Concept Barriers

Everyone understands the idea of a language barrier, and we blame a lot of things on it.  We are never quite sure how much of what we say is understood by those we are talking to, as the students certainly speak way better English than I do Chinese, but they are not fluent by any means.  The tendency here when they don't understand something is to nod and smile, which unfortunately makes it difficult to tell whether they have understood or not.  Today, however, Adam and I had an experience which illustrates to me something further than just a language barrier, but more of a concept barrier.  Not only are Chinese people different in the language in which they talk and think, but their very ideas and mental constructs are different than ours.  They build their picture of the world differently than we do, and thus different things make sense and have meaning than for us.  This is certainly true for all of the world's cultures, I am just using Chinese people as an example since I am here.

Today we went with one of the Chinese graduate students named Changyan to the campus of the Peking Union Medical College for another stab at obtaining the last necessary form for our residence permits.  That whole endeavor, which took most of the morning, was completely unsuccessful, which is a completely different story (think: foiled again due to being an illiterate foreign pawn in a power struggle between the Chinese police and China's greatest medical school).  However, before returning to the institute, Changyan mentioned that there was a telephone promotion with China Mobile, our phone company, that she wanted to investigate.  It turns out if you put varying amounts of credit on  your SIM card, you could get different free gifts, up to a new bicycle for 500 RMB, which is about $75.  Since I needed a new bicycle anyway, this was a deal impossible to pass up, as that will be enough phone credit for the whole year and that is about the price of a cheap bike at home - 2 for the price of 1!.  Changyan wanted a new bike too, and we struggled through the paperwork together, emerging triumphantly with new bicycles wrapped in plastic and cardboard.

And then the fun began...Adam and I both assumed that we would keep them in their packing, unassembled, in order to either carry them on to the bus (difficult) or put them in the trunk of a taxi (easy, but more expensive) and return to the institute.  Changyan, however, kept insisting that we find someone to put them together.  We tried to explain that it would be easier to return with them disassembled, but she insisted that we had new bikes and we need to put them together.  At first I thought maybe she didn't understand, but she had had almost no trouble understanding us so far today and the idea of the concept barrier was born.  Perhaps carrying around bikes in packages is just not done, or it seemed heavy and easier to handle once assembled.  Regardless, we stopped in the street, she called someone she knew in the area and we found the closest bike repair guy.  We dropped our bikes off, went to lunch in the nearby mall, and returned to assembled (albeit poorly, her brakes don't even work) bikes.

My new bike, complete with remaining plastic

And then reality hit - how were we going to return home?  The roads between the med school and our institute are all major arteries, very dangerous for inexperienced bikers with no helmets or Chinese skills, and Changyan did not feel comfortable either.  We tried the metro - bikes rejected.  She didn't have a map and wasn't sure how to get home.  We paused in uncertainty on the street for several long moments - what to do?  The bus driver was sure to reject us passage as well.  At last, we decided to go the begging route - Changyan got on the bus and pulled the "we got new bikes and we're lost and we are scared to ride on the street please let us on the bus" routine...and after several long moments, the bus monitor agreed.  We were saved!  Getting on the bus with the bike was the worst part...bus starts moving, bikes start rolling...you get the idea...but after a bit we got the hang of holding on to everything and it was really much easier than riding back, especially since that might have involved following the bus until we lost it, then waiting for the next one, since we didn't know how to get back!

The whole thing worked out, but it has made me think about the idea of a concept barrier - I'm sure there are better examples, but this is a small one, and one that certainly impacted my day!  I feel like concept barriers are harder to overcome than language barriers, because even if I learn Chinese I still won't have the cultural background of the Chinese or think like a Chinese person.  I think being aware of it is the first step to avoiding misunderstanding, but the barriers certainly bode for many interesting experiences in the year to come!

But, I did get a bike out of the deal.  So altogether not too bad ;)

Random surprises

So far, my life in Beijing has been full of surprises.  Some of them are frustrating and annoying, other are fun and uplifting.  I will share a few of them here:

Frustrating:
1.  Documents.  EVERYTHING here must be stamped.  And copied.  And probably stamped again.  Adam and I finally got all of our paperwork together to apply for the resident permit, went with a new grad student we had just met to the Exit/Entry Bureau on Saturday morning, only to discover that the form had recently changed and students need a special one now.  Our form was sans school barcode, so despite having 4 letters from the medical college and multiple stamps from them on every single form, it wasn't right.  Want to ask a question of the lady behind the glass window?  "Everyone knows that!  Next!" Arg...

2. Bugs.  Discovering the roach population just waiting for a tenant in this apartment has been less than a fun surprise.  Today I spent 10 minutes in the bug-killing aisle at Carrefour praying that the saleslady would just leave alone and let me puzzle out the labels on my own.  The rent doesn't come with automatic bug-killing service like in Nashville!

Delightful:
1. I went on a short self-guided tour of my neighborhood today and discovered a market street with all sorts of produce and people everywhere, multiple spas, salons, and...an open air pool hall!  Dad's dream!  There were 8 pool tables just all lined up with people playing on almost all of them.  Weird that there was no roof...but hey, for the love of the game...

2. Ginko trees.  The street outside my apartment complex is lined with ginkgo trees. Walking down my street reminds me of high school biology, when I first learned about the ancient history of the ginkgo, and my classmate accidentally blurting out a test answer "Ginkgo!" from excitement at knowing the answer.  Its interesting that this class was my first real exposure to biology which sparked my interest in the science and possibly launched my career up to this point...and it all comes back to the ginkgo, a tree which first appeared in the Early Jurassic period and has survived in a small area of central China up through modern times.  And I see it everyday.  Incredible!

3. Random park performances.  I left my apartment this evening to make a quick run to the bank in my square and discovered a dancing Chinese dragon in the park outside my front door.  Sadly I did not have my camera as I wasn't expecting entertainment at the bank, but the dragon was followed by multiple dance routines by women in wildly varying colorful dresses with billowing sleeves and sashes, several comedy routines by young men in pink shirts which would probably have been funnier if I spoke the language, and one really awesome clown routine which involved a spinning Chinese umbrella balancing rolling objects, including an apple, a hat, and a flaming wheel.  Excellent!

I will leave you with some pictures from my sightseeing at the Temple of Heaven and the Bell and Drum Towers; click on the picture for a slideshow.

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CICAMS

  CICAMS stands for Cancer Institute - Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and is my academic home for the next year.  I learned yesterday that it is essentially synonymous with PUMC, which stands for Peking Union Medical College; they are two names for the same thing, although the PUMC has another campus north of the cancer institute in Beijing as well.  CICAMS has multiple buildings, with several shiny new clinic and hospital buildings and several older more dingy research buildings, which is where I will be spending most of my time.  I should get to shadow some doctors in clinic or in the hospital at a later time this year, which will be very interesting.

The most visible CICAMS building which is a new outpatient surgery building.
My building is not visible to the right.

   Adam and I really started work in earnest yesterday, but we were introduced to the premises and got our desks in the grad student office on Tuesday.  We were issued white coats (definitely attending-length, eek! i'm getting ahead of myself! - but strangely short-sleeved), lunch cards, and desk keys.  I have three locks on my desk and three different keys for them!  The office is surrounded by lab rooms and hallway had a strangely familiar smell our first day, until I realized it was lab-strength HCl!  Perhaps it covers up the smell of the squat toilets, which have been fun to learn how to use, :S, as no matter how hard I try, its impossible to go the whole day without having to go to the bathroom, especially after lunch.

My desk in the office, complete with a million papers for us to read.

  
   There are 9 other grad students in our office, all with as-of-yet unpronounceable Chinese names, but one of them had the bright idea to write their names down for us, which makes them at least understandable and reproducible!  Now I have a little seating chart in my desk for when I forget.  Everyone so far has been super nice to us, making sure to get us before they go down to lunch so they can help us order at the canteen window, and showing us where things are, helping us connect to the internet, etc.  Since gchat doesn't work in China, the whole office uses Skype chat to communicate, which is constantly running on everyone's computer so we can all have ridiculous intra-office electronic conversations.  (Which I have done at home many times as well - like texting my sister from the next room).

The view of the office from my desk.  Adam is just to the right of middle on the far wall,
and a Chinese student named Liangyu is on the left.

    We had a meeting with the boss of the Chinese HPV/cervical cancer work group, Dr. Qiao (pronounced "Chow", apparently it means 'super' or 'awesome' in chinese, haha) yesterday and figured out at least vague plans for our research for the year.  I will be starting a study of HPV in HIV+ positive women which was designed by the Fogarty scholar last year and a collaborator at Vanderbilt in a province in southern China called Yunnan.  I will also be developing a survey to be folded into an ongoing cervical cancer prevention study that our lab has to investigate the reactions women have to being given a diagnosis of cervical dysplasia or cancer, and whether that affects their tendency to continue or pursue treatment.  In preparation, both Adam and I will be spending the next several weeks reading reading reading pertinent literature and figuring out how the workgroup works.  I think its shaping up to be an exciting year.

The King of Fruits

Thanks to my good friend Aubree who lived in China for two years, I have discovered the true identity of the spiky fruit in yesterday's post: it is a durian, otherwise known in Southeast Asia as "the king of fruits".  It is native to Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia, although Thailand is now the major exporter.  It only grows in tropical areas and is seasonal for the months June-August, so I guess I caught the end of the season.

The next paragraph is immediately paraphrased from the wikipedia article on durians:
 The unusual flavour and odour of the fruit have prompted many people to express diverse and passionate views ranging from deep appreciation to intense disgust. Writing in 1856, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace provides a much-quoted description of the flavour of the durian:

“

The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. ... as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.

”

Wallace described himself as being at first reluctant to try it because of the aroma, "but the natives give it honourable titles, exalt it, and make verses on it". Others have more graphic descriptions of the odor: British novelist Anthony Burgess writes that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory."  Anthony Bourdain, a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead great-great-aunt." Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:

“

... its odor is best described as pig-sh**, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.

”

Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs.

Haha!  And I only discovered this AFTER I bought one.  Truly, I did notice a disagreeable odor yesterday evening after returning from the store but wrongfully attributed it to my neighbor's cooking (sorry neighbor!)  And it is strange, because the flesh itself doesn't smell that strongly up close, but somehow the outer shell and the flesh from far away do really smell quite awful - my fridge smells like a garbage dump today!!  Furthermore, there are varying cultural beliefs concerning durians, including that they cause excessive sweating and are thus unsuitable for pregnant women or people with high blood pressure, that they cause indigestion or worse when eaten with coffee or alcohol, that they have aphrodisiac qualities (Japan) or antipyretic qualities (Malaysia) [almost the same thing, right?]  And to top it all off, there are in fact signs on durian trees in Indonesia warning against lingering, or if you must, to wear a hardhat, due to the mortal danger from a 7-lb spiky fruit falling on your head!

Food, Part 1

     Some of my experiences with food so far in China:  You have all seen the picture of the peking duck by now (in one of my first posts), but apparently there are other ways to eat duck in Beijing.  When presented with this plate, it actually took me about 10 minutes to realize that it was an entire duck head on the plate, complete with neck chunks.  Apparently you are supposed to suck on the chunks and just admire the head. The rest of the duck tasted quite good!

The duck head is on the left; sorry its so dark i couldn't figure out how to fix it.

     Apparently big mega grocery stores have hit China as well as the rest of the world; while there are still little family-owned groceries as well as fruit stands and random people selling unique vegetables on the street, there is also Walmart and Carrefour, a french mega-store chain.  Imagine my surprise to be greeted with a ghost of my year in France when I arrived in my neighborhood!  Actually, despite the horrendous crowds and quite aggressive salespeople, the Carrefour has been nice due to its occasional french food staples, such as baquettes, pain au chocolat (sadly not up to French standard, I tried!) and raspberry confiture, all of which have been a bit of a comfort as I have tried to come to terms with the rest of the very Chinese supermarket.  I actually got a tour yesterday thanks to one of the Fogarty fellows who is from China, and became a bit more adventurous today as a result:

 No, I do not know what it is.  This was its appearance in the store; imagine a huge pile of similar-sized porcupine fruit!  I just HAD to get one...  After only one serious poke, I managed to get the thing sawed open only to find smaller yellow bean-shaped pods of squashy but sweet and delicious fruit surrounding a brown seed.  It was awesome, but certainly took some work to get into!

  Here is a Chinese Pepsi can just for fun; it tastes just like Pepsi at home.  Cola products in Europe tend to taste different due to the use of sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup; they must use the same here as at home.

 And lastly, a fruit I ventured to buy earlier this week even sans supermarket tour.  Apparently a passion fruit??  It was also delicious!  And very fun-looking inside!!

 Oh!  And I almost forgot about lunch today!  It was our first day going to the Cancer Hospital Canteen, and we had to get electronic lunch cards and load them with money before even entering the canteen.  I was expecting something rather high-tech after the lunch card loading, but lo and behold, lunch was served in a plastic bag!  And really, why not, its cheap and as long as they don't leak (which it didn't) works well when everything you eat is mixable anyway.  Nevermind about carcinogens in the plastic...

My Chinese Home

   I am no longer homeless!  Its a good feeling, especially because its been a long time since I had my own place, longer than just the week I've been in China.  I moved out of my apartment in Nashville on June 27 and have been living in campgrounds, hotel rooms, and the guest room in my parents' house for varying amounts of time since then.  So the hotel room in China was just another in a long string of temporary housing, but I will be in my new apartment for 10 whole months!  An eon!
   When I first came to see the apartment, I was astonished at the size, for one person.  I think it could honestly be a fine apartment for a couple, but since the rent is still cheaper than I was paying in Nashville for half of a 2-person townhouse, this is great.  The landlord is super nice as well; he lived in the UK for 6 years and so speaks English well.  He and his wife picked me up from the hotel, drive to my institute so a chinese friend could look over the contract (resulting in a contract signing in the parking lot!)  There was a brief moment of panic when I realized that he wanted 6 months rent at one go -- that's a TON -- but after I explained that I get paid by the month and I'm a student so I don't have extra money, I managed to get a bit of extra time.  Apparently the key word is to mention that you won't be able to eat if you pay that much, which worked right away.

The living room complete with couch, TV, and trinket case.

Kitchen, which smells like a Chinese restaurant thanks to the people below me.

Study area

     After lugging my suitcases up the elevator and into the apartment, Hao (the landlord) took me to the internet store, the police station, and the bank, all in the neighborhood.  He also turned on my utilities, read all the meters, and got my internet hooked up.  Really very nice of him!  It is a very Chinese neighborhood here, I haven't seen a single other white person since I moved in and I get stares when I walk around.  I suppose people will get used to me eventually!  There is a grocery store directly below my apartment, with wares spread all over the sidewalk generally, and a park right across the lane, with benches and trees galore.  My bank is very close and there is even a foot massage place a block away!  Perfect!

The park across the street.  Notice: blue sky for the first time yesterday!  

The entrance to my apartment building is the door in between the red signs.  The red signs are grocery/vegetable stores.

     I have spent the last several days setting up my apartment, buying necessities at the store (a whole other story, Chinese Carrefour is a different beast all together from French Carrefour!) and exploring the neighborhood.  Yesterday on a 2-hour exploring jaunt, I found a great park, a mall, a subway station, and 3 KFCs!  I shall not want for greasy chicken in China it seems.  More to come soon on other recent experiences as we have been working to set up the logistical aspects of our lives here in China for the past several days.

The view from my living room window.

My apartment address (send me mail!!): FANG CHENG YUAN 1-5-JIA-1908, FANG ZHUANG, FENG TAI DISTRICT, BEIJING 100078, P.R.CHINA

Days 2 and 3

  So!  Now, on the morning of Day 4, I have a little time to recount and reflect on the last 2 days in Beijing.  Wednesday (the day after arriving) I woke up incredibly early - 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, etc thanks to the jetlag despite having not slept at all on the plane. :S  Finally I succumbed to my internal clock and got up around 8 am, but we didn't have to meet Shangying, Adam's Fogarty twin scholar, until 2 pm.  Being still in a bit of a haze, I spent the morning unpacking/inspecting my stuff (only one exploded liquid, thankfully inside a ziplock bag), letting family know I made it safely, and exploring the hotel.  I was proud of myself that I was able to tell the maid to come back tomorrow in Chinese, as well as ask for a refill on the room's supply of water and tea!  At lunch time, I managed to ask for directions to the dining room as well, didn't understand a thing the girl said in response but got the general direction from her arm waving, and then managed to request lunch, pay, and eat without any major mishaps.  I've no idea what I ate, but it all tasted pretty good :)

   That afternoon we met Shangying and Rong Li, my Fogarty twin scholar, and walked down to CICAMS, the institute where we will be working.  It was an interesting juxtaposition of old and new; there is a brand new surgery outpatient building right next to a disheveled grey and cracking concrete research building (ours).  The offices are nice, with computers and such, but the entry ways and hallways have seen many years of use.  Still completely functional though, and that's what really matters!  There are some parts of the Vandy Medical Center North that also date from another century.  We briefly chatted with Dr. Zhao, the head of the cervical cancer research section with whom I hope I will be working, and then headed off to the cell phone store to get us connected.  Thanks to Max, I only had to buy the SIM card and phone number, but Adam had a more grueling experience buying the phone as well, all of which must be done at different counters in the same store!  And (see below) the city buses are all double-deckers and have TVs on them!

   That evening, we met up with a friend of Adam's who is visiting Beijing and went to dinner at a restaurant called 'Da Dong', apparently famous for its Peking Duck.  The duck was in fact fantastic!  The restaurant was in the most expensive, glitzy mall I have ever seen, with a Gucci store and others similar.  There is certainly much wealth immediately next to much poverty here which is a bit strange to get used to.  The dinner we had would easily have cost a hundred dollars each at home but here it was $25, which  still makes it a very expensive meal in Beijing.

   Yesterday we met the Chinese scholars very early and headed off to be examined for health clearance to live as a foreigner in Beijing.  My blood was taken for who knows what by the most skilled plebotomist I have ever seen and I also got a chest xray and my very first EKG.  As far as I can tell it looks normal ;).  Hopefully we will all be cleared in several weeks and we can continue on the process of applying for temporary residence.  Altogether I think it will take several weeks to get all the appropriate paperwork.  In the afternoon, I toured an apartment and decided to live there!  Pictures coming soon after I move in today.   

   Altogether, I have not had any strong emotional reaction yet to Beijing; nothing has surprised me inordinately and I haven't been too frustrated about anything.  I was expecting things to take a while and to have trouble not being literate, but so far nothing has been terrible.  And everyone I have met has been really nice!  Wish me luck as I move into my new apartment today!

First Impressions

  Well, we made it to Beijing!  Our flight actually made it in about 12.5 hours, and my continuous coffee infusion was just running out as we arrived, in preparation for sleep at the hotel despite it being morning in the States.  We passed customs and immigration sans problems, and found the Fogarty scholars who were meeting us.  The one thing I immediately noticed about the area as we left the airport was the smog -- it was so thick that Adam thought there was a white roof over the train track, when in fact it was just a low-lying level of vapor and dirt.  My eyes started stinging immediately as well and stayed that way until I got inside again at the hotel.  I hope eyes can get used to that because otherwise its going to make sightseeing and transportation in Beijing uncomfortable!  Here we are with our luggage just after arrival; the others with me are Adam and Alyson; Adam is the other Fogarty scholar and Alyson is his girlfriend who is teaching English here this year.

 The hotel is very nice, if a bit quirky, as it took me 10 minutes to find the light switch when I was trying to go to bed!  It was hiding behind the nightstand, at about hip-level on the wall...interesting.  Also I have included below the first of a series (I'm sure!) of funny chinese-to-english translated signs - its understandable after a bit of scrutiny, but quite amusing!  Its also completely understandable that conjugations would be hard for Chinese people as from what I understand so far, they don't exist in Mandarin.  Its interesting seeing how other languages manifest themselves when translated into English.  This is the safety sign on the outside of the hotel shower:

Blastoff!

Well, today's the day, I can hardly believe it; I am leaving for China in a short 10 hours.  I have had a whirlwind last few days in the States, starting with a major medical licensing exam all day on Saturday, followed by a day of organizing, packing, and re-packing the luggage.  I was only slightly overweight the first time ;).  But now everything fits and as long as the airport people don't realize just exactly how heavy my carry-on duffel is, I should be good to go!  Despite grand plans to stay awake all the way to China in order to conquer the jet-lag straight-away, I didn't sleep as much as I should have for the last few nights; instead I laid awake practicing Chinese phrases, thinking about the airplane trip, hoping that our ride will in fact be at the airport at 11 pm, and generally just having racing thoughts.  I suppose nothing can cure that except arriving there!  So, I will next update you all from China!  Zijian!

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T-8

I am writing this from the desk I've appropriated in my parents' house in Kentucky, where I am spending my last two weeks states-side madly studying for a board exam. I wish that I was getting to spend more of my last days here with friends and family, as unfortunately, this desk has become a little too familiar in the last few days. But, a week from today, I will finish the Step 2 exam (with a huge sigh of relief I'm sure) and have 1 day of intense packing before heading off to Beijing, China! I will be in China for approximately 10 months, as a Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholar (FICRS), which is a program sponsored by the Fogarty International Center, one of the National Institutes of Health. I will be doing public health and epidemiology research in the area of cervical cancer at a cancer hospital in Beijing called CICAMS (Cancer Institute and Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences).

I am super-excited about my upcoming trip and will write more soon about the thoughts that I am having in the days leading up it. I plan on using this blog to both share my experiences and to reflect on them. I will also sometimes post on a blog called Four Continents of which I am a co-author (link to the side), which at the moment is an awesome narrative about my friend Katy's summer experience in Afghanistan, so feel free to follow it as well.

Zijian (goodbye) for now!