Bear Fighting in Cyberspace
20 Nov 2009 1 Comment
in Traveling Tags: America, anomie, CASPA, China, College of William and Mary, global economic downturn, grail, jobs, T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, University of Vermont, Yale University
Some have wondered if I will one day practice medicine in China. During an interview at Rocky Mountain College, home of the Battlin’ Bears, the director had even suggested that I could do a clinical rotation here. The thought had occurred to me many times. Many friends and fellow Bull Dogs from Yale University’s PA program completed international rotations in Latin America, South East Asia, and the Middle East. Yale even has a tropical medicine rotation in Kampala, Uganda. This feature was one of the major draws that lured me into their program back in 2007. In any case, I believe my international experience – of which my time in China is the backbone — will be an asset as the PA profession continues to globalize, and more international students attend American PA schools to bring the Rod of Asclepius back to their own countries.
A Journey to Hengshan Mountain
13 Nov 2009 1 Comment
in Traveling Tags: Buddhism, dreams, fox women, guanxi, Hengshan, nature, Students, Taoism
We took the midnight express back to Chenzhou from Hengshan late Saturday night. This meant getting dirty. I once spent four years as a grunt. Digging foxholes and wading through marshes was dirty work too. I look back at this previous incarnation with nostalgia as I board a crowded train in which tickets were sold beyond seating capacity for people to stand or sit in the aisles. The windows were sealed shut. There was the sound of people hawking up snotty yellow mucous. Chewed up sunflower seeds and cigarette butts scattered upon the floor. Old men with rotten, nicotine stained teeth smoked in the thresholds between cars. They came back to their seats smelling like death and brimstone. One such man hovered above me in the seat behind me. He was listening to the banter of my seat mates: five college age boys with long finger nails and high hair were engaged in a riveting discussion with my two guides and a lady returning home from a Shanghai shopping trip.
36 Hours in Billings, MT
25 Oct 2009 1 Comment
in Traveling Tags: Beartooth Mountains, Billings, health care, medicine, Montana, physician assistant, Red Lodge, Rocky Mountain College
While all of China took to the road and celebrated its 60th anniversary with a week long celebration I ducked out of the country for a quick trip to Billings, Montana. The Rocky Mountain College Physician Assistant program had invited me for interview. Though I was already missing teaching English literature and drama to my Chinese students at Xiangnan University in southern Hunan province, I was eager to purify myself with a sojourn to Big Sky Country. That meant exploring the city and its environs, re-supplying, and doing things I couldn’t ordinarily do Chenzhou, Hunan: like enjoy some fine wine and American microbrew.
Chenzhou was a sprawling city that sprang out of the rice terraces of southern Hunan. It continuously spilled out of itself as it metastasized at a frenetic pace ever expanding from Lake Baihu. Now Billings offered a pleasant counterpoint to balance out my experience in China. Here, this neat, self-contained city with cleancut borders arose out of the high plains and was defined by the Rimrock to the north and the Yellowstone River to the south. It was here in Magic City that I would meet and explore the land and her people, and hoped to one day call home.
Dinner with the Yu Family
17 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in Traveling Tags: art, blood, cultural infiltration, fried duck feet, hospitality, kindness, Twilight, vampires
One late summer evening before the sun went down, I was at dinner and had what appeared to be a glass of Chinese wine at an open air restaurant from across the campus. Children surrounded me. It was cooler now and all the neighborhood children were playing. One by one they came by my table pretending to ignore me. Once they realized that I didn’t bite, they made eye contact with me and squealed in surprise.
A university student saw that congress had formed at my table and we were all chatting amiably. I was trying to teach the children English and the children were trying to teach me Chinese. The student introduced herself and offered to translate for the children. Her name was Lucy and she was chemical engineering student at a university in Shanghai. Through Lucy, a little girl named Chi-Chi, asked me why my eyes were so blue.
I told Chi-Chi that my eyes were blue because of my beautiful mother. This made all the children laugh and my translator blush.
A Shopper’s Paradise
31 Aug 2009 Leave a Comment
in Traveling Tags: markets, shopping
China has meant so much to my imagination that the reality shocked me. I still cannot get the images of Shaolin warrior monks out of my mind. Or workers in Mao suits brandishing Little Red Books. Or even just old folk practicing tai chi in a public square. I half expected to find them all going about their daily lives. I remembered growing up hearing that I should eat everything on my plate because there are starving children in China. I remembered Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan,” and James Clavell’s novel Tai Pan. The truth is that China is dirty, cruddy, and trying oh so hard to fit in with her modern siblings. Its beauty is found in the way a family values its only child, in the happiness of people coming home from work, and in the joy of sharing meals with friends. Perhaps someday China’s siblings will one day emulate her. But now, it is convenient for everybody to realize she is still a growing child.
