Last Class Dinner

A few days before leaving the country, I invited Lab 318 as well as a few other students out for dinner at a nearby restaurant. I had informed the restaurant a few days earlier that I would bring a group of about 30 students so they set aside a few tables and made one long one.


The whole group except for a few people who had to leave early.

We had a really great dinner which, because it was in China, only cost about AUS$100 for the whole meal. Afterwards, we all went to KTV. Eventually I had to go to start packing and so I said goodbye to everyone many times and went forth. On the way home, I went with a friend for a drive around Hangzhou one last time. The driver took us to a temple we had never visited at the edge of the large river to the south of the city.


Blake, Eric, and I at KTV

Christmas in Hangzhou

For me, a significant part of being somewhere for a year is spending Christmas there. This was in fact the first Christmas without my family but that did not affect much. The Chinese love to celebrate, so there were decorations and seasonal songs in every store. The Koreans from the international dorms are also really into Christmas so we ended up having Christmas dinner all together at an Indian restaurant. We chose this place because everywhere else was either booked out or far too expensive for Christmas. Places were marking up to 600 RMB per person. At the Indian restaurant, which is usually quite busy, there were no other customers and we had a private room to ourselves.


West Lake on Christmas day.

After lunch, we walked around West Lake to one of the many Haagen Dazs icecream stores to have dessert. We had fondue with seasonal ice cream. Following this, the Koreans had to return home, so it was just me and 3 other Australians. We decided to take a trip on a boat around the lake which was quite lovely.

Later that night, we all went to a Christmas concert at the Hangzhou Grand Theater and then to a coffee shop downtown. At the end of the day everyone was tired. It was a good Christmas.

Qian Dao Hu

The Lake of A Thousand Islands, or Qian Dao Hu, is in a remote part of the extended Hangzhou city and takes about 3 hours to get to by bus. I went there over a long weekend with a friend, because everyone had told me it was a worthwhile trip. The township gets its name from a lake which forms part of its coastline, which has many small islands. However, they say in reality it is closer to a few hundred than to one thousand islands.



We arrived in mid morning and while taking lunch, 2 Chinese girls began to converse with us. They then offered to show us around town a little, an invitation we eagerly accepted because we had no idea what was what. They took us the the edge of the lake and showed us to a place where we could book day tours around some of the many islands. Then we walked back though the city to the other side of town where there was another coast of the lake. This area was like a large city square surrounded by shops. At the time, there were people but it was not crowded.

The girls left us, and my friend and I walked for a while only to run into one of the girls for a second time. She invited us to her house where her mother made boiled pork for us. Later that night, we went back to the city square with her. Now it was buzzing with life. People were renting out roller skates and there was a lot of other activity. My friend partook in this while I saw to some emergency work in an internet cafe. One of my classmates needed some help in writing some documentation for a few projects we were working on.

Later that evening, we went to the lake's edge and watched a beautiful fountain show. Fountain shows are quite popular in China but this was probably the nicest I have seen. They used lights underwater to colour it and had remote-controlled spray heads to achieve interesting patterns. It went on and on without repeating for quite some time.



The next day, we took a day tour around the lake to a number of the more major islands. They catered well for tourists of our calibre and provided a lot of interesting things to look at. There were monkeys, snakes, ostriches (which you could ride for 10RMB) as well as a mountain cable car that went up to a look out, each on their own island. It was very beautiful and had some of the clearest water I had seen in Chinese lakes.



The following day, which was our last, we went to the other side of the lake to see a activity park. It was ridiculously expensive so we just walked around before hitching a boat ride back to the main island. On the way home, I fell ill with a cold. I think there is some sort of trend here. Perhaps if I go traveling I should not return home, to avoid sickness.

Please view my extended gallery of this trip.

Qian Dao Hu

Da Zai

The view out my window.

From Yangshuo, we went to Guilin where we booked a train ride to Kunming for a few days later. We left Guilin the same afternoon to a small village high in the mountains called Da Zai. To get there, we had to take a bus along a series of mountainous dirt roads, but because there had recently been a lot of big storms many parts of the road were missing. These were in the process of being replaced by men working to repair them and there were piles of dirt and rocks that had fallen.

We eventually got there and on leaving the bus, we were confronted by a crowd of old women who wanted to carry our bags. We told them that would not be necessary and we were happy to carry them ourselves. It turned out this was a pretty stupid thing to do because although they told us it was only a simple 20 minute walk to the place we would stay they did not mention that it was actually 30 minutes and involved climbing over several mountains and many hundreds of stone stairs. During this process, one of my friends nearly passed out as we were carrying quite a lot of stuff. When we eventually reached the top, we were given rooms with amazing views. We walked around that afternoon and I ran into some pony problems on the mountainside.


Pony Problems. It was hogging the pathway. To my right is a steep drop off.

The next day, Jenny (one of the friends I had been traveling with) and I got up early and looked at the sun as it rose. It was quite nice but very small and way too early in the morning so when we returned to the guest house we both fell back asleep. In the next two days, we walked up and down the big mountain as little as possible, it was just too big and steep. Nevertheless, we did go down to the village below and tried to swim in a small creek. It was a bit too cold and because I had only recently been deathly ill, I decided I should not get cold.


These are local women showing us things they would like to sell us.

The local people were quite cool, although some of them spent a little too much time trying to sell things to me. They listened to really great music but sadly, I did not get any recordings. On other interesting thing here was that around mid-afternoon we would be asked what we wanted for dinner - chicken or pig. They would then kill the appropriate creature to make us a meal. At one of these meals I gave in to the efforts of one of the locals and bought 2 plain silver bracelets.


This is me on my way down. Yes, I am carrying a freshly tailored suit. I did not think that through so well.

During our stay, we found a much quicker method of descent, so on our last day we used this instead of the route that had originally been taken. We caught the bus back to Guilin where we stayed one night for one night before leaving by train the next morning.

Guilin seemed to be quite an average city so I do not have any pictures. When we went to pick up our train tickets, it seemed quite likely that the agency we had asked to book us a ticket had run away with our money. In the end, they turned up with tickets for a later train and we set off to Kunming, a 21 hour trek on a "hard sleeper" train that had no airconditioning, even though it was a 40°C+ day. However, the trip wasn't too bad and we had quite an interesting time.

Here is a collection of images from my stay at Da Zai

Da Zai

Luckily I was in room 11. 11 is my favourite number.

Yangshuo

Pretty nice view I think. Lots of little mountains.

Our first stop in our travels was Yangshuo, a small tourist city in Guang Xi province. It ended up being a 12 hour trip by bus - it was made longer because some of the roads that they would usually have taken were washed out by the typhoons a few days earlier. The bus we took was a sleeper bus, which meant that instead of seats, they had rows of bunk beds. The trip was quite good, although the beds were not quite as long as I'd hoped. Sadly, my phone was running out of power so it beeped a lot and I needed it on so I could stay in contact with Fan’s travel guide friend, Richard. Also, I had a temperature of 39°C for the whole night and was feeling a little sick.


Inches from death. Or at least a little sick.

When we arrived early the next morning, Richard met us and showed us around. He also showed me to a barefoot doctor, as my high temperature and illness were becoming an issue. The doctor looked at my tongue and gave me a poisonous drink with twigs that I was to drink 3 times a day for the next 2 days. She also said that if my temperature was not down by later that evening, I would need an antibiotic drip and some Chinese medicine energy solution. By that afternoon, I was beginning to feel better so I went for a boat ride with my other 3 friends to see some of the the famous mountains of the area. However, I began to feel unwell again by the end of the boat ride. When one of my friends went back to the doctor's place to pick up the rest of my medicine, the doctor was alarmed enough at my symptoms that she caught a motorbike back to my hotel room with my friend so that she could examine me in person. She determined that I was still too sick and that I would need a drip. (In China, drips are the preferred form of medicine for anything ranging from a cold to impending death.)

Her establishment could not offer such services, so we went to the establishment of a friend of hers from university, who specialised in drips and more Western medicine. This drip room was a small shop that opened out directly onto the street. They gave me the drip and complementary grapes.

That night, I sweated so much I had to change shirts many times and used every one of the shirts I had brought. The next morning, I felt a lot better and went for a bike ride to a place called Moon Mountain and then climbed it.

Moon Mountain was about an hour’s bike ride from the city. The mountain gets its name from a huge hole through the middle. They say that in the distance from every angle it looks like the moon at a different part of its cycle. In any case, we climbed first to the hole and then to the ridge above the hole. There were old ladies selling bottles of water at the top who were in much better shape than us. We were quite exhausted and they were casually running up and down the mountain with styrofoam freezers full of chilled water and juice. After that, we descended and returned to the city.


One of my friends Kayaking.

The next day, we went kayaking with Richard’s brother which was great fun except that we got exceptionally sunburnt and one of my friends ran into a tree, flipping her kayak and almost losing her camera in the water. The other friend who was with her had to jump in the river to retrieve the waterproof bag. He was very anxious to do this as it held his camera as well as hers.

On the way back from kayaking, we say a truck that had fallen off a small dirt road into a rice field. We had to wait while a crane lifted it back onto the road. This was quite cool and it was really interesting to see how the people dealt with such an occurrence. It was certainly treated a lot more casually than I imagine it would have been in a Western country. But perhaps that is because that kind of thing happens more often there.

That evening, we went to Richard’s house for cooking lessons. It was quite fun, although I think I will not open a restaurant just yet. We also got Richard advice on how to precede with our travels and where to go next. He was very helpful.

Here is a small collection of photos from my stay in Yangshuo.

Yangshuo

Heading South

These are the friends that saw me off as I left Hangzhou. Younghee's Boyfriend, Younghee and Shemmy.

After returning from Beijing, I left my ATM card in Shanghai Airport and spent a long week back in Hangzhou preparing to head south. I was to go to a place called Zhongshan where the family of a friend of mine was from. We would stay there for about a week before starting off on an extended travel though mid-China.

Zhongshan was a rather small village but quite a nice place to rest as my foot was still healing. I was staying at the house of a friend's grandfather and essentially every day after Yum Cha, he would go off to play Mahjong for the rest of the day. We had a nice time not doing to much for a change.

After a few days it was getting rather close to my 21st Birthday so we across to Hong Kong. We would return to Zhongshan a few days later before meeting other friends and leaving for our travels.

Recovering from Tea

Eventually, I started really getting better and the doctors asked my to start putting weight on the burnt leg again so that the skin would learn to stretch properly.

After another week, I returned to the lab and I could walk short distances. I had trouble walking for too long and would often need to sit down after a while. I also had to wear a compression bandage for the next 4 months.

I was happy to have lived through it and started to realise some nice things about the odd hospitals they have in China. They are very casual and very to-the-point. They do not waste too much time on paperwork and medicine and treatment is generally very, very cheap.

As I had spent the previous three weeks not walking and essentially lying in bed, I have a few photos of my typical days' viewing. The ceiling, my desk, a wall…

I was very excited when I had skin on my leg again, and even more so when I could actually start walking.

Actually Finding a Burns Hospital

A week and 3 days after my burn, one of my classmates, Blake, offered to accompany me to the hospital. He got a taxi to come to the back door of the dorm although they are not usually allowed inside the university, I hopped down the stairs and into the cab and we set off. As we pulled out of the university the driver asked where we were to go. I said the name of the hospital from the day before - the one with the microwave for human flesh - but Blake thought that was not a good idea. He then talked with the driver about which other hospitals were okay. There was a burns specific hospital however it was a long way away. In the end the driver said he would take us there anyway.

Eventually we arrived and I was seen rather quickly. They were shocked at the prior treatment and said that it had been treated as a much smaller, less serious burn and that I would need a skin graft. They then debrided the wound, which includes removing all the dead skin and flesh - in this case, skin and flesh that had started to heal incorrectly. This hurt quite a lot. They then washed my wound and dressed it. Again the pain had changed and become more evident so I was a lot more on edge. When everything was done I hopped out to wait for a taxi back home.

I returned two days later. They opened the wrapping and started to wash the wound as before. This time, however, after washing it the first time, they poured alcohol over it to ensure it would not get infected. There was no warning and it was quite painful, perhaps the most painful part of the whole experience. After that they rewrapped it and we talked about healing times. They expected it to take a while - 5 weeks to a few months without a skin graft and only 2 or 3 weeks with a graft.

My parents were still worried about this whole thing and to add to the confusion they were travelling separately in different parts of the world so communications were poor. They were trying to find out if someone could give us an idea of whether I needed a graft or not and how it should be dealt with generally. Our doctor friends in the States and Australia agreed that it was being dealt with well and that it would probably heal without a graft although a graft would speed things up. They thought if they were treating it they would not graft because there were still visible hair follicles in the photos I had sent. This meant the skin had somewhere to start growing from.

I went back to the hospital every two days for a few weeks eventually to find that it was improving rather well so the doctors said I did need not a skin graft. I was, however, still not walking and was hopping everywhere instead. In China they do not give you crutches or wheelchairs unless you really need them. The burns hospital was filled with patients who were hopping around because they had burnt part of their legs or feet.

Because the hospital I was going to now was more burns-oriented, there were more burn victims and everytime I went, I would see young and old with burns more serious than mine. It was also surprising to see that, on ocassion, a woman with child who had been scalded all over and was screaming continously would be ignored and made to wait until the doctor had free time, even if he wasn't dealing with anything particularly urgent at the time.

This is a small library of images from my legs recovery

Spilt Tea

Finding a Burns Hospital

The day after being burnt, I returned to the school hospital. This time, I was just accompanied by a western friend who could only speak some Chinese. This did not turn out to be a problem and the nurse redressed my wound. The next day, I was to redress the wound myself as that part of the hospital would be shut so she gave me the appropriate materials. This also went to plan. The following day, Monday, I returned to the hospital and the same procedure whet forth. At the time she expected me to be healed in about 2 weeks. A few days went passed following the same pattern. On the Thursday of that week however she scowled at my gamy leg and sent me to see a doctor who said I had an infection and that I would need antibiotics. They then redressed my wound and gave me a prescription to take to the drip room, a room full of sick people connected to drips hanging from metal hooks in the ceiling. It went on like this for a few days.

In the meantime, I was not going to the lab as I could not concentrate very well and I was still shaking from the shock. I was eating okay and have a few friends who were eager to take care of me while I was less inclined to walk. To avoid staying in my room all the time I went to a few relaxed places around Hangzhou and went on my first boat ride there. I was so ill at the time that I spent most of the trip sleeping or at least in an immobile state.

After 3 days of penicillin, I decided it might be a good idea to search for a English speaking doctor at a different local hospital. This proved an interesting effort because although when I arrived at the hospital I was was seen to immediately ahead of the other 20 or so people waiting for attention, I was not led to see someone who actually spoke English. Instead I was taken to a doctor experienced in another area who could speak about 10 words of English. He said that the previous hospital had been using a drug that was too weak and gave me a stronger antibiotic. He also prescribed something he called microwave treatment. This involved placing something like a griller near my leg. It then made my leg feel really hot as though it was re-burning it. I think to some degree this is what it was doing but I think the object of the device was to dry the wound. As well as this I was asked to stop walking on that foot. So the hopping began. At any rate it hurt quite a lot and that evening I called people from the lab to ask if they could accompany me the next day to ensure we were all on the same page.

At the same time I had told my parents and started they had contacted a few doctor friends. I had sent a few pictures home and they had been comparing notes. No-one seemed to know anything about this microwave thing but they said medicine in China was older than the most western medicine so perhaps it was quite an effective method. I also heard from the supervisor of one of my friends from UTS that when she she scalded her foot in China a few years ago, she was also given this microwave treatment.

Hangzhou CBD

Downtown Hangzhou is a series of long shopping streets that seem to be always populated and bustling. Although it has its share of restaurants and other food vendors, most shops are fashion or sports goods in this area.

At the south of the main CBD, there is a traditional street (Hefang Jie) that sells a lot of old wares and has some famous tea houses. Further north and closer to the lake, there is a more expensive area that has some of the better brands as well as more restaurants and hangout spots. There are clubs and other night culture venues throughout the central city, although we did not go to these much as ZJU students were rarely interested in them. As well as stores, they had what people called 'the markets' which are enclosed alleyways in some building that were full of tiny shops and often very crowded. Many of these would extend under the ground a few floors and above ground 5 or 6 floors. They would be full of many kinds of fashion products and accessories and bargaining is expected. The target market is generally girls under twenty five; however, most of the larger facilities catered for a larger demographic.

Throughout my stay I often walked through the central streets of the city to go shopping or to find a new restaurant. However, most things available did not suit or fit appropriately. For obvious reasons, shoes that fit me are not common in China. However, while I was there, I did find some that were too big and I eventually bought a pair in the CBD, although they have proved to not be too comfortable. I think they have culture on their side because they need not create fitting options for more than a few races of Chinese.

Yu Mao Qiu

In China, most people play some kind of sport and often they will ask you to join them. The most popular sports are table tennis, badminton, soccer, tennis and basketball in no particular order.

When I first went to China, I had only ever played soccer out of these sports but relatively quickly I was being called upon by my Chinese and international friends to join them in playing various sports. I am quite frightened of balls in general so I never participated in soccer or tennis and only once in basketball, but I gradually became able to make returns and eventually play volleys in ping pong and badminton.

In badminton, I have a large advantage because I am not that short and neither are my arms, so I can avoid the usual running around and just stand in the middle of the court. In ping pong I have the same properties, but it turns out that they are a disadvantage in this sport. I am too tall, so getting low enough to really gauge the ball's movement is a little tough. As I was playing with my lab mates one day, one of them, Dr. Yao, insisted that I lower my stance and instantly I found I improved immeasurably. I went on to beat him once or twice as well as a number of the other people in the lab.

On another note badminton in Chinese is "yu mao qiu", which literally translates to "feather ball". I think that is a pretty nice name.