Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture

January 27, 2010

My, oh, my. What an amazing last day as a group in China. We woke up this morning and I literally didn’t think I could get out of bed. I am exhausted. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed out for today’s festivities.

In the morning we went to a Chinese Hospital. We had a presentation by three medical students on Chinese medicine and the school itself. The students spoke pretty good English. We then toured the facility. It was pure chaos. I didn’t even know that it was a hospital. For one it was not as clean as our hospitals in the US, and the lighting was so much darker. The paint in the hallways was also very dingy and scratched off. We got to see a Chinese herbal pharmacy. There were literally drawers and drawers of different herbs. They had bugs, flowers, and even powder from aborted fetuses. It was insanely ridiculous. The smell of the pharmacy was overwhelming as well. The next thing we toured was the massage room. They give massages to people who are having trouble with a particular body part. The massage involves more rubbing and deep tissue massage. We then went to the Chinese acupuncture room. It was so neat to see them put the needles in someone. I volunteered and had Chinese acupuncture in my arm. It paralyzed the movement of my middle finger, but was very relaxing and didn’t hurt at all. After the acupuncture, we went back to the conference room. The Chinese people were very thankful that we came to experience their culture.

After the Chinese hospital we went to lunch. I honestly absolutely hated lunch. There was practically nothing I could eat. I was looking forward to our plans after lunch though. We had an afternoon FULL of shopping at various markets in Beijing. I enjoyed haggling and spending all my money. I hate spending money, but buying for other people makes me not feel as bad.

We had an interesting dinner. It was a duck dinner. A total of 6 ducks were served to a total of 22 people. The other students enjoyed it. I stuck to the eggplant. I have learned to love eggplant as well on the trip.

We came home broke, exhausted and on a “shopping high”. We went through our purchases and decided what we still need to be getting tomorrow on our free night off. We watched a movie, and then headed to bed.