Monkey bars

Monkey bars: You let go of the last bar before reaching out and grabbing the next one. That's what C. S. Lewis has to say about "endings and beginnings."

I'm indeed letting go of a lot as I end my two year Peace Corps stint in China. That includes this blog, so let me pause and thank all of you who have taken a little time to read some of Jing's Journey. I can't see individual's names, but I can see countries, and your tuning in has meant a great deal to me. I'm posting for the last time something from China, and I've seen for the last time many a Chinese face and place--and will continue to say goodbye to others before boarding a plane in Shanghai in July. Monkey bars. Yes. I'm indeed uncurling my fingers here and reaching out to something else, something over there.

"Monkey bars" works on lots of levels--but figuring out the boundaries of any analogy is half the fun. All transitions--all beginnings and endings--involve letting go in some ways, or should, as part of moving on. But have I really let anything go? Could all those faces and places, experiences and feelings, still live inside this little brain, a brain that, like all of ours, is still wider than the sky? Or have I let it all go--and am I already mentally and emotionally far away?

You see, in my mind's eye, I'm bursting through the gates at San Francisco International Airport, now catching sight of Mary, Tony, and Jim--and, who knows, maybe Paul and Jade. Now I'm opening the doors to the oak book case in the Gans homestead in Missouri. Ben and I are sizing things up as we get ready for an estate sale. Ann, too. I find myself squinting up the olive tree alley with Jim, trying to decide how much to cut back those branches-on-steroids so that a furniture truck can make its way down the lane. Now I'm in Michigan, waiting for my mama's head to turn when she hears my voice--and Sally's and Ted's. Will she know me? Us? I find myself trolling the pages of the CU website for the Writing and Rhetoric program, trying to familiarize myself with who is doing what. And then I find myself halfway up Boulder Canyon, high in the Rocky Mountains, at Pat's place where I'll be living for a while. Jane's there. Most of all, I find myself going back to Chris and Ana's north shore rooftop in Pittsburgh, witnessing three brothers laughing, Nick the hardest. Seeing Ana's growing belly.

And then I come to. Actually, I'm in China. I'm here. Hunched over my laptop. Maybe mentally I'm holding the next monkey bar (for those images are real enough, or will be), but at least physically I'm still gripping the last monkey bar. Here in Beibei. The dancers' music from the garden way below drifts in on a still-soft breeze. A motorcycle revs up and I hear the chop-chop-chopping of cabbage in several nearby kitchens. My own kitchen counter is laden with bounty bought dirt cheap from the vegetable man. A critter scurries through the walls. My eyes fall on my Chinese book--a book that felt like my best friend for over a year--but a friend I jilted. A month ago I had to admit--wo meiyou shijian--I didn't have enough time to keep up with my class and still make progress on a book project with Professor Liu and honor my other Peace Corps priorities before leaving. I was surprised just how heavy that loss felt--almost like a break up that was long in coming but not desired. A letting go I wasn't ready for. Yesterday I sat at the banquet table, a farewell luncheon the waiban hosted, trying to figure out which pieces in the dish before me were pig's ear and which were mushroom. It was hard to tell.  I'm here in China, alive, but with hand outreached for the next monkey bar.

Later in July, the situation likely will be reversed: I may find myself mentally back in this kitchen chair in Beibei, mentally picturing ferns sprouting everywhere, even out of stone walls, mentally strolling through the lush campus landscape, under the magnolia and fig trees, mentally appreciating my hard-working students. And yet physically I may be somewhere else, maybe on a dry mountain trail in the Flatirons of Colorado.

The lane a half mile behind my apartment in Ban Zhu Cun

Endings and beginnings, letting go and reaching forward, of course, are not simple. Multiple, overlapping, varied. Identities are stretched, expanded, altered. What is it that we release and what stays with us? With identity? With experience? Awareness?

I'm sort of leaving China and my Chinese students, but not all of China, not everything Chinese.  I'll be bringing some of China home with me, wherever home is. And just what do my students want me to bring home?

Invitations to come visit China!

A desire for peaceful relations.

Hope that people will be curious about China's delicious cuisines--maybe enough to view the documentary "A Bite of China."

Students from Xinjiang, Tibet, and other autonomous regions want people to know that everything isn't Han and their cultures have just as much to offer.

Some students express hope that Americans may take an interest in China's emerging film industry, just as China has long been devoted to Hollywood. Others want to introduce their mythologies, their ancient Chinese stories. Dragon stories.

Over and over I hear variations of this "If you come, you will be welcome! We want to meet you!"

Most of all, I hear my Chinese students wanting to be understood. One student says "Perhaps in most people's minds our thoughts and ideas are limited or somewhat closed. However, even though we have little limited ways to get information, the fact is we are interested in getting new knowledge, in accepting different views. We are open, too!"

The lunch crowd on Africa

My first hike through campus two years ago exposed me to tens of thousands of Chinese--and one African, whose eyes caught mine that fine morning. Those eyes seemed to suggest we were already connected, perhaps as two honorary members in a Society of Outsiders. Once I started taking Chinese classes, I got to know some other Africans--Evanio and Agilcio, both from Guinea Bissau, and a doctor from the Congo. A woman from Malawi. Sometimes on Wednesday afternoons we would sit around a bowl of peanuts in my apartment and stammer through our Chinese lessons--unable to easily drift off into our native languages, since we spoke Portuguese, French and English respectively. Chinese was our common language. I at least had the benefit of Chinese-English dictionaries and books. Not so easy for them.

It was in those days that I started thinking about the Sino-African relationship. My radar was up, and I started noticing things in the news and
in book reviews about China's growing presence in Africa. Today, for instance, there is buzz about Monday's Second Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation.

My classmate from the Congo already is a doctor, a gynecologist, but hopes to pursue further study here in China if he passes the HSK language exam. The two from Guinea Bissau aspire to be doctors, and sweet ones they will be if all goes well. They like China's mix of Western and Eastern practices and they value what they believe China has done for them at home.

I sense that some Africans embrace  China's less-Western values and are willing to overlook occasional abuses--no country is above them.  If nothing else, China and most African countries have developing economies, and they're all just trying to make the best of it. Why not cooperate?

Today a different collection of individuals, my Tuesday lunch crowd minus Shi Jun, huddled over tofu, vegetables and rice in the school cafeteria and talked about China's presence in Africa. These three Chinese people--my linguist buddy, a friend of her daughter's, and a stray academic who has taken to joining our weekly conversations--were each eager to dissuade me from seeing China's growing presence in Africa as a re-run of European imperialism, but each for different reasons.

The older two, who often see big gaps between government theory and practice, between professed motives and real intentions, were less critical than usual of the government and were focused more on the individuals who have migrated from China to Africa. Why not go to Africa? Life is just so hard for so many Chinese people, and there is so much competition for too few good jobs. Pollution is a problem--rivers are bad, cancer rates are skyrocketing (so one of them said). And they painted a picture of immigration not unlike that of any other diaspora, where people who have suffered seek more opportunity in a new place. And the Chinese are well known for their capacity to go on, to work hard, and to endure.

But one of them felt that the Chinese government has misplaced priorities and should be doing more for these very people (before they emigrate) and less for people abroad, possibly Africans. Should a mother give food to others if two of her own children are hungry? That one also felt that China actually has decent environmental regulations but is hesitant to enforce them, partly because it has too cozy a relationship with the tax-paying companies it is supposed to regulate.

But the youngest one thought that the Chinese government, however self-interested it might be in making business deals in Africa and elsewhere, has no choice. In the long run, China's poor will benefit from the relationships China is currying abroad. China needs to make deals for food. She argued that food security is a mind-boggling issue and that the government must do whatever it can to make allies and plan for the future, even if some of it is on the backs of working people. She didn't deny that many workers are getting a lousy deal--whether Chinese or African--and that some mineral extraction is almost stealing (her word) and some farm laborers are treated almost as slaves, but she thought the larger picture is entirely justifiable. Of course, China must look out for itself. What country doesn't? Moreover, she argued that what we're witnessing in both China and Africa--with high pollution and low working conditions--is an inevitable stage in  becoming a more developed economy. She compared China to England during the Industrial Revolution--and thought that it must go through a dirty phase on its way to economic well being--and China might as well take a number of African countries with it.

The older two were much less inclined to take an ends-justify-the-means perspective and yet one of them felt nothing good can happen until there is a little more widespread economic well being in China. One of them was quick to criticize the poor, who will do anything to survive, he felt; the other pointed fingers at the government, which is more interested in protecting Party members than in protecting China as a whole. These two obviously aren't nationalistic, but they are deeply patriotic--they love their homeland, no matter how flawed its policies and individuals might be.

I have no idea how representative this trio's views are of the general population's, but one thing is clear: Chinese people don't all think alike about the daunting issues facing their government.

Another thing is this: my experience as a foreigner is complex. I'm a foreigner who shares outsider status with other foreigners in a part of China that still tends to stare at anyone who is not a Han; and yet many of the other foreigners at this university, like our Chinese hosts, are non-Westerners who may be seeking decidedly non-Western paths.

We may be witnessing not just the emergence of China as a growing power, but the emergence of a collective energy that is decidedly non-Western.

* * * * *

As my brother's friend MEB points out, a book some people might find interesting is Howard French's China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa.

The class monitor

Echo and Arabella were chatting during my office hours, just practicing their English and letting the conversation flow loosely. Somehow the subject of "class monitor" came up, the designated person who acts both as teacher's assistant in the classroom and house mom in the dormitory.

Being a class monitor, by the way, is an intense responsibility. A "class" of students in a Chinese university is like a class in my junior high, where the same body of students goes from math class, to history class and so on. In my high school, it was different: completely different students populated my math class and history class, and certainly that was the case in my college classes. But here in China, university students live together as a "class" (body of students) in the same dormitory; they take all their courses together, semester after semester for eight semesters; and they are looked after by the same monitor. The monitor is kind of a mom or pop in both administrative ways and personal ways--and keeps the class on track.

How are these monitors chosen, I wondered aloud? Most of my monitors have been fabulous--smart, savvy, usually sensitive leaders. The tiniest little monitor can shout out orders and everybody falls in line. They're given authority and they use it, but usually in very responsible ways. Students seem to just accept their authority--and their help. And monitors, in turn, seem to accept the privileges that go with the position and the faint promise of more good favors down the road. So, how are they chosen? Grades, my students think. They're not sure--it's not clear. Teachers choose them. Do they need to be Party members? Well, maybe not at first, but most are invited to be members. After all, the really best students tend to be invited to be Party members. Echo and Arabella thought it worked like this: The monitors are usually invited to take the class that prepares them for the exam that must be taken before applying to be a Party member.  That led to a whole 'nother conversation, but it cycled back to monitors.

How are monitors chosen in my country, Echo and Arabella wondered?  Well, we don't have class monitors in the US, at least not on a university level. But from what I can tell, both countries do have little models of their respective governments embedded in the school system. In most US high schools, there's a student council, president, other officers, and so on, and the council members are elected. Likewise, to some degree, in most US universities. Democracy of sorts, never pure.

And here the monitor system links to the larger Chinese government, and indeed the monitors are being groomed for it. But it's not so much communism I see at play as it is paternalism. (In fact, I see very little communism in the Chinese government.) If anything, it seems more Confucian than communist--with "harmony" in the collective body maintained through a prescribed system of superiors and subordinates. I see paternalism and the family metaphor everywhere. There is an authority figure responsible for monitoring and protecting a large group, that authority figure is chosen in ways that are not entirely transparent, there is extensive monitoring--and also protecting, and the larger group fairly obediently accepts the authority of that figure. Or so it seems to me.

At its best, this paternalism works for the common good and fosters a stable and harmonious family; at its worst, it is autocratic, patriarchal, and self-serving, creating a dysfunctional family. It's a paternalism that seems to maximize order and efficiency but possibly by keeping the larger population in a somewhat childlike state of dependency. I see paternalism everywhere--in the government, in households, in the university, in organizations, and even in the social life of the classroom. Generally, it's the more benign kind of paternalism and it often works, but there is still widespread passivity in the face of authority. Some might say that passivity in the general population might be better understood as a practical acceptance of the trade-offs needed for stability and order, rather than childlike dependency. The net effect, though, is the same: deferring to the authority for decision making and not questioning the decisions.

Echo and Arabella said nothing about paternalism per se--rather they ranged all over the map in their opinions about this and that--but as I listened to them, these thoughts ran through my mind.

And it's a curious thing in a university. One thing about paternalism--and the stability and order it fosters--is this: it may stifle creativity and independent thinking which, some might say, are at the heart of academic research. Questioning is at the heart of learning. In China, every department is governed not only by deans, but also by party secretaries. (I have fabulous deans--smart, progressive, visionary.) However, as far as I can tell neither the deans nor the faculty enjoy a Western standard of "academic freedom," not that the ideal of independent research is unsullied in the West--the reality is far from perfect. And several friends who are Chinese academics have tried to set me straight on what "peer review" means in China. Whatever it is, it might be different from that in the West--although, again, "peer review" in the West often falls short of the ideal of independent review.

The glue in the family system in China seems to be "guanxi"--connections, relationships, special favors. But those relationships exist in a system monitored by authorities whose rulings largely go unquestioned.

The Chinese system of monitoring and protecting is a paternalism with which I'm not entirely comfortable (not that the US is innocent of excessive monitoring in the name of protectionism). But if my smart, savvy class monitors are the future of China, I do have hope.

One down (almost)

One down, the rest to go

The spring semester in China starts late by Western standards—late February—and also ends late—early July. This, of course, accommodates the Chinese New Year activities, which last for almost two weeks earlier in the winter. It also provides a good balance—the winter and summer breaks aren’t quite equal, but are close to it—six weeks, give or take a little. So! What does this mean? Most of my classes don’t finish for another month. The one exception is my news class, a short class that meets for only ten weeks. It is a foreign language class—English—and the students enrolled in it are all double majors, some graduating with physics degrees, some with environmental science degrees, all different kinds of degrees. Our exam is Friday, the 6^th.

So it is a curious thing. What do I teach in a class like this? What should I focus on the first week in June? As I write, it is actually two days before the 6^th of June, a day that is not insignificant in the history of China. Even though this class is not my main preparation, I have loved teaching it—partly because I’m a news junkie, I suppose—partly because teaching news literacy is one of the best ways I know to teach critical thinking. It is also of paramount importance in the digital age, a time when we find ourselves swimming in information—but—just what kind of information? Reader beware! No matter what country we might live in, the burden is on us as readers more than ever to read thoughtfully and critically.  That’s true for all of us all around the globe.

So what am I thinking about this week? And what am I allowed to say? My own organization, Peace Corps, follows the “when in Rome do as the Romans do” philosophy and forbids us Peace Corps volunteers to make reference to any of the “three T’s”—so that is something I bear in mind when teaching this class. One of my colleagues, an American contract teacher who is not a Peace Corps volunteer, was just reprimanded and had a job reassignment because he did get in a discussion with some students about one of them, arguably the least controversial.

One thing that is natural to do in a news class such as this is to compare news coverage on any given day—what is the BBC saying? The Guardian? China Daily? Al Jazeera? Der Spiegel? The New York Times? And so on. This enables us to ask questions not only about accuracy and truthfulness, but also about the rhetorical situation—Who is the author? Who is the audience? What is included, excluded, and for what purpose, in what the context? How are the sources handled? Not only how many—but what kind? Can they be checked? And so on. Below is a screen shot of the front pages of several newspapers. 

I would not be allowed to focus on the front page of some of these papers today (say the WSJ)  because Peace Corps would not allow me to mention some of the top stories. So I don’t. I don’t try to touch on every possible issue—and I don’t meet my next class until June 6^th, anyway, which will have different stories.

We spend lots of time looking at news from cross-cultural perspectives—and anyone’s own country almost always looks awful through the lens of another country. That’s because what is considered “news” usually isn’t pretty—especially any “news” that jumps oceans and national borders. Another way to put it is that our own countries tend to demonize others—not that we are untruthful, but we selectively focus on the negative. I think the coverage of China in the NYT is unrelentlingly harsh.

My students have had lots to say about US spying on China and elsewhere. They have lots of opinions about Snowden. They have not read—in fact, most have no clue—about stories of some other major countries that have been called on the carpet for spying, but we have discussed in the abstract general principles about both privacy and transparency.

Although I do think the NYT is unrelentingly harsh, it is a news organization with admirable journalistic standards and understandably won’t be quiet about certain issues that are of great concern to journalists. One of the issues in a news literacy class is “what makes a journalist?” and “what makes a good citizen journalist?” How much is the journalist a watch dog—for governments and other institutions? We use criteria that have been widely discussed among some of the world’s leading journalists.  I can’t always get the articles I want on this and other topics—this week my computer keeps shutting down; it is unbearably slow. But it is always slow, for layers and layers of reasons.

The issues here I believe are of paramount importance in any country, and I don’t know how successful I’ve been as a teacher. But my goal has not been to cover every possible story. My goal has simply been to ask questions.

It’s not fish, but fishing I’m after.

A hundred bowls of dumplings

A hundred bowls of dumplings. I'm a bit overwhelmed thinking about it--hosting three different oral English classes on three different evenings for three different jiaozi (dumpling) extravaganzas in my fourth-floor apartment, a stone's throw from the university.

But who could turn down these enthusiastic cooks?

The first crowd waited for me at the foot of the hill, some holding bags of extra groceries, half of them dressed like they were going to a prom. A few like me figured blue jeans were okay on a Saturday night, but I did a quick change when I saw the finery most were sporting. Another class, on another night, met me at Gate Two of the university, all of them wearing matching white T-shirts. It was easy to keep track of them as we traipsed on down Tiansheng Road.

Three times on three different nights we made thirty some bowls of dumplings--and various other favorite dishes from home. Whether really fabulous or just first-time cooks, they immediately dived in to the activity,

and nobody left before at least trying to clean up and mop the floors. 

What would they be doing otherwise? My students say that most but not all would be in their dorms with their three (girls) to five (guys) roommates, and in their rooms some would be surfing the web or playing video games. Most, though, would be studying. That's what they do on weekends. They study a lot. Even on vacations.

And when these students aren't studying, they're working, eating, or doing other things together. They're together almost 24-7 for four years. They might not have brothers and sisters, but they have thirty-some classmates who might as well be.

This study-around-the-clock culture certainly comes with a price and the exam culture has some unintended negative consequences, and yet, I think the West might do well to look East. Others are, including Andrea Orr who wrote The United States Can Learn from High School Students in India, China and Chen Huabin in Parents' Attitudes and Expectations. It's not that the schools are better in the East--I don't think that's the case--but the priorities in the larger culture support what's going on in the schools. Learning and teachers are privileged in the culture, and home-life supports learning from the earliest age. Students grow up with an expectation to hold some personal desires in check for the sake of a long-term goal.                                                        

My students this semester are scholarship students who hale from all over the country, and they'll return to their home provinces to teach English for at least ten years. That's the deal. And do they mind? Well, most do want to be teachers but, even if they aren't smitten by the idea, they are pragmatic. They take precious little for granted. They know there are millions of Chinese twenty-somethings competing to fill the untaken spots, wherever they are. 

In the meantime, they're thrilled when they have a little reprieve--something so simple as making dumplings at a teacher's place.

Two Feathers in China

Who knew what I'd find at the Chongqing North train station--huffing through the double doors just as the last call was being made to board the train to Chengdu. I needed to make another journey through the beautiful terraced mountains of Sichuan to do routine Peace Corps business in Chengdu, "close of service" tasks that every volunteer must do. And there, as I was debating whether to board the train alone or not, came Two Feathers in her huge bright turquoise T-shirt and baggy below the knee denim shorts. Her white roots proudly peeked through her brown hair, pulled back in a long, long braid. Nothing about Two Feathers is normal in China, where even the petite street sweepers and construction workers wear their hair in tidy buns with glittering hair clips. Nothing about Two Feathers is the least bit normal here, and yet she is beloved.

Why was a bit of a puzzle to me, at least at first, because I've certainly witnessed foreigners whose ways were so odd, so removed from Chinese reality, that they just didn't succeed in establishing much rapport. Not the case with Two Feathers, whose students at Chongqing Medical University look after her and take her everywhere--and yet learn from her, find her an amazing eye opener.

Two Feathers is a volunteer, a year behind me, also serving in the municipality (think province) of Chongqing. When she heard I was going to Chengdu, she decided to go with me so that together we could pay a visit to the host family who took each of us in when we first arrived in China. In the summer of 2012 during "pre-service training" I lived with Li Ying and her husband Peng Laoshi. Then, in the summer of 2013 while I was traipsing around China, Two Feathers lived with them, her first summer in China. My Chinese is not the best (a masterpiece of understatement), but Two Feathers was dependent on me--so I did all the negotiations in train stations, buses, taxis, foreign student dormitory, and so on--I was the one to carry the conversation with Li Ying and Peng Laoshi.

It was absolutely wonderful to see them and to taste again some of Li Ying's fabulous cooking, including an incredible catfish dish. I'd never seen Li Ying so radiant, so happy--possibly because her pregnant daughter was visiting. We saw pictures of their recent travels and heard about plans to visit relatives in San Diego.

Now Two Feathers hasn't always used her Native American name--in fact, she had to stage a silent protest at Rutgers to be allowed to have it called out at graduation. Her protest involved wearing a mask in keeping with her Apache traditions, but a mask that also had some red, white, and blue because she was a Vietnam veteran who had served in the military until retirement. That service was her ticket to an education, which she got only later in life--none of her eleven older siblings had degrees.

If she grew up poor and an object of discrimination in all the complex ways that race, class, gender, and ethnicity are bound together, she hasn't let any of that deflate her spirit. In a husky contralto, she talks non-stop and just charges ahead. She has 180 students--not altogether but in just one of her speaking classes--which for Two Feathers is no problem. She adapts a group plan until it works, gets them all talking, keeps them all accountable, and spares them nothing. She gets them on fire. None of her stories are censored and she elicits from them all kinds of stories and testimonies that I find utterly amazing. She keeps her ear close to their needs, finding all things medical for her medical students and tapping video clips of contemporary pop stars for her undergraduates. She meets them where they are and seems to find them.

There's nothing standard about this person--not her English, not her appearance, not her manners, not her approach to anything. And yet driving all of it seems to be a will to make the best of it, and that is deeply Chinese. She just goes, ever resourceful in her attempts to connect, to help, to teach. By all accounts, she reaches them, with students crowding into her classroom, into her apartment, onto QQ, and offering to take her anywhere, protecting her, helping her.

Utterly amazing Two Feathers (left).

Chicken bones

Who knew that a little chicken bone might eclipse the excitement of pulling off what Wu Dan insists was China's first writing-across-the-curriculum conference. Wu Dan had come to Beibei from Xi'an to help me facilitate what was to be a bilingual workshop for several dozen folks (our maximum capacity), some coming from as faraway as Beijing and Hainan. We were relieved to have it behind us, winding down at a little outdoor cafe when Wu Dan introduced me to a dish I'd never had before and will never have again--Xinjiang Da Pan Ji--meaning "Xinjiang big dish chicken." Don't misunderstand--I love food from Xinjiang and this was delicious--but never again will I risk eating little bits of chicken with even littler bits of bone hidden inside.

Xinjiang Da Pan Ji (photo credit way below)

As soon as I realized something wasn't going down, I excused myself in search of an out-of-the-way trash can where I could spit. But I couldn't really spit--instead half gagged, half coughed until I nearly wet my pants, with volumes of glue-like spit swinging from my fingertips. As I tried to dodge the crowd on my way back to Wu Dan, I was approached by "Daisy" and her sister, two kind women I have bumped into on repeated occasions. They magically produced some tissue for me to use, but I couldn't speak to thank them. Back in my apartment, things calmed down a bit--eventually I could talk, had stopped coughing up volumes of that viscous stuff and could even take about half an ml of water. Wu Dan and I thought it safe to skip ER and see if the damned thing would resolve itself by morning.

It didn't. I shooed Wu Dan on her way, her early morning flight to Xi'an, and called the Peace Corps medical staff in Chengdu. Beat it to the ER, they advised. So, at Gate 2 of the university I met my dear friend Xiaodan who accompanied me to not one but three hospitals before the day was done, each one a little better than the previous one, all packed with people squeezing into examination rooms whether it was their turn or not.

Although I could swallow a drop or two of water successfully before I went to bed the night before, that was no longer the case. I couldn't swallow my own saliva--let alone anything to eat or drink--and surreptitiously spit into a steel water bottle every other minute, dumping it whenever I found a good bush. What had been mid-throat now seemed to have lodged near the base of my throat, too low for the ENT at the first hospital to see and too high for the gastroenterologist to do an endoscopy, he said. Nonsense, said the Chinese Peace Corps doctors who were monitoring things by phone. Ditch that place and go to Southwest Hospital in Chongqing.

An hour or two later, Xiaodan and I found ourselves in a labyrinth of gigantic buildings--a massive hospital complex with beautiful outdoor courtyards and fountains and impressive statues inside. We zigzagged back and forth, following different folks' directions, before we finally found the ER, where blue capped nurses doubled as receptionists, both taking your blood pressure and checking your passports at the check-in counter. Less dingy than the last hospital, this one was just as packed. People, some with big baskets of vegetables on their backs, squeezed into elevators--sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty people--creating shouts of dismay from people in the back.

The ENT department was in a clean, spacious area, and we found the ENT surfing the web in a room like a college computer lab. He directed us to another office--high ceiling-ed and mostly empty except for a little desk, an examination chair and a doctor. The round mirror strapped to the second doctor's forehead reflected bright light down my throat but, alas, he could see nothing. That meant we needed an endoscopy, but, that would be impossible before the next day. The first doctor was solicitous but waited patiently while we consulted our Peace Corps doctors. Given that they would fly to Chongqing to be with me unless I came to Chengdu, where they were, I hoofed it to the train station where I found myself standing behind a humpback about 4 and a half feet tall. When someone tried to cut in front of him, the woman behind me started a row that drew in about half a dozen voices before things calmed down. I booked the next train to Chengdu, enjoying a beautiful two hour journey through western China's terraced mountains, listening to my seatmate drown out the children's songs on the other side of him with an English movie that he put on pause and replayed every few lines, sometimes repeating a turn of conversation ten times before moving on.

The Peace Corps staff was out in full order awaiting my arrival. When I stepped from the train onto the platform, Cheng Dang called to say he was waiting for me, and indeed by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, there he was. He sped me to what is perhaps the best hospital in southwest China, where Dr. Gao pulled up on her bicycle and Dr. Bing was waiting inside--along with half of China, some in their pajamas. Every hall was teaming with people, many from far flung areas.

Even after living in China for almost 22 months, I still find myself amazed by the scale of everything. The sheer number of people. An ordinary day in a Chinese hospital is like December 23rd in a big-city department store in the US. You simply can't see the floor.

Hospital gurneys with patients in waiting, many in colorful ethnic clothing, were surrounded by family members--extended families, it seemed--many of whom went freely in and out of nearby conference rooms where other patients were being seen. So it was in the IV room where I spent the night along with two dozen others, most snugly tucked in under colorful blankets from home. Having not even a toothbrush, let alone a blanket, I was ready to just chill in every respect, but Dr. Gao noticed, pedaled home, and returned to cover me. Husbands patiently washed wives' foreheads, daughters repositioned fathers--one even changed the man's underpants. The teenager seated next to me seemed to be dying of pneumonia, his lungs rattling when he wasn't spitting into our little shared wastebasket. His sister changed his socks, his brother with long hair neatly held back with a headband looked on solicitously, and his father tended him all night. If I actually snoozed off for a few minutes, I'd awake to see his father staring at me with gentle curiosity, softer than the stares I get all day long on the street.

The Peace Corps medical staff had to wait in the hall but they checked on me regularly, and both doctors were there in the morning to accompany me to another building. Plan A was to have an ENT slither an endoscope down my throat to get those bones hiding down at the base; Plan B was general anesthesia and surgery. I was ushered into a room where the last patient was still collecting his things and was placed on my side on a table. Staring at cutting edge imaging machines, the specialist skillfully guided the thing down my throat (no anesthesia), roaming around while I tried not to gag. Ah! She got a piece and tried to withdraw it. Four more times. The end of her scope had a bright light doubling as camera and she shot pictures of our four prizes inches away from my drooling mouth. No need for Plan B, although I'd still have to hang out in Chengdu at Peace Corps headquarters until my throat was healed enough to take liquids and a tiny bit of soft food. I revisited old haunts on Sichuan University campus, where Peace Corps China headquarters is, and read up on things in the library, having nothing with me from home, certainly not a laptop.

I have had phenomenal medical care my whole life, but the China Peace Corps medical staff is just the tops. Smart. Humane. Pro-active. Spunky. Up to date. They're amazing. Thanks, Drs. Gao and Bing--Kandice and others. Li Li.

Well, my reputation for hospitality is at a low ebb. My sister Mary learned that if you go to China to visit me, you might end up spending half the time at the police station; my friend Wu Dan learned that a visit here isn't complete without lots of spit and chicken bones.


PS I know a surgeon and a nurse anesthetist at home I can't wait to see!

Xinjiang Da Pan Ji photo credit: https://www.google.com/search?q=da+pan+ji&client=firefox-a&hs=YlW&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=RPpxU8zfNtG1yAT5n4Ag&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1188&bih=648#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=bR9wz9QiDh3G7M%253A%3BScz7xOp2yViQJM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdevelopingcityblog.files.wordpress.com%252F2013%252F02%252Fxinjiang-da-pan-ji.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdevelopingcity.net%252F2013%252F02%252F17%252Fbest-xinjiang-food-in-shanghai-2%252F%3B701%3B396