Goodbye China

The goodbyes started several weeks ago actually, as Ben, one of the medical students in Beijing for the year on a scholarship similar to mine, left right before we left for Portugal.  He celebrated his departure in a typical Chinese way, by going with his friends for kareoke, or 'KTV' as it is called here.  Chinese people LOVE kareoke, and it is even included in some more official business meeting dinners, with kareoke after dinner to let everyone have some fun and break the ice.  I had participated in one kareoke sesson in southern China when I went on a site visit with Adam and Dr. Qiao, but I had never been with my friends.  Instead of singing in a bar in front of strangers, in China you rent a room by the hour and then just sing with people you know!  There is generally still quite a bit of beer involved to get everyone loosened up to sing, but I thought it was much less stressful to be just around my friends instead of random strangers.

Ben, Alison, Adam, Esther, and a friend of Ben's

Adam and Alison singing one of their favorite songs ;)

The next goodbye was the banquet the office threw for us this past Thursday night.  We were told it would be a 'picnic' in the park, but it was actually a buffet dinner at a restaurant in the park, complete with certificate presentations, short thank-you speeches by Adam and I, and toasting.  Adam and I went around to every table with our drinks (in my case, peach juice) and toasted the people there to show our appreciation for their hospitality and help this year.  The food was not-so-good, but it was very nice of them to show us off like this.  Everyone took loads of pictures:

Adam and I with Shangying and Li Rong, our Fogarty twins, and Dr. Zhao, our cervical cancer mentor

Adam and I with Shaoming Wang, next year's Fogarty, and Hao, last year's Fogarty

Some students from our 6th floor office

The central guy is Unench, one of our better friends from the office

Everyone eating and making toasts

Dr. Qiao with us

After the picnic, the rest of the Fogarty folks got together for dinner and smoothies as we are all leaving China around the same time.  We are all heading back to different medical schools and probably won't see each other much after this, so it was a little sad.

The next day was my last day in the office, and I spent much of the day running around delivering goodbye gifts and saying goodbyes to people.  In China, you give a gift when you leave, and your closer friends will give you a parting gift back.  I got a set of really nice scrolls to go on the wall, along with some other 'schotsky' as Adam would say - things that sit around and collect dust, but were super nice of them to give.  After all the gifts were passed out and Adam  had left for the day due to having nothing to do, it felt weird in the office - no one wanted to work like normal, since it wasn't normal, exactly, but it was hard to know what to do otherwise.  One of the students, Luliang, solved the problem by breaking out his guitar and we had a minor jam session in the office.  We carefully kept the door shut in case any of the teachers from down the hall should wander down, and enjoyed ourselves.  Luliang played several Chinese songs, and then he asked me to play one - turns out Chinese students know 'Take Me home, Country Roads' just as well as American students!  I love singing and listening to others play the guitar and sing, and somehow this ended my last day at work on a good note.  Somehow the music expressed my mixed feelings of sadness and excitement about leaving, and I feel like all of us kind of connected with those feelings and each other through the music.

Sun Huikui showing off his new Western bandanas

Lu Liang playing the guitar

Badachu

After my adventure at Fang Shan, I had an intense week of work and evening get-togethers.  This last weekend was also filled to the brim with packing and activities.  I had met a girl named Audrey through Lara when she lived with me back in October, and we have kept in touch, ocasionally meeting for dinner or a show.  I wanted to see her before I left, and I also wanted to see a park in western Beijing called 'Badachu' that Lara had recommended, so we combined the two this past Saturday.  Mind-blowingly, Badachu, while still in Beijing, took me 2 hours to reach from my apartment, even taking the metro for a large stretch of it - Beijing is so big!  I will not miss the huge distances or long travel times next year.

Once we arrived, we were greeted with a corridor of lanterns and a lovely park based on a hill/(they call it a mountain) with 8 different temples/monasteries on the way up.  Many of the temples were similar to other Buddhist temples I have seen, but more integrated into the surrounding hillside, so they were less huge and overwhelming.  

There also many people outside the temples holding up plastic water bottles and looking it it towards the sun.  This was quite a stunning picture when many people were doing it at once.  We asked what they were doing and someone pointed at the sun's reflection on the bottle, but that still doesn't make much sense to me - bizarre!

There was a cool dragon sculpture at one temple...which turned out to be styrofoam!  oh China!

Lighting incense outside a temple

Cool flower candles

From the top, there were views of the surrounding suburbs and far in the distance, the Beijing skyline.  This picture should give you an idea of the smog that has been a regular fixture for the past week or so in the city.

On the way down, we took the lift to save our tired legs, and gave us ample time to take in the view.  It was great to see Audrey again before leaving, and she is one of the people I will miss when I return.  

Fang Shan, Take 2

The weekend after my return to China, I asked my friend Hao if she wanted to go hiking to get out of the city.  I had kind of had a small amount of culture shock again when I returned to the pollution and noise that is Beijing, and felt like escaping.  I picked out a place that sounded lovely in the tour book, and since she speaks Chinese, we were able to get on the correct 900 bus to ensure a quick arrival...and then there were traffic jams.  And more traffic.  We were crawling, and our hoped-for 11 am arrival got pushed to 12...still, we were moving, albeit slowly, so what could we do?  Then around 12:30, the bus came to an actual halt, and opened to the doors.  I was surprised - are we there?  Oh no...upon standing up, I saw a line of cars stretching onwards towards infinity, farther than the eye could see.  We sat in silence for a few minutes, then started debating - to stay or go?  Neither of us wanted to give up our day trip, but no one knew when the line of cars would start moving again.

We finally decided to give up and got off the bus and started walking back through the traffic that had already accumulated behind us.  All the cars were stopped with people standing around in the road, eating, sunning, going to the bathroom...To make it worse, cars trying to pass the jam had pulled up in the lanes reserved for the other direction, so no one could drive the other way either.  We passed several cars trying to turn around, and they kept hitting cars around them, resulting in angry shouting and gesticulating.  It took us 25 minutes to walk back out of traffic!  People in stopped cars kept asking us what was ahead, and Hao kept telling them to turn around while they still could.  

 We eventually got lucky - they had told us the closest bus stop behind us was 10 km away - quite a walk, but better than sitting, and we had been planning on doing an 11 km hike anyway that day.  But after about 30 minute of walking, we encountered a bus turning around, and managed to flag it down to drive us back away from the jam.  I had noticed on the way there that we had passed the park that Max and I went to in October, Fang Shan, so we decided to go there to hike rather than completely giving up on our day.   We didn't get there til 2 pm, but we still had a fun time climbing the mountain, going in the cave with resident Buddhas, and taking the lift down again with some dazzingly views.

The outside of the Water Cloud Caves

Buddhas in the cave

Touristy lighting in the caves

Tired after the hike up the hill

The view down from the lift

The view up behind us from the lift

Mountain goats we saw from the bottom!

Rome breeze-by

My flight back to beijing from Portugal stopped through Rome, and there was no option for a short layover.  Regardless, I had at least 4 hours of layover, so I decided to go whole-hog and take the 10-hour layover, with the hopes of having time to see something in Rome.  Since Italy is still in the European Union, I didn't need any special visas to venture out, and in fact didn't even go through passport control since I was coming from somewhere else in the Schengen zone.  I was surprised at how much I was able to see in Rome during my approximately 5 hours (after subtracting travel to and from Rome and check-in time at the airport).  I basically did a self-guided walking tour, but after China the crowds of tourists didn't seem so daunting and neither did figuring out the public transportation.  Before living in China I don't think I would have been so adept at reading the bus signs, getting on and off a tram, taking a train from the airport into the city, etc, but after learning how to get around being totally illiterate and mostly mute, signs in Italian and people who might understand French made it a piece of cake to get around!

I took the train into Rome from the airport, and walked first to the Piazza da Navona, famous for its fountain, designed by a great Italian artist.  The male figures represent the 4 great rivers of the earth.  There were lots of people walking around, shopping, and enjoying the sunshine.

Next I headed to the Pantheon, my second national pantheon in the span of a week, and saw the graves of more famous people.  I actually thought the Pantheon in Lisbon was more beautiful, but this one is very iconic and still lovely.  

I walked through some old neighborhoods and saw many churches, some famous, some not.  Italian churches focus on paintings, sculpture, and mosaics more than stained glass like in France, so the space inside feels different, but still very reverent.  The Church of Santa Maria had a medieval floor and was hugely spacious, with tourists wandering past monks and priests hearing confessionals.  

The art highlight of my short stay was seeing the Ectasy of St. Theresa, by Bernini, in a small church off the main street.  There was a crowd of people just see this artwork, and when the priest turned on the spotlight, there was a small murmur of appreciation.  Its hard to tell in photos, but the expressions on the faces of St. Theresa and the angel are so lifelike, and the folds of their clothes look so real, it was amazing.  I just sat and stared for a while, you can see why this is a famous masterpiece.  I felt kind of sorry for the sculpture directly across from the Ectasy; i'm sure its good too, but it was clearly neglected compared to the favorite. (no spotlight).  

On my way to the Coliseum, I saw another church and the Trevi Fountain, a famous pool/fountain built onto the back of a government building.  It was noticeably cooler near the fountain, and it was a very dynamic space with moving water, sculpted figures that looked caught in motion, and chattering crowds.

Finally, I swung by the Coliseum.  I did not have time to go inside, but I could see from the outside just how impressive it is.  I could also see part of the Forum along the rear of the Coliseum, with ruins of arches and temples everywhere.  I had some pizza at the foot of the Coliseum before heading back to the airport.  Basically, my quick trip to Rome makes me want to go back for a real visit!

Conference

 I've told you a lot about the sightseeing we did in Lisbon but not a lot about the reason we were there in the first place!  Adam and I both submitted abstracts and were accepted to give oral presentations on different projects we have been working on this year.  My presentation was about the global HPV seroprevalence review I have been working on with my mentor in North Carolina.  I had 10 minutes to talk about a huge review article with more than 120 papers included and reams and reams of data!  Adam talked about a paper that he helped write about a screening program in China.  

 Both of our presentations were on the last day of the conference, so we had plenty of time to get our bearings and go to sessions.  The first day was mostly 'what is HPV', and 'big trends about cervical cancer'; introductory sessions, mostly.  The second and third days had bigger sessions about 'Epidemiology of HPV' or 'HPV in Resource-Poor Settings', as well as more targeted sessions about particular techologies or vaccine developments.

 On the last day of the conference, we both put on our newly tailored Chinese suits and showed up early.  I went to Adam's talk, which was excellent, and then he jetted off for the airport to catch the last flight home that day.  I had to stay later since my talk wasn't until the last session of the entire conference, in the afternoon.  I thought that there would perhaps be fewer people there, and there were, but my mentor told me it was a 'high-powered session' and thus my talk had to be good!  Eeek!  I think it went well  however, I stayed within my time limits, and I didn't make any glaring errors.  Thankfully, we were behind time already due to earlier speakers taking too long, so nobody asked me any questions!