Birthday Celebration

Our second day in Yunnan started out way too early, considering our late arrival to the hotel the night before.  Chinese breakfasts at hotel seem to be very similar to other Chinese meals, with cooked vegetables, meat, noodles, etc.  Congee is one exception; it is a rice porridge similar to oatmeal, into which one can put pickled vegetables (eew), meat (not so good at 7 am) or fruit (pretty nice).  After breakfast, we went upstairs to a conference room with a podium and nametags...including ours!  We knew we were giving presentations but Dr. Qiao had neglected to mention the reason for the symposium...or even that there was a symposium...for the 70th Birthday of the Gejiu Tin Mine Hospital!  We had to sit in front of the crowd and introduce ourselves, then relocate to the front row of chairs so they could set up a podium and projection screen for presentations.

After giving my talk (on Medical Education in the US, Dr. Qiao's direction and sadly nothing to do with Gejiu or lung cancer (the main illness treated by the hospital for many years)) I was told that the local newspaper wanted to interview me.  I went downstairs to the lobby and talked to 2 very pleasant newspeople for about 30 minutes, with a translator who kept insisting on answering for me instead of telling me the questions!  They asked me all sorts of awkward questions, such as, "what do you know about lung cancer in Gejiu?" (I had just found out it was a big problem the day before) and "Why did you choose the topic of your presentation for the lung cancer symposium?" (my boss told me to...)  It would have been embarassing if it wasn't so funny, and plus, I could blame my nonspecific answers on the language barrier ;)

After lunch, we headed off to the main hospital building for a huge performance to celebrate the birthday.  There were songs, dances, and mini plays depicting tin miners dying of lung cancer and a team of nurse/dancers swooping in to the rescue.  It was really quite dramatic and emotional at some points, with some of the songs being very good, if belted out about 100 decibels louder than necessary.  My eardrums hurt for at least an hour after leaving!  We were also introduced as 'Visiting American Experts' and were constantly shown on the video cameras, which were broadcasting live, so we had to work very hard at paying attention and being appropriately amazed/pleased with the performances.  It was very interesting however, and much better than sitting in Chinese meetings all day!  Too bad American hospitals only celebrate their birthdays by hosting expensive black-tie galas!