Yesterday was our first day in Yangcheng, in Shanxi Province, and we spent most of the day at the Yangcheng Women and Children's Hospital. The morning started with the Grand Opening of the research study LCMCCSS - Low Cost Molecular Cervical Cancer Screening Study - with a podium with all the main investigators, speeches, and 3 minutes of firecrackers that left everyone deaf! Apparently there is a mythical Chinese monster that haunts new beginnings and thus the firecrackers to scare him away.
That was followed by several hours of lecture (mostly in Chinese) explaining the meaning of the study, the techniques, etc. Some of it would have been really interesting as they were explaining how to do visual inspection of the cervix with different materials, but sadly, I didn't understand much. That was followed by lunch and then a demo of the study, with 20 women who came to enroll. I spent the first part of the afternoon wandering around following the investigator from the NIH in the US who was just poking his nose everywhere to make sure things were running ok. The second part I spent in the lab seeing how one of the HPV detection tests was run.
The evening was spent at a banquet restaurant with everyone involved in the study - there was loads of local Chinese food followed by karaoke! The directors of the hospital and other bigwigs got up in front of the crowd and sang - often badly - but it was very hilarious and a fun time all around. I did not sing but supported another guy singing a Whitney Houston song - yikes!
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