Hun Hao Chi!

"Delicious", literal translation: very good to eat

This was one of the first phrases we learned at Mandarin lessons... and I quickly realized that the food here is not only ubiquitous and important, but also actually... very good to eat.

Let's start with our hospital cafeteria... or shall we say our hospital cafeterias. We have at least 3 on this campus, and 2 on the other. We prefer to eat in the one that's in the first floor of the women's dorm building where we stay - fresh handmade noodles by "noodle guy," grilled veggie/tofu/meat skewers made to order by "grill guy," make your own "hot-pot" station, and lots of fresh stuff cooked every day... and it's really hard to spend more than $1 (7 yuan) on a meal. Ridiculous I know. Here's some visuals.

The caf in our dorm building

"Grill guy's" fantastic selection

Yum... fruity yogurt out of a bag

Highly recommended for your viewing pleasure....

More fantastic dishes we've had...

Pineapple rice at this Sezuan restaurant... the sweetness really paired well with the almost ridiculously spicy food.

Lunch with my team on gyn-onc!

Hot-Pot!

Don't worry... they are really just mushrooms of the very delicious kind

We like our hot-pot with lots of green veggies!

More signs...

For your viewing pleasure...

Giant poster in front of a weight loss center

In case you need a visual for the sizes... in a lingerie shop window

Just makes you feel right at home as a tourist

Yes, this was taken inside of the woman's restroom... it's the door for the "western-style" toilet

This guy's pose just cracks me up... especially since its an ad for a hospital

Oh, the signs of Beijing.

There's lots... and some of them are hilarious (at least to me)....

This bank does a great job of not making me feel anymore comfortable about the economic situation.

Take care of the "girls" for less than $10

Beijing is really the last place you'd expect Starbucks to close down next to a "no-name" coffee shop...

I dunno. Just funny.

My sense of humor hasn't changed since middle school.

I'll add more as photos are taken....

ni teng ma?

My ID card... that and a long white coat, and its just about as official as it gets.

We've been taking a "Traditional Chinese Medicine Course" for 2 hours every Monday, taught by a very enthusiastic Chinese Med Doc, who explains us concepts such as Qi (vital substance making up the human body), Xue (red liquid rich in nutrients, not blood but like blood), Jin and Ye (body fluid with two functions - moistening and nourishing). This week I had the opportunity to shadow and observe in the TCM Accupuncture clinic.

When a patient comes in, she or he brings in her own out-patient record, which looks like a notebook, filled with handwritten notes by practitioners, and copies of labs, ultrasound, and imaging results taped in. The TCM doctor takes the history, and then the patient lies down on one of many tables, separated by curtains (although curtains are often drawn).

Then, the patients all seem to get a series of cupping and accupuncture, in various orders, and sometimes even the cupping over an accupuncture needle.

"Multi-Purpose Health Device" - electrodes which attach to the accupuncture needles

Accupuncture for back pain

Cupping
Cupping for shoulder pain

Main chief complaints? insomnia, facial paralysis (bell's, sometimes residual, sometimes less than a week), back pain... also have seen dysmenorrhea (the accupuncture points chosen seem more painful than the dysmenorrhea... like all over the lower abdomen).

The doc is this really sweet older woman, who speaks some English, and is very enthusiastic as well. She always tells me about the patient by first saying what they have "she suffers from paralysis of face," and then follows it with, "after accupuncture, much better!"

Many patients look at me with confusion... and I just tell them something that I've actually become quite good in saying, "wo zhe mei guo xue yi de." (I am a medical student from the US). They point to their skin as if describing an accupuncture needle, and then give me a thumbs up.

3 weeks without a fork

UCSF Crew @ The Wall

Gettin' ready to hike the wall - From left to right - Cathy (PUMC), Michael (UCLA Resident), Peter (Harvard), Christine (UCSF), Sarah (UCSF), Andrew (UCSF), Susan (Harvard), Shennen (Harvard), Tian (Harvard), Me (UCSF). Photo taken by Dingxin (PUMC).

And you know what? I haven't really missed using one! Today completes 3 weeks in Beijing... I know I haven't written a lot... I've attempted though, and here I go again... I'll try to summarize the highlights!

Thursday March 5, 2009: We went to "English Corner," which is a weekly medical English club, organized by each class for their own class. Every week, there is a student who presents a case in English, and they discuss. They invited us to it... it was a case of "can't figure it out turns out is SLE" - classic for a case presentation, along with TB (for us, not so surprising around here). Met a few medical students there... one of which invited us to an interesting excursion for the following day...

Friday March 6, 2009: "Some friends and I will play roll skate to travel around the city tonight. It is a good chance to see the night view of the city." was the text message I got. Confused, I texted him back, something to the extent of "where, how, when?" It ended up that I texted him our shoe sizes, and he somehow acquired skates in our size. We show up at the entrance to his dorm building, and there are a few medical students, all wearing rollerblades, skating around on the slick floor. "How far are we skating?" I ask him. "uhhhh.... ten... ten thousand meters," he answers. Hmmm... okay. So we try on the rollerblades - they f it. fantastic. We ended up "practicing" outside of this beautifully lit church on Wangfujing street, where someone had set up cones to work on weaving in and out like a rockstar, and then continuing on to rollerskate around the Forbidden City. It was lit up and beautiful...

Saturday, March 7, 2009: This was the intro to the Lonely Planet section on The Wall:

"This is a great wall and only a great people with a great past could have a great wall and such a great people with such a great wall will surely have a great future." - Nixon

Can we say brown-nosing? Haha. So anyway, the Wall was amazing... I didn't realize that "hiking The Wall" literally meant "hiking ON The Wall." We spent the next 5 hours or so after we arrived in Jinshangling to walk on the wall through to Simatai (the names are sections of the wall). The steps are uneven, some a few inches, and others over a foot, so it makes it fairly challenging to admire the view while climbing straight up. The views were spectacular, you could see the wall going up the ridges of the hills in front of you and behind, and also know that you, too, will ascend the ridges. The way it wraps and snakes over them is really interesting... haven't seen anything like it before. Pictures explain it better:

After the wall, we had a great meal, like most meals are done here we were first seated into a "banquet" room, which is a private room with a round table, and then we ordered many dishes to split. The dishes are placed on a lazy susan in the middle of the table, and everyone gets a bowl of rice. The dishes are then shared, family style.

Then we continued on to see Smash Up-Derby, the San Francisco based smash up rock band, which usually plays at DNA Lounge in SOMA. I heard about them almost one year ago, and then have been meaning to go, but its just never worked out with my schedule and my friends in SF. However, I caught them on their last night in Beijing! When we got there, it was a swanky hotel, mostly business-looking men, som e older couples, definitely no hipsters like we were seeking out. We were standing to one side, jamming to the music, when one of the band members caught us and asked us to come dance on the then-empty floor. Sarah (UCSF) and I obliged, followed by Peter (Harvard) and Christine (also UCSF). We were the only ones on the floor gettin crazy for the first set... but during the second set, a few more people creeped in, and by the third set, the floor was filled, and somehow the young hipsters we couldn't see in the beginning made it out into the open. It was a fantastic night... and the SF Homesickness I was feeling after being away for over 3 months was resolved - all it took was a little Madonna meets Bush (as in Razorblade Suitcase, not ala Presidente).

Gettin' the hang of it

It is almost the end of my 2nd week in Beijing... and most of the adjustments are falling into place. I switched from "General Medicine" after about three days to "Ob/Gyn". Somehow I ended up on Gyn-Onc, the attending surprising the poor medical student on the service with a new task, "translate for the foreign exchange student." Shaking and barely able to say "okay" to her and "hello" to me, he obliged. Turns out his English is not bad at all, he just needs a bit of confidence.

Today I saw a pretty cool case, one that I hadn't seen before... a radical hysterectomy for stage 1B cervical cancer. Fantastic anatomical windows... could see all the nerves and vessels in the pelvic side walls.

On Tuesday morning, we rounded on a woman who was later going into surgery. She had recurrent ovarian cancer, multiple debulking surgeries in the past, and once again she was going into surgery. She was smiling, and seemed almost disturbingly enthusiastic to me. I was very confused with the presentation of her emotions. Later on I asked my medical student, and he told me that "some people are strong in mind, and I think she has accepted her cancer." Still, I was amazed that she was smiling... I would expect stoic or even agreeable, but not smiling with enthusiasm.

I have to say, being vegetarian for so many years, there has not been many things that I have tasted and did not like enough to not eat. This has happened to me multiple times in China. Not to say the food is not good... for example we have "noodle guy" in our cafeteria, who makes fresh noodles with his fingers, throws them in the boiling water, and serves them to you once they are perfectly cooked, about 3 minutes later. We also have "grill guy," who is really my man, he has all these skewers of yummy veggies, tofu, and some interesting things, such as little tofu sheet wrapped cilantro bundles, that he, well, grills for you, and throws sauces all over. The doughy-ness of the bread is something that we are just not used to... and also the ubiquitous nature of bean paste... when I look at it, I expect some sort of gooey fig newton type of filling, or perhaps even chocolate (I know, I'm asking for a lot), and instead I get this dry stuff... its just interesting, that's all.

Tonight we are going to this "Latin Night" @ a club... we'll see how it goes. I just need to move my hips around a bit.

This is the first time in my life that I am "blogging," so please... don't expect much. And if for some reason, you made it this far, then lets just say my skills are much a work in progress.