China Musings

It seems that I am the king of the unfinished story. I think I have actually finished typing out only one of my stories so far, but I am going to keep trying, because as I forget, it gets harder to write this stuff down. I just found this half-post in Blogger. I wrote this from an internet cafe in Kunming, the night before we were to return to Hubei by air, Feb 2002. Even then I couldn’t finish, granted, if kept at the same pace, this story will turn into a book.

the train Jan 24 - Jan 26

It was thursday, I had just been working 17 hour days for the past 4 days grading 70 essays so that I could turn in my final grades for the semester. I went to the teachers office and finished compiling all the grades into excel spreadsheets, printed them out, double checked them, and left them on the secratary’s desk. It was 1PM, Valerie and I were leaving on the bus at 4. Rushing home to find Val and Alison waiting for me for lunch, we enjoyed a wonderful last meal in our home of the past 6 months, Huangzhou. I quickly packed for the trip, trying to determin the bare minimum for my month long sojourn. I’d never been on a month long vacation, and I really had no expectations for the upcoming trip, only that it would be warmer as we went south.

The plan was simple, take the train to Kunming, Yunnan. From there we would get our visas for Laos, and head south into the small country for about a week. Then we planned to return to China, to travel through the fabled and diverse province of Yunnan. Starting in the rainforests of the south we would head north, to magnificent mountains at the edge of the Tibetian plateau, eventually returning to Kunming in time to catch our train back to Wuhan. “That should fill up 4 weeks”, we thought. By prioritizing and visiting the things we wanted most to see first, we were confident that our trip would be smooth, relaxed, and we would have no regrets.

We left Huangzhou on time, and nervously sat on the bus to Wuhan, where we would catch our train. I stared out the window wondering what the future would bring. I realised that we knew nothing, only the summaries in our guidebooks and a little bit of Chinese. We would become entirely dependent on other people, many of them strangers, if we were to fully realise our plans. That idea scared me a little bit, as I knew it would stretch my sense of independence, my ability to trust, and potentially get us into a lot of trouble. What I didn’t know is that this ability to trust is what makes travelling such a fulfilling experience.

Getting the train tickets was no simple feat. We were told by numerous ticket offices and travel agents, “Can’t buy any now, come back later, two days.” But after returning we found that the tickets had been sold out. Since that made no sense to us, we kept trying and eventually found a company that said they could get tickets, cheap ones too. As we entered the bustling train station and found our way to the appropriate gate and train car, we were immediately taken aback by the site before us. There was a literal human wedge forcing themselves into the door of the traincar. With little alternative Val and I pushed ourselves right in and rode the human wave into the train. Nothing I have seen could have prepared me for the scene I witnessed on the traincar. It was China: unleashed.

China is an overpopulated country, and in no place is that more apparent than the 4th class train car. Upon being pushed into the car I was presented with a site I can only call - humanity. There were people everywhere preparing for the ride to come. Some were sitting peacefully, others forceing themselves through the crowds. Men were throwing their bags into the overhead racks, women were calming their babies. Valerie and I found the seats written on our tickets and sat down.

The train was a cross section of the majority of Chinese society. Families travelling together, and students returning home for the semester break

This is the first of the video podcasts from Guangzhou. I am going to try to take more movies of my surroundings, to give people an idea of life in GZ in 2005. Just sit back, relax, and allow these shows to be downloaded to your computer, and watch them when they come in.

To subscribe, you have to have a podcast reader, like iTunes 6.0 (itunes.com) . It is very simple. In iTunes, just go to the “Advanced” menu, and select “Subscribe to Podcast”. In the box that appears, just paste this link:
http://blog.desandies.com/feed/rss2/

Then just sit back and wait as iTunes automatically downloads the shows. You may have to go into your preferences to tell iTunes to download all the episodes instead of just the latest one. I must stress that you will have to be patient. Just leave your computer on and let iTunes do its thing. Once the first one downloads, watch it, then come back tomorrow for the next one. After that, shows will just show up in your iTunes as fast as you can grab them from my feed.

I am going to start off with 4 videos, and hopefully add more at a fairly constant pace until I run out of things to record, or Alison stops letting me play with her camera.

For each episode, you can always get the link here. If the iTunes thing is too hard, just come here and click the link at the end of the article.

CM #1 Welcome

Just uploaded a new demo of an application my Mom thought of. She showed me this shockwave application that allows students to drag unfamiliar words to a “notepad” on the side of the screen and later print them out. She was hoping there was a way to “borrow” this funtionality and use it with her own content for her class. But since it was done as one big, ugly, clunky shockwave (not even Flash) app that took me 5 minutes to download, there was no chance.

Enter Web 2.0. What we used to call DHTML, and now can just call html, has developed to the point where implementing nice interfaces over the web is a snap. In this case, I used the excellent javascript library Script.aculo.us for its Drag and Drop objects. I implemented the same functionality found in that shocking shockwave app in minutes.

I plan to add a bit of php to allow people to upload their own stories and get their own URL. Check out the prototype now:

http://desandies.com/words

I just finished watching Hitch, with Will Smith. I enjoyed it, up untill the last 5 minutes when my 5RMB DVD decided to FREEZE! Grrr.. Oh well, I can’t complain when paying ~$0.75USD for a movie. The ending looked really cheesy anyway, so I don’t think I missed much. The scene that really made me laugh was near the beginning, when Will’s character succumbs to an allergy. It’s really not nice to laugh at others’ misfortune, but in this case, I am just laughing at myself. It is certianly one of those “You’ll laugh about this later…” things, because I was not very amused at the time.

While living in Huanggang, maybe early spring, Alison and I went to the big supermarket to get some groceries. The big supermarket in Huanggang was not just a shop, but as it is in town all across China, an event. There were staged promotional fashion shows, kids’ bouncy rides, women selling shoes on a foldout table, and of course the ubiquitous food stalls. We picked up something that advertised Malaysian style barbecue. I remember some beef satay, maybe some chicken too, and some spices I certianly had never had before. They were tasty and we continued on our way to shop and return home.

About an hour after I had eaten the satay, (to be fair I think i ate some other street food that day as well) I started to feel an itching at the back of my throat. Since I actually am generally allergic to a lot of things, I am used to this sensation, and it usually passes quickly. This time however, the sensation seemed to continue to grow, spreading to my toungue, and further around my throat. About 2 hours later, I realized that the actual tissue in my throat was swelling, my face and neck were itchy, and my lips were getting thicker. And it was getting worse.

Ok, this part wasn’t very funny. I realized that if this phenomenon did not begin to reverse itself I would soon be unable to breath. Stupidly I held on for another 20 minutes or so hoping it would go down by itself, but instead, I found myself straining to take breaths. (I am also asthmatic, so I am fairly used to this sensation as well) Since I was fairly sure the cause of the inflammation was allergy, I knew I needed help, and could not combat this with my asthma medication. So I told Alison, “I’ll go.”

You may have been wondering why I didn’t get up and head right for the hospital as soon as I started to feel bad. Well, the answer to that is I had seen the hospital. I had accompanied Alison as well as some of my colleauges there on before, and to me it was not a welcoming place.

We arrived in a rush piling out of the taxi, and I shuffled to the emergency window. By this time my throat was pretty swollen. I could only take slow, shallow breaths, and I couldn’t really talk. Alison rather frantically tried to explain what was going on, and it seemed that they understood that I was not getting enough air. So, they produced a bag. It reminded me of the free pillow that comes with an an air matress. They proceded to blow into the valve to inflate the bag, and then shoved the attached hose into my nose. She gave me the bag to hold under my arm, and motioned for me to squeeze it, apparently to push the air into my lungs. There was only one problem, my nose was stuffed shut. Full of snot. The hose wouldn’t even stay in after she tried to tape it. At this point, I was really wondering how they were planning on helping me.

It seems that they were wondering as well. I sat in the waiting area for a while, breathing slowly, while they ran around looking for someone who might be able to handle my situation. At this point my Chinese wasn’t very good, and to me they were just running around yapin incoherently while was slowly suffocating. It was starting to get to me. Then finally, a nurse said, “Come with me.”

The room I was assigned to was in the back building, on the 7th floor. The elevator was out of service. Now, remember that I can’t breathe, I’m significantly worse than my average asthma attack, actually, problably near the worst, and now I have to climb 7 flights of stairs with an infalted air pillow under my arm. Looking back I realize that I am just a really easygoing guy, cause I just went right up. The nurse looked sorry for me, as I shuffled up the steps at an alarmingly slow pace. I could feel my breath getting shallower with each step, but I just kept on, determined to get to my room where they would finally DO something.

When I finally arrived, I sat on the bed, and rested. By this time, my chest was gettin sore…pushing air in and out or my constricted throat. I couldn’t talk, and all I wanted to do was start breathing normally again. Alison translated for me and the doctor asked me some questions. I could only nod or shake my head. Finally, they announced that they were going to medicate me - with penicillin. Now, I am going to have to give the doctors the benefit of the doubt here, because I refuse to believe that they wanted to give me penicillin, an antibiotic, to treat a clear case of allergy, which requires anti-histamines. I maintain that it is just some quirk of the chinese-english dictionary that translates “strong medicine” into penicillin, or something like that.

By this time, my breathing had actually gotten much better as I relaxed from the exercise, and although I was far from 100%, I could feel myself un-constricting. So after an emphatic NO, I fell asleep.

I guess I woke up something like 3 hours later, feeling terriffic. Alison was worried sick, because she wasn’t sure if I had passed out from lack of oxygen or something like that. There was a huge tank of oxygen, finally, and a nurse ready with an injection kit. I was completely disoriented and actually quite happy to be breathing and being able to move my tongue. The doctors were really surprised that I didn’t want anything, in fact I think it took about an hour just to get out of there.

I stayed away from malaysian kabobs after that litle experience. But actually, even in Malaysia I never got that flavor or subsequent reaction again. Thank goodness. I am also happy that now I am in Guangzhou they have quite adequate medical care if I need it.

Now I think back on that day and chuckle. Not cause of the whole not breathing thing, but just the comedy of errors that led me up 7 flights of stairs just to fall asleep!

Hey, time to jump on the Flock Bandwagon. I’m posting this from within the newly released XPCOM based browser called Flock. It has serveral built in tools to connect to various APIs. They call it social-networking software. I think it’s pretty cool.

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.