Welcome to TCM, Chinese style!

Okay, so Ian's done this rockstar job of keeping you all in the loop with our travels....I'm both thankful, and feeling the ever-expanding shoes to fill!

Our Gang from Victoria; Our Gang and some of our translators; the outside of the hospital, the Herbal Dispensary; patients waiting for their herbal formulas

This story will be brief (okay, probably not), but not without it's share of gory details about our first two weeks of clinic in China! Nothing short of amazing...in so many ways and on so many levels. Our group from Victoria has been split into three, each with it's own translator and following it's own set of Doctor's for the week. One group's experience is not necessarily another's, so we are never short of stories to swap at the end of each morning. The Doctors in the 'out patient' ward (where they collectively treat over 4000 patients per day) begin their day at 8am and see patients continuously until noon. For some, like Dr. Hu that I followed this morning, she had already treated more than 50 patients by 10:30am....FIFTY PATIENTS! (I hope that Health Canada isn't watching). They have a 2.5 hour lunch break (during which many of them take a nap, I'm told), and then treat patients again from 2-5pm, 5 days a week. The rooms are absolutely jam-packed with people, some having treatments, some awaiting treatments and several interns busily assisting the Doctor. With the addition three rather large Canadian interns (in comparison...wow, I've never felt so tall), you can imagine the kind of jostling that goes on throughout the morning.

Patients are treated for any number of conditions, but, facial paralysis and hemiplagia (one-sided paralysis) make up 90% of what the Doctor's in these wards treat. 90%!!!!! It's incredible. Row upon row of people, young (as young as 4 months) and old, have needles inserted all over their faces and scalp and are then hooked up to electrical stimulation machines that send a current through to the points at regular intervals. Frankenstein has nothing on China.

Some Doctors use other manipulation techniques as well - flash cupping on the face (I hope to post a video of it next week) which consists of heating a small glass cup and then creating suction on the face, lifting and re-applying in rapid succession, often creating a bruise. The intention is to open the channels that have been blocked so that energy and movement return to the local facial muscles. (See the photo below of our friend Nat, and the result of her experience of cupping on her back...21 days later, she's still bruised). Dr. Hu also has created a 'facial plaster' that consists of all kinds of 'roots & shoots' (as my Dad would call them)....more like creepy crawlers in this case, which is applied to the face and then warmed with a heat lamp while the needles are in. When we've asked why this condition is so common here, we've received many different responses, none of them definitive and too many to list. However, because it is treated so successfully by these methods, people afflicted often come directly to the Acupuncture ward to receive treatment. Although I have yet to treat someone in Canada with this condition, I'll be ready and waiting upon my return!


Nat's cupping experience...ouch; a 14month old patient & her mom; facial paralysis treatment with e-stim


I should say something more about this.....
'Treatment' in China isn't the once a week (if you're lucky) kind of thing we do in Canada. Treatment occurs in cycles. One cycle = 5 treatments, and treatments are given 5 days/week. So, someone here might have 3-4 cycles of treatment for facial paralysis....like 15-20 treaments in succession. This definitely gives pause for thought around style of treatment in relation to results. Many of us have been thinking how we might most effectively support our patients in regaining their health (while not going bankrupt) when we return to Canada. The Chinese model has been making an impression, for sure.






This entry would not be complete without describing the tools of the trade. Although we all knew that 'disposable' needles were not in common use in China, I'm not sure if any of us were prepared to see how Chinese Acupuncture has taken the idea of 'recycling' to a whole new level. The needles that are used have been autoclaved (sterilized at a high temperature), but perhaps one too many times as their handles are all rusty, and many of their shafts have been bent. But, not to worry, because before the Doctor inserts the needle into the body, s/he ensure that it is more or less straight by bending the shaft with her/his fingers....hmmm, interesting. Then, once the needles have been used, they are put in an alcohol solution to soak before they are separated (by bare hands) and organized according to size. My group and I sat dumbfounded one morning watching as our teacher tapped the insertion tips of needles (that we thought were sterilized, but turned out to be the used ones!!!!) with her hands to even them out and then slid her fingers along them as she put them in the cotton holder. Not the 'clean needle' technique we're obliged to practice in Canada, let me tell you. A little startling when you consider that 100 million people are said to have Hep B in China. Watch the video below.





So, it's been a great start to our term of study here. Tomorrow we're heading to see the largest Buddha sculpture in the world at Le Shan, and then for dinner at our friend's place on Sunday night....a freshly made perogy feast we're told!

Hope you're all well in all ways....
Lesley

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles...and Boats, and Bikes, and lots of walking Part 2...

Okay, so maybe Lesley won't write the second half...
As I write this Lesley is in bed after a hard night of being pretty sick with what from now on we'll refer to it as Chairman Mao's revenge. She remarked that we've have been here for 1 month and she has been sick 4 times with various coughs, colds, and digestive woes. We've all had some form of these maladies, including my cold/cough that lasted about the first 3 weeks of being here, and have been grateful for the tried and true Chinese remedies we can find in almost any pharmacy.

Me sick in Dali ... Lesley sick at home...

Anyhow, back to our travels. At the end of a hard day hiking through what remained of the jungle, and various tea and rubber plantations, we arrived at a small village where we spent the night with a local family. As I was pretty sick during the hike, I was looking forward to a good nights sleep and some bottled water. Neither of these were to be found. Our guide, Mr. Rush, had told us we would be able to get water at our destination, but it turned out that, no, we could not get water until tomorrow after about 1 hour of walking. Our 'bed' for the night was the floor of our guests home, which Lesley and I, Steve and Natalie, shared with the 7 young German engineering students that were with us on the hike.
All this being said, our guests were wonderfully hospitable, the food was good, and there was beer and homemade moonshine that the grandfather of the house made. I didn't try any, but I'm pretty sure it served the dual role of beverage and degreaser...
After a less than restful night, we were off again the next morning. Our hike took us through endless rubber plantations, past local farmers garden plots and pineapple patches(?), and finally, row upon row of banana trees. We ended the hike by being shuttled into the next large town in 3 wheeled taxis. After lunch we walked down to the nearby Mekong river and crossed it on the ferry. Our guide was an educated and philosophical man, and after a discussion about the merits of nuclear power, versus damming rivers in China, we boarded the ferry and recrossed the river back to our original starting point. The description of our tour said we would cross the Mekong river and we were not disappointed. We checked out a local Dai monastery, cruised through a local market, and ended our trek with a bus ride back to Jing Hong.




And finally we come to the 'Plane' part of this long winded blog. After experiencing the wonders of China's train and bus systems, with our shortest trip at about 12 hours, we looked to the sky. Our next destination was the tourist haven of Dali. Our options were a 18 hour bus ride for Y190 (about $38),or a 45 minute flight for Y280 (about $56), no contest. After a pleasantly quick plane ride on Lucky Airlines (likely named because they're lucky they don't bend the landing gear with that kind of touchdown), we arrived in Dali. Now for those who haven't been, Dali isn't really like the rest of China. It's more like a beautiful Swiss town, on the edge of a lake, at the base of a picturesque mountain, but with Chinese architecture and the people to match. Dali is famous for its clean streams running through town, its tourist friendly streets, its local marble (the lamp posts were made of marble), and pot...From the time we arrived at about noon until we turned in for the night, I was offered ganja about 15 times from sweet old ladies who walked up and whispered to me, "You smoky da ganja?". Tempted as I was to spend my remaining days in a Chinese work camp, I declined.

Scenes from Dali, a beautiful Dai temple, carved doors, decorated houses...



The woman in the red vest is our friendly neighborhood 'Ganja Granny'.

We did enjoy Dali, with its many artists, beautiful buildings and temples, colorfully dressed minority women, and foreign cafes. Lesley and I managed to find a bakery run by a German woman, where we indulged in scrambled eggs, toasted bagels, and fresh ground coffee!
After the second night in Dali, Steve and Natalie, our trusty travelling companions, parted company and set of on their own adventure.
After a couple days in our tourist paradise, we headed up the road a few hours to another tourist paradise in the town of Lijiang. The old town section of Lijiang was much like Dali except that Dali is nicely laid out in a grid of streets, while Lijiang is more like a rabbit warren. This subtle difference, in a place where one vendor is often selling the same thing as the next, led to Lesley getting lost for about 3.5 hours after I headed back to our hotel early.

We had planned on heading out from Lijiang to hike through 'Tiger Leaping Gorge', but my cough was not letting up, and after 5 sleepless night, I had to tap out. Despite our change in plans, we enjoyed some brisk sunny days walking around Lijiang and enjoying the sights. There were many temples, carvers, and more colorful locals to look at. The minority people in Lijiang are called the 'Naxi', and Lesley was fortunate to take in some of their local dancing in the town square. One more thing, Lesley was lucky enough to try some local Yak yogurt, and for someone who knows good yogurt like she does, you can see how good she thought it was!

So back to Chengdu we go. From Lijiang we survived a harrowing 8 hour bus ride through a steep sided gorge that followed the Yangze river as it left Tiger Leaping gorge. Our driver didn't see a problem in passing dump truck after dump truck around blind corners! My theory was, he believed the buses horn created a 'force field', a kind of energy barrier, that would protect us from harm. It must have worked though, because he was on the horn constantly, and I'm still here to tell the tale.
The bus ride ended in a dirty industrial town, called Panzhihua, where we hoped to catch an overnight train on the 12 hour trip back to Chengdu. Our plans changed when we arrived at the train station at 5:30 pm, and we were told that the train would be leaving the next day at noon.
We finally got back to Chengdu, the city we have come to think of as 'home', at about 11:30 pm on Wednesday the 11th. After 4 nights in a hotel, we thanked our lucky stars, and our friend Jason who had made some contacts in our absence, and moved into our apartement on Sunday the 15th. 3 hours of scrubbing and cleaning later we began settling in to our new home.


School started on the 16th, but I'll save that tale for Lesley to tell.
Thanks for reading.

Zai jian.

Ian

Being the cultural ambassador that I am, this is me teaching some kids how to play thumb war on the train to Kunming.


P.S. If you click on the pictures they do enlarge!