the irony was not lost as the memory of the tanks rolling in in 1989 was certainly fresh in my mind. We took some amazing pictures, some deeps breaths and marvelled at it all.
The Forbidden City sits across from Tian’ An Men square and is the archetypal vision of China’s past, except of course for the huge portrait of Mao at its entrance. Emperors, Empresses, the 10,000 concubines and Eunuch servants (only castrated men were allowed inside the gates to ensure the purity of the Emperor’s lineage) lived here amongst great pavilions, squares and gardens. It was massive and gave a sense of the kind of opulence enjoyed by the royalty of China (not unlike royalty in any country, I guess). To contrast the grandeur, right outside the gates, ‘hutongs’, which are the narrow cobbled streets that enclose a labyrinth of homes and small shops. These took us to Beijing’s main drag of glitz and glamour, Wan Fu Jing. A huge boulevard of high-end shops, loud music and restaurants. We dined on freshly made dumplings and soup, and then took a peak into the famed market of the same name. Care for a scorpion (live or dead) on a stick? How about grasshopper? Maybe a starfish, or secada? Yup, take yer pick, it’s all there for the asking and the eating. Take a look at the photos and then the video below to see how the merchants like to play with gullible tourists (aka me).
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OK, stop the presses….WE HAVE ARRIVED IN CHINA! Cheng du is the noisy bussling busy crowded dingy and alive China I had imagined. It’s fantastic! Our guides (fellow students “Alice” (from Alice in Wonderland, she introduced herself) a TCM Doctoral student , and James, a 5th year TCM student from Toronto), led us to our hotel and then through our neighborhood, pointing out various hotpot restaurants, shops and things we might need to know. They then took us to a special ‘congee’ restaurant where they serve about 7 different kinds of this rice porridge – sweet, savory, veg, meat, with herbs, without….all self serve. They ordered a whole bunch of really delicious dishes – lotus root, ennochi mushrooms, kun pao chicken….and taught us about Chinese table manners. “What Westerners do at the table is not what we do here”,
Alice started. The first bit of advice she offered was to never pass dishes to people across the table. Instead, we are meant to stand up, lean over everyone else and pick up the food we want with our chopsticks. There are no serving spoons. It’s a free for all with wooden sticks battling to get into the choicest selection of the dish. Double dipping is the ONLY way to go here if you want to actually eat. So, in we went – stretching, reaching, poking through our meal, to a very satisfactory end...mmmmmmmmmmm.
After dinner we strolled around the streets and walked through our University Campus and then to the Hospital that we’ll be interning at. We heard that the windows are left open ‘to keep the bugs out’, and no joke, there were no doors on the front of the building (windows open in our hotel rooms and along all of the hallways too….crazy! Do they not feel the damp cold????). We had our noses on the glass of the herbal pharmacy and watched as the Herbalists filled formulas by opening drawers and scooping, roughly weighing, and dropping onto metal dishes lined up…over and over until the magic formula was complete. It was so exciting and I had a real feeling of gratitude that we’re here. Hard to imagine what this time and how these experiences are going to shape us ~ as students, as practitioners, as human beings?
One thing’s for sure, we are going to be well massaged. For some wonderful reason, we have a TCM/Massage Centre off the lobby in our hotel, and several of us availed ourselves of their services before going to bed last night. Ian and I had a 55 minute foot & lower leg soak, massage and pummeling, which was great, especially after having climbed the Great Wall yesterday. Was that yesterday? Wow.
Feels good to have arrived……
Zai Jian,
Les
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