Adventures in Jingmen

Hey everyone…
Well here goes. Many of you have been asking for a post by me, and I finally gathered the initiative to sit down and write one. I haven’t had the chance to read all of the former posts because the internet here won’t let us view our own blog. Isn’t that fascist? But I’m sure that Jack has done an exceptional job at recounting the craziness of our exploits here in the People’s Republic. The reason I wanted to write this post is because I just came back from a little side adventure to the town of Jingmen, a quaint little village of only 2.5 million (after Wuhan and Shanghai, ‘quaint’ has now become an especially relative modifier). I undertook this venture with the company of one of our Chinese grad student hosts, Amy, and 3 other undergraduates in the school of public health. Our mission: to visit as many community health centers and their corresponding “street health stations” as possible, and interview the patients directors, doctors, and surrounding community members about health education. Of course, all I could do, since my Chinese is hurting, was sit there like an ignorant American and watch, pretending to take notes.

Jingmen, about 3 hours by train from Wuhan, is slightly more rural than Wuhan (again, I am being candid here about relativity), but the differences were still noticeable. For one, almost every city or town in China has its own dialect. Wuhan has Wuhanese; Jingmen has Jingmenese, and so on, and they are all so different, that they cannot understand eachother. All Chinese students urban or privileged enough to have the opportunity to go to a decent school learn Mandarin, so it is easy for the Chinese to travel around their own country and still be understood. But can we stop and consider this for a moment? Something I’ve been really attempting to reflect on here is the concept of being part of a culture that is the oldest continuous civilization on Earth. The Chinese have never been overrun by immigrants, or colonized by a foreign power. So it is somewhat similar, I can only imagine, to how the Americas would look had the English, Spanish, and Portuguese never colonized it. Maybe they would have a national language, like the Chinese have Mandarin, but each area would still also have its regional dialect, like Hopi, or Sioux, or Washoe. Isn’t that wild to think about?? I love imagining these alternate realities, but sorry if I am boring you.

I mean, talk about a cultural immersion. Or submersion might be a more appropriate term, since I was kind of floating beneath the surface of whatever was going on the entire duration of my cultural escapade. Amy and one of the undergraduates, who has chosen ‘Snow White’ as her English moniker, both speak very broken English, and that was my contact with communication for the entire three days of the trip. This led to several inevitable mishaps, most of which involved food. We ate two preposterously extravagant dinners with a few WU School of public health alumni and friends, who couldn’t have been more pleased to have an American foreigner at the table (the Chinese really love Americans…possibly one of the few countries left on Earth in which our good name has upheld its sterling reputation). Although they spoke no English, the meal was punctuated by frequent shouts of “Kambei!” (Bottoms up!) and subsequent beer-chugging and profuse welcoming praises in my honor. The first sign of trouble came when the first dish was laid on the table and everyone donned plastic gloves. Whole crayfish, eyeballs and all, was the first dish. One of our hosts came over and showed me how to break off the tail and bite into the claws to get out the meat. No big deal.

I think Jack may have mentioned in a previous post that I abandoned my vegetarian ways early in the trip. I did this for several reasons. It is commonly cited by vegetarians that they will eat meat while travelling in order to fully experience the local cuisine. I can’t say this was my primary motive, but it certainly works as a justification. Secondly, we have been invited to several dinners, by various hosts, and since all the food in China is served family style, not eating the meat at the table would not only be bad manners, but also pretty much unavoidable. My final and most compelling justification for eating meat is simply that I don’t know Chinese well enough to order dishes without meat most of the time, and there is a little bit of meat in almost everything. So there you have it.

Anyway, back to dinner. The crayfish was the most benign of my worries that night. Immediately following that dish, another of the alumni insisted on dropping what I swear was a large vertebrae into my bowl, surrounded by fat. I nibbled a little of the fat, and attempting to cover up my gag reflex, gave a stiff smile and a nod of approval. This was followed by a 4-inch long sardine-like fish that you are supposed to eat head, bones, and all. I obligingly took a bite. It tasted like rotting fish at low tide. “Mmmm. Delicious.” I said, adding it to the discreet pile of food waste that I was accumulating inside of my napkin. The final offense that night was the most comical, because a picture of it had come through my inbox before I even left for China. Remember the bird flu duck head, Dan? I’ll leave it at that.
The next night was even worse. One of the dishes served was introduced to me by Snow White, who dropped an unidentifiable piece of meat into my bowl and simply said, “tail of pig.” It came out of a pot of stew that also contained some kind of dark squares of meat. I avoided it like the plague. When I saw Snow White munching one of those squares, she looked at me and said, “Blood. Do you know this word?” Great, congealed blood. Probably from the same poor pig whose tail was still sitting in the bottom of my bowl, strategically covered with noodles. “Do you want to try?” Umm. No thanks, I’m getting really full. The final blow came at the very end of the meal, when one of our hosts (I think her name was Hu) was trying to divvy up the remaining food. All the fish in China is served whole, and you have to eat around the bones. The dish in question had two fish on the plate, which actually tasted pretty good. I lifted my bowl, and she placed the entire head inside. Sitting down, I eyed the fish head suspiciously and began to attempt to pick out the bones. Amy said, “This fish, the head is the most delicious part.” How thoughtful. It must have been obvious that I was having trouble, because Hu motioned toward Snow White and with a gesture that seemed say, “Help this girl.” Snow White had the other head, and she said, “Do like me,” and proceeded to suck the entire face, including the eyeball off of the fish head. Everyone was watching, so I picked up the head, and put my lips on it….
Ugh. I couldn’t do it. I managed to fake it ok, at least I think. And no one bothered me about it after that. I actually think that the Chinese get a kick out of watching foreigners reel at the thought of eating their food, because Amy kept asking me, “Do you think Chinese food is strange?” I told her honestly, yes. Although strange would be a euphemism for any honest adjective that I would use in that context.
Whew. Sorry this is so long. Anyway, my adventures in Jingmen extended beyond food, but I’ll spare you all of the boring details of our research. Hopefully, if you’re still reading, you found this interesting. Well, till next time…

Wuhan Clan

We met our new friends Amy, Tracy and XiaoXiao (Shao-shao) at the train station. Mercifully, they took us straight to the Wuhan University campus and to our hotel for showers and a great meal. Their English was great, making it easy to communicate, and they helped us with Chinese words for common foods and getting around. We got settled in our hotel on the medical school campus and took a quick tour of the School of Public Health, in a building only a 100 yards from our hotel. In between was the Chinese equivalent of a corner store, and a couple of student cafeterias. This would be our personal microcosm for the coming month. In the School of public health, a display case on the 1^st floor was dedicated to the University of Hawaii – Wuhan University collaboration, which was made “official” during our trip, which represented the first exchange program of the collaboration. A few days later, the Vice Chancellor of Univ. of Hawaii, Gary Ostrander, and Hawaii public health faculty would sign a collaboration agreement in Wuhan with their administration and faculty.

That night we were to have dinner with Dean Mao and Professor Bi. Dean Mao is in charge of the public health program at Wuhan University, and he is also a ranking member in the communist party. Professor Bi is the equivalent of the departmental chair. Our new Chinese student friends kindly escorted us to the restaurant and we soon found ourselves in a private dining room with the professors and other faculty and staff. We had been prepared (warned) by our Hawaii faculty that these occasions were marked by a lot of boozing. The Chinese custom is that if anyone raises a glass for a cheers, then everyone has to stand and drink. This happened roughly every 5 minutes for the next hour and half. What was even crazier was the food!

They ordered enough food to feed a small army – all kinds of different dishes. The Chinese way of eating is family style – with all the dishes in the center of the table. They give you small plates (the size of a saucer), chopsticks, a small glass (for beer), a small cup (for tea) and then everyone digs in with their chopsticks. It was really fun. Nearly everything had meat in it, but dishes were primarily comprised of vegetables. One of my favorite moments was when the Dean encouraged Daniela to try the beef ribs. I never thought I’d see my vegetarian wife knawing on a 12” beef rib but it happened. Too bad I didn’t bring a camera.

A few days later the students threw us a party at a local hotel. The party concept in China is much different. Nearly every event we’ve been too features a strong element of Karaoke. You learn pretty quick to throw your embarrassment about singing in front of a group of strangers out the door. The songs available are a mix of Chinese traditional songs, newer hip-hop and rock-infused Chinese songs, and a weird assortment of American rock and pop classics, mostly from the 1970s and 80s. When Kris and I told our hosts we played guitar they brought us a guitar from a classmate. We learned 4 songs in 2 days and played them (with amplification) at the party. Personally I think we did a pretty good 3-harmony rendition of “country roads” (Prof. Alan Katz joined in for this one), but we slaughtered “Hotel California”. A favorite thing to do was to pick a song and then when it came up hand the microphone to your friends to sing it. This can also come back to you. As it happened, Kris and I had to do a duet of “billie jean” by Michael Jackson. I’ll be fine if I don’t ever have to sing that one again.

Daniela danced hula and was instantly elevated to celebrity status. Everyone over here is enthralled with hula. Later on she danced hula at the graduate party for the public health program – in front of at least 80 people. People were getting her autograph and taking pictures with her – it was awesome. Students gave her gifts and flowers.

We settled in pretty quickly. We’re actually here to do collaborative research, and within the first two days we were introduced to the faculty we’d been paired with. Daniela began working with a Chinese student on health education and the changes in the Chinese health care system. Kris and I got paired with a professor working on toxicology of the Yangtze river. We ended up starting a collaboration with the Institute of Hydroecology & Chinese Academy of Sciences to work with them on their monitoring data of reservoirs. Part of our research may be to synthesize some of the information on the linkages between ecosystem changes and human health that have resulted from the Three Gorges Dam (the largest dam in the world). This research is what we’ve been working on the past few weeks. More to come on our fun adventures around Wuhan!

Shanghai to Wuhan: Travelling and trains…

Okay so it’s been a while since we updated you all on our trip over here in China. This is partly because we are actually over here for work (research), so it hasn’t been all touring and activities. We’ve got some pictures up and I’ll get to those stories too, but I thought I’d pick up where we left off – in Shanghai:

Shanghai is Mega-Huge, which is why it’s no surprise that the train station is a behemoth mini-city that’s the size of the astro-dome. So of course this presented some problems for our friend Kris, who was arriving in Shanghai the day we had to board a train for Wuhan, and whom we told to “meet us at the train station.” Once we got to the train station we realized instantly that we were going to have a helluva time finding Kris. Our first circumnavigation of the oval-shaped train station took us about a half hour. As we neared the departure time for our train, we went through endless “logic scenarios” in our heads, trying to figure out where he would go upon arrival. It was a bit like trying to figure out which way a mouse would go in a maze.

Jack: “Obviously Kris would go to entryway 7, where the train is supposed depart.”

Daniela: “But entryway 7 has no access to the boarding platform, where all the snacks and shops are. Kris would be hungry – he would go to platform 6 or 8 in order to get access to the platform.”

Jack: “If we’re using the ‘Kris is hungry’ logic, then I say he’d go to platform 12 where the Italian food is – Kris would want Italian food after a 12 hour flight.”

And on and on and on...

By way of a minor miracle we found Kris about an hour before the train departed, on one of our circuitous routes through the train station (he was not at the Italian food place). We were all carrying huge bags for our 1–month stay and subsequent travels, and we eventually made our way down to the escalators to enter the train boarding area. We were to board car 8 and our room was #18. As we stood in line to enter the train car, I noticed that we were the only ones carrying luggage. Red Flag #1.

Upon entering the train car I immediately realized why. A long, thin corridor stretched out before me. About 75 feet separated me and my luggage from “room 18,” and that corridor was packed with people sitting on little seats next to the windows or standing in the hallway. To the utter horror of my fellow passengers, I hoisted by 60 lb bag over my right shoulder and began navigating my way through the human maelstrom towards my room. Tiny Chinese women began praying, people darted quickly to the safety of their sleeping cars - small children were summarily snatched up and removed from my path. The corridor was arranged such that I had to walk with my legs on the left side, in between the tiny fold-down seats and the wall, and carry my bag over my right shoulder and the heads of people sitting on the seats. People looked at me as if I were certifiably insane. Somehow I got to “room 18” without dropping my bag on some poor soul’s head.

In my mind, we were going to be kicking back in a luxurious train car, resplendent with felt-covered seats, continual tea service and a flatscreen TV entertaining us with the latest Bollywood special. Unfortunately “Room 18” didn’t quite fit that picture. Our room was about the size of a pantry - or a perhaps a small walk-in closet, with 6 bunkbeds (3 per side), separated by a 2 foot crawlspace in the middle. What was immediately obvious was that there was absolutely no luggage storage space. For a moment we stood, contemplating the luggage conundrum, and then eventually just dropped our luggage on the beds, where most of it remained. Later on we found a “convenient” luggage storage space at the top of the sleeping room, requiring us to hoist our luggage up past the last bunk-bed at the top of the train car. Having no other option, we went almost immediately went to sleep.

I woke around 5 am and went into the hallway to watch the countryside through which we were passing. For hours we would our way through an agricultural landscape dotted with small townships. Some farmers were plowing small plots with their oxen – most were using hand implements; others were grazing their few livestock on overgrown paddies. I saw little, if any, forest. It was calm outside, overcast and wet. Occasionally the train stopped at little town and a few people got off, but mostly we just made our way through the rural countryside toward Wuhan.

Though the train would continue on towards Sichuan province to the west, the site of the massive earthquake, our stop was Wuhan – a city of around 7-9 million people and the capital of Hubei province. We “de-trained” around 7:30 am and found ourselves smack in the middle of another hugely populous city. We were tired, having slept restlessly and travelled continuously for days. It was oppressively hot outside and our trek through the train depot left us sweating. It all faded away when, at the exit of the train station, we saw a small group of Chinese girls, holding a small sign that simply read “Jack, Daniela & Kris – Welcome.” Our adventures in Wuhan were about to begin…