October 14 - Falling, Chinese Cupping, Zhengzhou

In other words, don't walk on the grass...

On the way to teach our classes on Monday, I stopped to use the washroom.  The Chinese have a habit of not having even floors, especially when you leave the washroom.  I was hurrying out of the room, when my foot caught on that lip, and down I went!  My left knee hit first, and then my right knee, and then my hands.  China also uses a LOT of tile on their floors.  I hit the floor with a lot of force.  It did not feel good at all!  Fortunately I landed right next to a radiator so that I had the ability to get up on my own.  

I quickly took stock of where it hurt, which was mostly my knees, and decided that I had survived.  We hurried on to classes and taught the students.  My knees were tender, but they didn’t bother too much.  We had lunch at the canteen, and then went to the little nook that we had found that has comfy chairs where we could relax a little before going to our massage.  After our massage, we went home to do our school work and get ready for the next day.

As I was sitting at the desk, entering scores, I could feel my knee swelling up.  I had to get up and hang some laundry, and I could barely walk.  It just got worse and worse as the evening went on.  By the time we were ready to go to bed, I was in a great deal of pain.  I asked David to give me a blessing, and we asked our children to pray for me.  

I kept trying to think of what else I could do to help my knee.  David had some naproxen, but I kept wondering if there wasn’t something topical I could put on.  I didn’t have any ice to put on it, and I didn’t have any way to put heat on either.  Dr. Tricia had given David some patches to put on his stomach for sea sickness, and he had only used one.  We had read on the directions (fortunately they had them in English also) that it was good for bruises and arthritis.  Basically swelling in the body.  We decided to try that since there were plenty left.  

By the time I got up in the morning, I was still in a lot of pain, but I could walk.  I decided that I had probably bruised the bone when I fell so hard.  Teaching went okay, I was able to climb the three flights to my classroom and then back to the apartment.  This is the week that Reader’s Theaters starts, so it has been a fun week.  The students don’t have a lot of resources to make props, but they are very creative in what they do.

In the afternoon, we went to the train ticket office that is on campus, hoping that we would be able to pick up our tickets for the trip we would be taking to Zhengzhou later that week.  After a phone call to Kang Ming to get the numbers, we were able to get the tickets. 

Wednesday, my knee was still sore, but I could move it without problems, so I was able to teach.  After lunch, we made the trek over to the massage place.  David warned them ahead of time that my knees hurt a lot.  As soon as we got there, they had me lay down on the table and looked at my knees.  There was a lot of concern in their voices as they looked.  When they gave me the massage, they were very careful around my knee. 

Our friend, Carol, who got us introduced to this place, arrived, and they were able to tell her of their concerns for my legs.  They wanted to do some Chinese medicine procedures to help reduce the swelling from my knees.  We thought, “Why not try it?”

I laid back down on the bed, and the first thing they did was a procedure called, “cupping.”  The cupping are glass vacuum cups, which are placed on certain places on your leg, being aware of where the blood veins cross in particular.  A vacuum is created and then taken off.  Afterward a small needle is inserted three times in that cupping spot.  Then the cup is put back on, and the vacuum returned.  This pulls some thick blood and clots out, relieving much of the swelling.  If the cup causes too much pain, they release it and put it back on.  It really wasn’t painful for me, more of a pinching sensation.

 

This is what the cupping looks like.  They drew out several small blood clots. 

After the cupping, they did a different procedure called, “mono moxi=bustion,”  With this, they attach by suction a small little “chimney” on your leg.  Then a tube of herbal medicine is placed in the chimney.  They light the tubes and let them smoke and burn down almost to your skin.  Once again, it is not really painful, just a tingling sensation as the tube of medicine burned down.  

The mono moxi-bustion helps to draw out toxins in the  body.  These little "chimneys" are attached to my skin and then they put a tube of  herbs in each cup.  

Each tube has to be lit separately.  

There I am, smoking away.  It was a rather pungent smell.  The technician that was lighting them, had to step away for a while to catch her breath.  I could smell that odor for several days.  It is a smell that I remember and I have smelled it on other Chinese since.  Just lets me know what they have had done to them.

Taking the cups off my leg.

My knee felt much better on Thursday.  Still a quite tender to the touch, but overall, a lot better.  My right knee hurts much more than my left now.  I was wishing that I could have the same treatment applied to it.

I like to take pictures of some of the better moments of the readers theaters.  This student was expecting it, and flashed the peace sign without even breaking his lines!  He was so funny!

We let our classes out a few minutes early on Thursday.  The university had invited us to go to a conference in Zhengzhou that is meant to foster relations with foreign teachers.  We thought that many would be applying for a chance to go, but David and I were the only ones who could.  It was easier for us, because we don’t teach on Friday, but most of the others do teach then.  We had to meet our guide from the university at 12:25 p.m. by the north gate of the campus, so we hurried back to our apartment, grabbed a small bite to eat, got our bags, that we had packed the night before and got to the gate right at 12:25.  

Yu Yawen, who works in the Foreign Affairs office of the university, was able to get us a taxi to the high speed train station right away, and we arrived there with enough time to get some KFC for lunch.  

After we had ridden south on the train for about two hours, we stopped at Xuzhou. Yawen told us that everyone needed to stand up, so that the seats could be switched around to the other direction.  We hadn’t seen this done before, so it was interesting.  Then the train left in the opposite direction, taking a different track west.

After we arrived in Zhengzhou, we took a taxi to the hotel.  It took us almost an hour and a half!  Besides the fact that it was drive-time, there was also construction to slow us down.  

We got checked in and then they sent us in to dinner.  It was in the hotel cafeteria, and they were at the end of the time that they were serving, so it was pretty slim pickings in the buffet.  We did get enough to eat.  The hotel room was okay, but still quite, “Chinese.”

Zhengzhou is a hub of the great high speed railroad, it intersects with a lot of different tracks there, so you can go in any direction you want from Zhengzhou.

Friday morning, we were loaded onto buses and transported to Zhengzhou University campus.  It is a huge campus, over a mile long from north to south.  The opening ceremony was good until a professor from Canada got up and began pontificating on what he thought a university should look like.  Then we sat through a presentation by a woman who had lived for eight years in the US.  She told us all about the wonderful sites to see in Henan province.

 

All the foreign teachers and university personnel that attended the conference.  We are just right of the center of the picture on the second from the top row.

Lunch was in the university’s canteen with typical Chinese food.  After lunch they took our groups to two different places.  One was the robotics laboratory on Campus, the other was the medical school museum.  

The robotics were fun to watch.  The students who were demonstrating the robots had won several awards, including the highest award in China for robots in their categories.  

The museum was a history of the medical campus and was rather dull.  They were moving at an extremely slow pace.  David and I were tired, so we decided to go outside and wait for the rest of our group.  Yawen had the same idea, along with another one of the Chinese guides, so we all had a pleasant visit sitting in a gazebo by the water.

Going to dinner included a hike to the opposite end of the campus.  At times we wondered if our guide really knew where we were supposed to go, but eventually, we arrived.  The dinner became long and tedious when some of the men at our table decided that drinking a lot was okay.  They got loud and thought they were really funny.  Some of us got up and started walking around and asking when the buses were coming to take us back to the hotel.  It had been a long day, and we all wanted a rest. 

On Saturday morning, we were on the buses bright and early for the 90 minute drive to the Songyang Academy near Dengfeng.  Dengfeng is considered to be the birthplace of Kung Fu.  This academy was started many years ago and still trains Buddhist monks.  Today was a day for young artists to be there to learn to draw.  We came upon a large group, 30-35 children sitting on the ground trying to draw a picture of a very old tree.  We were a little disruptive as we went by.  The children all wanted to know where we were from.  We walked around a little and admired their work.

 

Students learning to draw.

Some of these kids were pretty good!

This tree is at least several hundred years old.

This is the tree that the students were supposed to draw.

This beautiful spot is full of water in the spring, but dry this time of year.  Still beautiful.

As we continued around the grounds of the academy, we met another group of children all dressed in blue robes with a black cap.  I’m not sure what these scholars were learning, but they all wanted to say, “Hello.” As they passed by us on their way to somewhere.  

Students excited to see Americans.

More of them.

Lunch was at a vegan restaurant that is known for its use of tofu and mushrooms.  They claim that they can make a tofu that will taste like any meat.  It’s all vegetarian.  The claim was pretty true.  We tried tofu fish, tofu chicken, tofu beef and tofu pork sausage.  It was all very interesting.  I would definitely eat the sausage again, the chicken and beef were okay, but I would only eat the fish again, if I really had to.  I think the best dish was a plate of mushrooms that had been sliced, and then crispy fried. 

Lunch was over way too soon, and then we were on our way to the Shaolin Temple.  It is supposed to be one of the most famous temples in China, bringing together the philosophies/religions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism.  We had to walk quite a lot to see and do the things that we saw that day.

We first walked to see a stage production of Kung Fu.  They had several young men show off their skills.  The last three acts were the most interesting.  One young man walks around showing the audience that he has two bars of metal.  They looked to be about one-third of an inch thick, three inches wide, and about eighteen inches long.  Then he brings them to the Kung Fu master who has been warming up on the stage, and the master breaks one of the meal bars over his head.  The next master does some tricks with a chain, and another does something with a rope.

The grand finale was with a piece of glass and a balloon.  First, the young boy walks around the outside of the stage and allows people to touch and see that he has a solid piece of glass.  He walks it up to the stage where someone is holding a blown-up balloon.  They hand the master a pin (looked like a push tack to me), and he proceeded to pop the balloon through the glass!  Then the boy walks the glass around the room that shows that the glass has a hole in it, about a quarter inch diameter!  That was amazing!

When the show was over, we walked to where there were some buses waiting to take us up the mountain to the Shaolin temple.  There was a lot of just standing around listening to the lengthy talk by the guide, so I started looking for a place to sit. My knee was really bothering me from my fall last Monday, so I found a nearby bench and waited for them to finish.  

 

Gate to the Shaolin Temple area.

Tombs of the monks that are centuries old.  The roofs determine the importance of the monk.  The roofs also can have either three, five or seven levels.  Something about the odd number being better.

I thought the shape of this tomb was really unique.

More of the tombs.

As I sat there, a young boy on crutches came over and sat by me.  He looked like he had spina bifida by the way he used his crutches and dragged his feet.  I asked him his name (Talent) and introduced myself.  Talent is here in China while his mother teaches at a school. They have been here for five years.  David texted me when our group was moving on, so I got up and hurried to where they were after I said, “good-bye” to Talent.

We went through the temple and looked at what we wanted to see.  When it came to a part where we had to climb about four stories, I said my knee had had enough of walking up and down stairs today, so we slowly made our way back to the meeting area.

 

A pretty roof line.

Shaolin temple.  There were even more stairs than this behind it to climb, but I didn't have the heart to do it and aggravate my knee more than it was.

While David and I sat there, an older woman (said she was 70) came up and asked in pretty good English where we were from.  She didn’t know much more English, and we don’t know a lot of Chinese, but it was a nice visit with her.

While David was talking to her, I was noticing people as they went by. Young kids with curious stares are who I like to wave at.  Some respond and wave back, some speak the little English they know, and others hide behind their parents or grandparents.  Several asked if they could have photos with me.  

Just before the rest of our group gathered together, Talent and his mother came by.  She thanked me for talking to him and said that he said he enjoyed it. 

Our group made its way to the buses that would take us back down the mountain.  They didn’t have a bus ready for all of our group to go down together, so they had part of our group pile into an oversized golf cart.  When we were still a pretty good walk away from where our bus was parked, the cart started to fail.  The driver got it going again, but it kept failing.  We just barely made it into the parking area for the golf carts before it totally died!

We transported to a restaurant that was NOT vegan for supper, and then went to a special show called, “ShaoLin Zen Music Ritual.”  Most of us were really tired at this point and just wanted to get headed back to the hotel.  After the show was over we were all glad that we had stayed to see it!  The lights, the music, the singing, he choreography all made it a spectacular show! 

 

Some of the scenes from the Zen Music Ritual production.

We got back to the hotel after eleven and hurried to get to sleep.  Tomorrow was going to start early.  We talked to Yawen to see if we could change our train tickets to sometime earlier than 3pm  She said that there were spots available on the 11 and 12 o’clock trains the next morning, but we would need to go there early and exchange the tickets we had.  We decided we were done with the conference and that seeing the museum (that wasn’t even finished yet) was not going to ruin the conference for us. 

The hotel got us a taxi that was able to get us to the train station in a half hour (compared to the one and a half hours earlier this week.  Sunday traffic was light!  We were able to get tickets on the 12 o’clock train, but the eleven o’clock train was all sold out.  The wait at the train station wasn’t too bad.  We made it home in good time. 

 

Just an interesting choice of words, "Retrievable", "Unretrievable."