China Musings

I have been listening to a lot of news lately, via Podcasting and iTunes 5. In fact, I almost never listen to music anymore on my daily commute, unless it is lpayed by a podcaster.

Anyway, I listen to ABS nightly news and have other sources such as NPR’s Science Friday. All I have to say is that ABC news sometimes makes me cry. What on earth is happening to my country? For whatever reason, decisions are being made in government with regards to science that defy rational thought. This is not limited to one or two small items, this ranges across all areas of Science, including medicine, and is affecting people’s lives.

Three issues in particular:
1. Teaching Creationism in schools as a scientific theory (WTF!?!)
2. Hindering the study of medical technology from stem cells
3. refusing to realease the Plan B emergency contraceptive as an over the counter drug.

This last one is comparitively small, but I just heard it this morning from ABC news while on the train to Hong Kong. In this case, it is patently clear that the science and medicine backs the release of the drug, a sort of “super pill”, that can greatly help to reduce the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy if taken within hours. However, the pill has been blocked from release over the counter, where it can do the most help (often one is not able to schedule a doctor’s appointment in order to get a prescription in time) due to “political pressure.”

This is so wrong on so many levels I can not even describe how angry and disappointed I am. This decision made by the FDA not only defies logic and their own mandate to protect people’s health, but it also is unconstitutional. The panel of scientists and doctors assigned to evaluate the drug approved it with a vote of 24-4. The drug itself is already available in prescription form, and is proven to be safe and effective. The goal of this drug is to prevent unwanted pregnancy, therefore, logically it should be made available to people why are at risk of unwanted pregnancy. However, despite the proven effectiveness, despite the doctor’s endorsement, the FDA denied the application for OTC status, thereby effectively reducing the effectiveness of the drug, and endangering patient health unnecessarily. Some might argue that pregnancy is not a health risk, but I would counter that in fact it is a serious health risk physically, but more importantly it is a huge psycological threat. If a woman does not wat to give birth, for whatever reason, when she does give birth it creates myriad problems for her, for the child, for society. In many cases, specifically non-concentual sex, having a way to avoid the long term physical effects of the crime must be made availble if it is technologically possible. But the FDA ignors this, ignores the health of the american public, and continues to keep Plan B a presciption-only drug.

To examine the other aspect of my argument, the constitutionality of it, one has to look into the reasons the drug has been withheld. I am not sure why, but on ABC news, no one was willing to take the step and say where this “political pressure” comes from. The pressure can only come from 2 areas, competition, or ideological resistance. As far as I know, Plan B has no competition except for RU485. Now, it is possible that lobbyists from RU485 are pushing hard to make sure that if they can not be sold over-counter, than no one else can. However, I am more willing to bet that this kind of pressure comes from people who have an ideological problem with what Plan B represents. Plan B works by preventing the egg from leaving the ovary, or preventing the eg from embedding itself in the uterine lining. This is the same effect that the normal contraceptive pill has. The difference is that Plan B is taken after intercourse. In some people’s minds, this equates it with Abortion. The topic of abortion, especially at the single-celled stage, is finally a religious issue. Some people believe that abortions are immoral and against the will of God. Therefore, for the US Government to force me (if I were a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy) to allow the a baby to come to term basically amounts to stripping me of my right to religous freedom. I have to follow their religion even if I don’t believe in it. This is unconstitutional.

Granted, calling PlanB abortion is a stretch, but there is an argument that the drug will cause people to treat sex more casually if this emergency contraceptive is available. Still, this idea is not based on science, studies have shown that access to contraceptives does not alter behavior. In addition, this is still an impression of someone’s idea of how a woman should act beign forced upon everyone. And even if we are in agreement that casual sex is not a good thing, we still have the ever-present danger of non-consentual intercourse. Rape. Incest. Pressure from people in power or abusers of trust. What can these victims do if they become pregnant? The fact that someone thinks that the risk of casual sex is greater than the emotional anguish of a rape victim is simply reprehensible.

Alright, I have eaten some pretty suspicious things while living and travelling in China. One thing that I had managed to avoid was snails. We came close in Yangshou, but Alison foung a hair in the dish and we lost our nerve.

Here in Guangzhou snails are a large part of the “xiao ye” menu. Xiao ye is loosely translated to midnight snack. If you travel through GZ at night, you’ll see hordes of people sitting on sidewalk tables at 2AM, happily munching on noodles, barbecued kebabs, rice porrige, and most commonly - snails. They come in a big heap, boiled and stir-fried with some herbs and flavoring agents. If you look closely you’ll see that many tables have small heaps of snail shells off to the side. You see, there is not much in a snail, so you tend to eat a lot of them. Cantonese folks can sit for hours, sipping beer, swapping stories and picking snails out of their shells with a toothpick, one tiny tongue-foot at a time.

Last night, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. We were invited to my cousin’s house to spend Mid-Autumn festival together over a meal. My cousin (once-removed? twice-reserved-grand-uncle?) is my grandfather’s brother’s grandson, so he is in te same generation. However, he is all of 56, married, with a 17 year old daughter. They are a very cute family, warm and friendly, and we enjoy eating at their house despite the fact that they are also very Cantonese, and have a very different style of food from what we are used to. Anyway, last night my cousin-in-law went all out. She made deep fried won-tons, stuffed peppers, boiled chicken, steamed dumplings, roast pork, wintermelon soup, and it was all delicious. Alison and I stuffed ourselves, and when we were done, they made us eat more because, “We don’t like to eat leftovers.” So here we are bloated and drinking tea, I actually had to stand up to give the food space to digest, and she comes out with one more dish - snails.

It was just a small bowl. My neice was excited, and our course, our host urged us to try. I gave Alison a look, she replied with one of her own “I’ll do it if you do it too.” So we dug in. Toothpick in one hand, small snail shell in the other. The trick is to spear the foot at an angle so you can pull the whole thing out in one piece, since there is quite a bit of animal curled up inside the shell. It was easy to get the hang of, but being - uh - full, limited me to a small sample. Alison got into it, saying “It’s like eating sunflower seeds!”

So, the big question, how does it taste? Well, we have all eaten molluscs before. Gastropods in a shell. And you know what - these freshwater, snails are not much different from their seafaring cousins. It reminded me of eating a small clam, or a tiny muscle. The flesh was a little chewy, not very flavorful aside from what it was cooked in. All in all, I’d eat it again. There was nothing wrong with it except for my pure American lazyness when it comes to food. Unless we live in Baltimore (crabs) or Maine (lobsters), we basically don’t like to have to work for our food. These snails simply did not have enough meat(?) or taste for me to go about wrenching them from their shell one by one.

So, if you ever come to visit, get ready for the xiao ye. You don’t have to worry, they let the snails sit in clean water for 12 hours before they cook them, nice and clean.

Redesigned, or I should say designed drdesandies.com is up today. Basically just added a few images and a contact form, and we are ready to go. The CSS is quite a bit more complicated now, but by using png-8 for all the images, the size of the site is still crazy small.

Last week I was pretty much out of commision due to fever. On the last day in Baokang, I felt a cold coming on. On the train ride back to Guangzhou, the cold turned into a full-blown fever. I spent a fairly miserable 22 hours on that train, alternatively sweating and shivering as my fever ran its course. This was in fact the worst infection I have had in a long time, the last time I felt this bad was in Laos, where I was also traveling and fevering at the same time.

I think I picked up the bug in southern Yunnan, near the Vietnam border. I was traveling with Valerie, my cousin, during our first Spring Festival holiday. While we were waiting for our visas to be processed but the Laotian Consulate in Yunnan’s capital, Kunming, we decided to take a side trip to a town that my guidebook called “the best example of terrace farming in Asia.” This was an out of the way place with crazy weather, and instead of breathtaking views of hillsides covered in terraced rice patties, we ended up spending 2 days in a dense fog. Visibility 50 feet. We were not prepared for the weather, and I was cold. Despite the constant drizzle, wehad a great time in that town, but that is a story for another time.

We returned to Kunming to pick up our visas, then immediately hopped onto a 24 hour bus to take us all the way to the Mengda, the southern tip of Yunnan and the border of Laos. This bus is of the type called a “sleeper bus.” Instead of seats, it is fitted with skinny bunk beds, two levels and three rows, from front to back. We stepped over everyone’s luggage to the back of the bus where there were two adjacent empty spots. As everyone one the bus stared at us (admittedly not too many foreigners travel this way), we stowed our gear in the aisle, and settled in for the long ride.

Yunnan is a beautiful province. The most diverse in both poples and environments. The northwest of Yunnan is the southeast corner of the Tibetan Plateau, covered in snowcapped peaks. The southern part of Yunnan is covered in ful-fledged rain forest along the Burmese-Thai-Lao border. Unfortunately, I saw very little of it. Pretty much from the time I boarded the bus, all I remember was shivering, sweat, and a never-ending rocking motion as the bus lumbered along the windy, hilly roads of central Yunnan. When we stopped for food about 5 hours in, I wasn’t even hungry. Val was pretty worried about me, but there wasn’t much we could do on the bus, so I just hunkered down and tried to sleep it off.

We drove through the night, and the next morning, we arrived at a town that very clearly was not our destination, yet the driver was shaking us awake, telling us to get off the bus. Apparrently we were the only two who had bought tickets all the way through to the border, so the bi bus was going to stop in that town, and we had to board another bus. I was not feeling much better, but we dutifully trudged over to this new, smaller bus, one with seats. This one had strange markings on the side though, I would not find out exactly what that represented until later. What I remember from this bus ride was that I suddenly was feeling better, and that was a very good thing, because that was possibly the bumpiest ride I have ever taken.

Continued in Part 2

Launched preliminary version of drdesandies.com. This is a small site for My father’s private therapy. It is designed for simplicity, creating a quite striking and attractive design with about 10 lines of XHTML and 20 lines of CSS. The content is handled by our simpleCMS, so the actual new code is less than 40 lines. We have to add some images though, mainly a the title text as an image, and an image of the principle.

A few weeks ago, August 26 to be exact, marked the end of my 4th year in China. I arrived in 2001, fresh-faced and carefree - ready to see the world, then go back home. I can’t believe I’m still here.

Let’s see, what have I learned over these past 4 years. I’m still not fluent in Chinese. I can only read maybe 1000 characters. I have been in Guangzhou for almost 3 years, and I still can barely speak Cantonese. I do think in meters and centigrade, instead of feet and farenheight now, so I guess that is one aspect that I have become accustomed to while living here.

Before I left, I ate a lot of Chinese food, at least 3 times a week, often 5-6 times a week. I wondered if coming to China would give me an overdose if Chinese food, but in fact, I am still loving the food. I have some chao niu he almost 3 times a week, honestly the same thing I ate when I was living in California. I have to admit that whenever I go to Hong Kong though, I make sure to eat something else, often Indian, or Western foods.

In terms of understanding Chinese culture and lifestyle, I feel I have made some progress. I had no idea what life was like in China before I came here, and now I feel that I have a really good idea of how a lot of people live, from the big cities to small rural towns. Living in Guangzhou is a lot like living in any big city in America, with 7-11s, traffic, and always having something to do or someplace to go. The small towns I have visited in the mountains of Hubei and Yunnan are quite different though, with their slower pace of life and clean air.

I have a pretty good understanding of Chinese history; I can hang in there on a discussion about ancient emporers or Chairman Mao. I love the famous classics of literature, from the adventures of Liu Bei and his two sworn brothers to the drama of Bao Yu in the Red Mansion. But I still haven’t figured out all the nuances of interpersonal relationships. Buisness moves at a different pace here, and casual male-female relationships follow a different set of rules. The differences are often very subtle, and at other times, quite overt.

I have learned to cook in a Chinese way, sort of. I find it extermely difficult to reproduce the things I can get at any restaurant apart from the most basic dishes, like stir fried cabbage. But I do have a basic idea of the techniques used and the favors expected. My problem is that I am trained (I use that term loosely) to do things in a different way, and to focus on bringing out a different taste, so my dishes almost always come out a little differently even when I try my hardest to reproduce authentic Chinese cuisine. I love to cook and I used to cook a lot in my former life. But Western cooking relies a lot on carmelizing vegetables, which in China is considered burning.

It has been a wonderful 4 years, and I am very glad Chris and Su (the original people who invited me to come teach for my first year.) asked me to come over and teach in China. I couldn’t be happier with my decision to come here; my life has grown and I have developed in ways I never thought possible. I just hope I can keep learning and growing.

Night Has A Thousand Eyes - Sonny Stitt

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