The spread of HIV/AIDS in China is extremely different from other countries. Besides the normal methods of transmission - intravenous drug use (IVDU), tainted blood transfusions and unprotected sex - many poor villagers contracted HIV in the 90s by selling blood. This occurred in the Central China region (which includes Anhui province). In Central China, the infection rates have stabilized since selling blood is now banned. However, in the IVDU regions, the disease is spreading due to the sharing of tainted needles.
Yunnan Province in southern China, which shares a border with Myanmar, is a region where IVDU is a serious problem. Much of the border is completely porous - no guards, fences or anything. Just walk across the street. As a result, a lot of drugs flow into China from Myanmar. Once in Yunnan, the drug travels to Guangxi Province next door and into rest of country. On average, 50% of the IVDU drug users in Yunnan are HIV+, a staggering figure.
We flew to Lincang, a small town high up in the mountains yesterday morning, and did some patient consultations at the local hospital. The infection rate among intravenous drug users here is approximately 70%. Unlike our other sites, where we only saw Pediatric patients, here, we saw adult patients too, many of whom contracted the virus from unsafe needle use. Today, we visited an IVDU Detention Center where drug users were incarcerated to provide patient consultations. 90+% of the inmates here are HIV+. It was a truly depressing experience. Inmates live 15 to a cell. The thin mattresses they slept on were lined up one next to another on the ground. There were no beds. The cells are located around an outdoor courtyard and the metal bars on the door provide no protection against the elements. They put up a cover of some sort over the bars in the winter. Food is passed to them through a small window on the outside door. It is such a sad existence.
We took a tour of the detention center. We walked on a platform above the cells and looked down into them. One of the inmates saw us and said - "welcome to the zoo." And he is not far off. That was exactly how it felt. These people were locked up behind bars and we were observing them from afar. It felt rather voyeuristic. The inmates are there for a year and then released, but many of them end up back there again. Only 2-3 inmates out of a hundred stay off drugs for any meaningful length of time. It just shows you how strong drug addictions can be. The fear of returning to a place that is so dehumanizing does not seem to trouble most of these people.
The staff at the hospital visit the detention center and provide care to the patients several times a week. All patients who need ARV receives it for free. I'm glad the Chinese government is trying to treat them. They've even opened up methodone clinics. The consequences of ignoring the problem is too great since this is the major cause of the spread of HIV in China today. Figuring out how to help these people will be key to limiting the spread of the disease in the future.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Mid-Autumn Moon Festival
Since arriving in China a bit over a month ago, people everywhere have been carrying around boxes of moon cakes and giving them as presents for mid-autumn moon festival, which took place tonight (we did see the full moon, but it was a cloudy night, so the moon was mostly obscured). It’s a day you’re supposed to spend at home with the family but I was on the road for work in Yunnan Province (not that I have family here). The whole ritual is one that I find rather wasteful since the moon cakes all come in elaborate boxes and packaging that is thrown out afterwards and I swear no one actually eats all the moon cakes that they receive. How can you when you get boxes and boxes of that stuff?
I’m generally not a fan of moon cakes (except for the ones made from mochi and ice cream called “snow cakes” in Taiwan – those are delicious). I find them way too heavy and sweet, and really dislike the egg yolks in the middle of the pastry. However, the interesting thing about moon cakes in China is the sheer variety you can find. In the U.S., there is basically one kind – there’s some kind of sweet paste (like lotus paste or red bean paste) and egg yolks (sometimes as many as 4 per moon cake). But here, it seems like every province has a specialty. In Guangxi, the moon cakes are filled with spicy beef (did not actually try them). In Beijing, I sampled a type of moon cake that sort of just looked like a huge pie without filling (rather bland and tasteless but supposedly the earliest type of moon cake), as well as a bunch of moon cakes with different flavors more closely resembling the American kind, but less sweet and without egg yolk. In Pingyao, I tried the local “hand-made moon cake” which is flat and hollow, with just a bit of sweet paste inside. In Yunnan Province, the moon cakes are filled with a local ham mixed with egg yolk and sugar (didn’t really taste like ham). It’s been interesting trying all the varieties, but still not a huge fan.
There’s a box of moon cakes waiting for me in Beijing – a gift from the office. It was really sweet of them, but I doubt I’ll be able to finish them. Oh well. It's just all part of the cultural experience.
I’m generally not a fan of moon cakes (except for the ones made from mochi and ice cream called “snow cakes” in Taiwan – those are delicious). I find them way too heavy and sweet, and really dislike the egg yolks in the middle of the pastry. However, the interesting thing about moon cakes in China is the sheer variety you can find. In the U.S., there is basically one kind – there’s some kind of sweet paste (like lotus paste or red bean paste) and egg yolks (sometimes as many as 4 per moon cake). But here, it seems like every province has a specialty. In Guangxi, the moon cakes are filled with spicy beef (did not actually try them). In Beijing, I sampled a type of moon cake that sort of just looked like a huge pie without filling (rather bland and tasteless but supposedly the earliest type of moon cake), as well as a bunch of moon cakes with different flavors more closely resembling the American kind, but less sweet and without egg yolk. In Pingyao, I tried the local “hand-made moon cake” which is flat and hollow, with just a bit of sweet paste inside. In Yunnan Province, the moon cakes are filled with a local ham mixed with egg yolk and sugar (didn’t really taste like ham). It’s been interesting trying all the varieties, but still not a huge fan.
There’s a box of moon cakes waiting for me in Beijing – a gift from the office. It was really sweet of them, but I doubt I’ll be able to finish them. Oh well. It's just all part of the cultural experience.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Site Visits
I spent the week traveling with my team and a Pediatric AIDS expert (Herb) from the U.S. to various sites doing patient consultation. So far, we have been to two different provinces – Guangxi and Anhui. Guangxi is a region with rising HIV infection rates since it is along the drug route and intravenous drug use is widespread along the border with Myanmar. Anhui is a Central China province (the area of China where villagers sold their blood for money) that also happens to be one of the poorest in China. To say the experience has been eye-opening would be an understatement. Learning about how doctors treat HIV patients in resource-limited situations and watching them in action has been an incredible experience. The week has been an emotional rollercoaster though. I spent quite a bit of time playing the role of social worker, comforting care-takers (parents, grandparents and other relatives) and children alike, trying to give them hope and bring a smile to their faces. I have heard heartbreaking stories about how these people got HIV, and seen so many babies and precocious kids that have suffered way too much in their short lives.
The Chinese government provides anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to all Chinese HIV+ patients free of charge, assuming the patients can be found. All the pediatric formulations are donated to China by the Clinton Foundation, courtesy of a grant from UNITAID. The goal is to get 100,000 children on treatment worldwide by the end of the year. Even in the United States, not everyone has access to free ARV drugs, so I was pleasantly surprised. But as I have learned, access to free drugs does not necessarily lead to a successful patient treatment program, especially when it comes to children. China currently has less than a thousand children on treatment.
Admittedly, I knew almost nothing about HIV/AIDS when I accepted the position of Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program Officer, and I did not know a whole lot more when I arrived in Beijing a month ago to start work. I am still developing my knowledge, reading as much as I can about the disease and its treatment, including the WHO and UNICEF guidelines. After seeing dozens of HIV+ children, many just babies, I asked Herb what the average life expectancy of these children is, and his response was “what’s the life expectancy of an average Chinese person?” Advances in medical science has yielded a number of drugs, with even better ones coming down the pipeline, that makes it possible for HIV+ people to live full lives, something that was unimaginable even a decade ago. But much of this depends on drug adherence, and proper storage and administration of the drugs. These affected children depend on the adults in their life to help them with all three.
However, for every child who has a caring care-taker, there is an orphan or a child who has been abandoned by the adults in his/her life. Two days ago, I met a child who had been left at a train station. Another child had no one to take care of him – his father was a gambler, his mother had died of the disease, his grandmother just developed cancer and his stepmother wanted to leave him at an orphanage (but orphanages won’t take children who are HIV+ and have a living parent). Luckily for the first child, they managed to find him a foster home, where an old grandmother has done an extremely good job of caring for 4 HIV+ children. All of these kids were doing well, appeared healthy and were as happy as can be. Their drugs have successfully kept their disease at bay and under control. But the second boy looked forlorn (who can blame him??), was dirty, has no one to give him his drugs on a regular basis and receives absolutely no adult love or attention. Even his doctor did not bother to show up for the consultation. As a result of his poor drug adherence, he is likely to develop resistance to his drugs very quickly and the virus will have the opportunity to take over and, in the worse-case scenario, kill him. I wanted to cry. This is just one example, and of course, the problem is not limited to China. The stigma these children face is huge regardless of location. It is truly heartbreaking.
Poor adherence has led to serious drug resistance in many of the children. We worked until 1am last night trying to figure out what 2nd line drugs we can potentially give a group of children with multiple drug resistance. After listening to the experts talk and helping with translations, I now have a pretty good knowledge of the 1s and 2nd line drugs available. There are fewer drugs available to children than adults and several of the children have few options left. While my hope is that all these children will hang in there and pull through, some of them are in really bad shape, and the future does not look promising for them.
Even in cases where the parents care, many of them don’t have a refrigerator to properly store the medicine. One of the drugs, d4T suspension, requires refrigeration, but in Guangxi (in Southern China), where the temperatures can easily exceed 100 degrees in the summer, only one family we saw at the clinic owned a refrigerator at home (we saw approximately 3 dozen there). We are trying to donate fixed dose combination (FDC) drugs in the future, that combine the 3-drug cocktails into one small pill which would not require refrigeration. By making it easier to take the drugs and to store it, we hope to improve adherence and give more children the opportunity to live to adulthood. The suspensions are also supposed to taste terrible (they make some people drink it to understand why it is difficult to get small children to take their medicine, but I have not had to do that), a problem the FDCs will also resolve.
Many of the children were also malnourished since they come from poor farming families that still reside in rural villages far away from urban centers. Some of the children had to travel 9 hours just to get to the provincial clinic (they normally see their local doctors – but their training and experience is likely more limited). We are looking into whether Chinese children will like “plumpinut” – a peanut butter-like high-calorie nutritional supplement for kids. I had given out some chocolate to the kids during the consultations – for many of them, it was the first time they had tasted chocolate – and they loved it. Hopefully the kids will like plumpinut too so we can donate some to China to help combat malnutrition.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about why the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS is so great. HIV/AIDS children are not allowed in orphanages and many hospitals won’t admit them into care. Some restaurants won’t let them eat there. There are other deadly diseases but people don’t seem to fear it as much. Is it just fear of getting the disease? Is it ignorance about how it is spread? We had to do one consultation secretly at night – 5 orphans with HIV live in a foster home in an apartment building where none of their neighbors knew about their condition. They will get kicked out if anyone found out.
One of the kids I just saw today has a cleft palate, and I am hoping that I can either find an organization to give her cleft palate surgery, or raise enough money to get her the surgery for free. If anyone knows of an organization or wants to help, please let me know.
I have another week of site visits. We’re going to Yunnan Province next, and then heading to help Sichuan Province with their ARV Training for local doctors. We’ve worked throughout the weekend and traveling from site to site has been exhausting, but truly, truly rewarding.
The Chinese government provides anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to all Chinese HIV+ patients free of charge, assuming the patients can be found. All the pediatric formulations are donated to China by the Clinton Foundation, courtesy of a grant from UNITAID. The goal is to get 100,000 children on treatment worldwide by the end of the year. Even in the United States, not everyone has access to free ARV drugs, so I was pleasantly surprised. But as I have learned, access to free drugs does not necessarily lead to a successful patient treatment program, especially when it comes to children. China currently has less than a thousand children on treatment.
Admittedly, I knew almost nothing about HIV/AIDS when I accepted the position of Pediatric HIV/AIDS Program Officer, and I did not know a whole lot more when I arrived in Beijing a month ago to start work. I am still developing my knowledge, reading as much as I can about the disease and its treatment, including the WHO and UNICEF guidelines. After seeing dozens of HIV+ children, many just babies, I asked Herb what the average life expectancy of these children is, and his response was “what’s the life expectancy of an average Chinese person?” Advances in medical science has yielded a number of drugs, with even better ones coming down the pipeline, that makes it possible for HIV+ people to live full lives, something that was unimaginable even a decade ago. But much of this depends on drug adherence, and proper storage and administration of the drugs. These affected children depend on the adults in their life to help them with all three.
However, for every child who has a caring care-taker, there is an orphan or a child who has been abandoned by the adults in his/her life. Two days ago, I met a child who had been left at a train station. Another child had no one to take care of him – his father was a gambler, his mother had died of the disease, his grandmother just developed cancer and his stepmother wanted to leave him at an orphanage (but orphanages won’t take children who are HIV+ and have a living parent). Luckily for the first child, they managed to find him a foster home, where an old grandmother has done an extremely good job of caring for 4 HIV+ children. All of these kids were doing well, appeared healthy and were as happy as can be. Their drugs have successfully kept their disease at bay and under control. But the second boy looked forlorn (who can blame him??), was dirty, has no one to give him his drugs on a regular basis and receives absolutely no adult love or attention. Even his doctor did not bother to show up for the consultation. As a result of his poor drug adherence, he is likely to develop resistance to his drugs very quickly and the virus will have the opportunity to take over and, in the worse-case scenario, kill him. I wanted to cry. This is just one example, and of course, the problem is not limited to China. The stigma these children face is huge regardless of location. It is truly heartbreaking.
Poor adherence has led to serious drug resistance in many of the children. We worked until 1am last night trying to figure out what 2nd line drugs we can potentially give a group of children with multiple drug resistance. After listening to the experts talk and helping with translations, I now have a pretty good knowledge of the 1s and 2nd line drugs available. There are fewer drugs available to children than adults and several of the children have few options left. While my hope is that all these children will hang in there and pull through, some of them are in really bad shape, and the future does not look promising for them.
Even in cases where the parents care, many of them don’t have a refrigerator to properly store the medicine. One of the drugs, d4T suspension, requires refrigeration, but in Guangxi (in Southern China), where the temperatures can easily exceed 100 degrees in the summer, only one family we saw at the clinic owned a refrigerator at home (we saw approximately 3 dozen there). We are trying to donate fixed dose combination (FDC) drugs in the future, that combine the 3-drug cocktails into one small pill which would not require refrigeration. By making it easier to take the drugs and to store it, we hope to improve adherence and give more children the opportunity to live to adulthood. The suspensions are also supposed to taste terrible (they make some people drink it to understand why it is difficult to get small children to take their medicine, but I have not had to do that), a problem the FDCs will also resolve.
Many of the children were also malnourished since they come from poor farming families that still reside in rural villages far away from urban centers. Some of the children had to travel 9 hours just to get to the provincial clinic (they normally see their local doctors – but their training and experience is likely more limited). We are looking into whether Chinese children will like “plumpinut” – a peanut butter-like high-calorie nutritional supplement for kids. I had given out some chocolate to the kids during the consultations – for many of them, it was the first time they had tasted chocolate – and they loved it. Hopefully the kids will like plumpinut too so we can donate some to China to help combat malnutrition.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about why the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS is so great. HIV/AIDS children are not allowed in orphanages and many hospitals won’t admit them into care. Some restaurants won’t let them eat there. There are other deadly diseases but people don’t seem to fear it as much. Is it just fear of getting the disease? Is it ignorance about how it is spread? We had to do one consultation secretly at night – 5 orphans with HIV live in a foster home in an apartment building where none of their neighbors knew about their condition. They will get kicked out if anyone found out.
One of the kids I just saw today has a cleft palate, and I am hoping that I can either find an organization to give her cleft palate surgery, or raise enough money to get her the surgery for free. If anyone knows of an organization or wants to help, please let me know.
I have another week of site visits. We’re going to Yunnan Province next, and then heading to help Sichuan Province with their ARV Training for local doctors. We’ve worked throughout the weekend and traveling from site to site has been exhausting, but truly, truly rewarding.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Shanxi Province
For my first site visit in China for work, I had the opportunity to visit a children's AIDS hospital in Linfen in Shanxi Province with our Global Peds Director, who was in China for a visit, and the China Peds Manager. Shanxi is a major mining region and its biggest export is coal, followed by vinegar. The mines in the area has caused heavy pollution. As a result, Linfen has the dubious honor of being the most polluted city in China. Linfen, Taiyuan (the capital where we flew to) and Pingyao (where I visited an ancient Ming-dynasty city) all seem constantly cloaked in fog, except its not innocuous fog blanketing those cities, it's pollution. During the 3-hour drive from Taiyuan to Linfen, we passed by multiple quarries. Dug deep into the ground, they looked like massive green and yellow mountains with steps on the side. They are actually quite a sight to behold. We saw coal being hauled in small trucks everywhere.
According to the Global Peds Director, the hospital we visited is one of the nicest children's HIV/AIDS she has visited. In addition to medical facilities for the patients, there is an elementary school. Through a donation they received, they were able to purchase instruments for the children, and we caught them during music class. They performed a dance and played their instruments for us. It was absolutely adorable. There are also dorm rooms for the children and a vegetable and flower garden. They are also building apartment-like facilities for the patient's relatives to stay in when they visit. The whole thing was very well-thought out. The whole facility only serves a handful of patients at the moment, but they are thinking of expanding it to serve the entire community.
Besides coal mines, Shanxi is famous for its vinegar and its noodles. They make over 100 different kinds of noodles here. During lunch post-site visit, we tried 8 different kinds of noodles, including cat's ear (a pasta-like noodle shaped like cat's ear) that is a Shanxi specialty. My favorites include a sauteed noodle with vegetable called "knife sliced noodle" and a noodle that was shaped like a shell and cooked with a bit of vegetable and shrimp. Knife sliced noodle is a noodle made by using a knife to slice thin slivers from a big chunk of dough. We added a bit of vinegar to all the noodles we tried. The people of Shanxi are extremely proud of their vinegar and insist that everything tastes better with it. One little boy I met a couple of weeks ago, whose father was from Shanxi province originally told me that he didn't want to visit America because the food would be bad since there would be no vinegar. I found that really cute and funny. Trying to explain that we do have vinegar in America did not really work. In addition to eating just about everything with their vinegar, the women also insist that it does wonders for your skin (even the doctor told us that!). I bought some back to Beijing with me (but just to use with food, not for any type of beauty treatment).
Rather than coming straight back to Beijing, I took the opportunity to stay in Shanxi for an extra day to visit Pingyao. Pingyao is an interesting mix of old and new. Pingyao contains a city within a city. The ancient city of Pingyao, which is completely surrounded by an intact Ming-dynasty wall (supposedly the last remaining in China), is a charming little area with hundreds of old buildings featuring Ming-dyansty era architecture complete with courtyards located inside Pingyao - a relatively modern city. It feels like you have stepped straight into the past (except for the throngs of tourists). Even my hotel had a small but beautiful courtyard and my room featured a Ming-style bed, which looks like a platform with bedding on top of it. Most of the city is extremely well-preserved, but some of the less touristy parts are crumbling. Through the doorways of some houses and in the smaller alleys less frequented, you can see buildings that are falling apart, although some are being renovated.
Pingyao used to be a financial center and a thriving merchant town in the Ming and Qing dynasties. I visited several old banks and former residences of wealthy financiers, as well as a few temples. Many of the banks and residences are like mini-cities inside. Some have hundreds of rooms surrounding several courtyards, all enclosed within its own set of walls on the outside. The architecture of the buildings were all pretty similar, so it felt repetitive after a while, although they were all quite beautiful. One of the most interesting complex was the ancient government buildings. A vast maze of courtyards and rooms, it featured a cool photography exhibit on some of its walls.
The modes of transporation in Pingyao was really varied. There were donkey carts, bicycles, mopeds, big golf-cart like things serving as taxis, tricycles, trucks with only three wheels, cars, etc. I rented a bicycle early this morning and biked to Shuanglin Temple, approximately 7km from the ancient city. Every time I ride a bike, I still feel a sense of trepidation because I'm terrible at it, and I hate riding on streets congested with vehicles of all kinds coming at you from every direction. I was relieved when I found it. There were few visitors when I arrived but there were dozens of art students from Xian making clay sculptures. Shuanglin Temple is known for its clay sculptures but time has really washed out the colors of the scultpures and most of them were enclosed behind a cage-like barrier, which really detracted from the experience. While I was there, a monk started talking to me and decided to tell me my fortune. He claims I will have an unhappy marriage. Talk about incentive to stay single. Most of the stuff he said about my past were completely off (was not sick last September and no one in my family was sick either) and I am not really superstitious so I'll let the comment slide.
I stopped by the Qiao Family Courtyard House, the site where Zhang Zimou's film Raise the Red Lantern was filmed, on the way back to Taiyuan. The guy who built it was a wealthy merchant in the Ming or Qing Dynasty. I remember watching the movie back in high school and thinking that the buildings were gorgeous so I was excited to see the place in person. To get there, I had my first China long-distance bus experience. There was no schedule, which was kind of frustrating - the buses leave only when they are full - so I ended up wasting almost an hour sitting on the bus. When I finally made it there, it was like a zoo. There were requisite red lanterns hung all throughout the main corridor of the house as I had expected, but there were also dozens of tour groups packing the place, following tour guides holding flags and talking into microphones or megaphones. There were masses of people everywhere. It was total chaos. The place is big, but not that big so I quickly walked around and got out of there.
Getting back to Taiyuan from there was my sketchy bus experience #2 in China. I had to go across the street and flag a bus down. The bus was dirty and gross but had no choice at that point. I managed to make it back to Taiyuan without any major problems and am back in Beijing now. Here for a day and then I'm off for 3 weeks! Visiting Guangxi, Anhui, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces for work, and then going to Hubei (to see the Three Gorges) and Chongqing for October holidays. Am really excited.
According to the Global Peds Director, the hospital we visited is one of the nicest children's HIV/AIDS she has visited. In addition to medical facilities for the patients, there is an elementary school. Through a donation they received, they were able to purchase instruments for the children, and we caught them during music class. They performed a dance and played their instruments for us. It was absolutely adorable. There are also dorm rooms for the children and a vegetable and flower garden. They are also building apartment-like facilities for the patient's relatives to stay in when they visit. The whole thing was very well-thought out. The whole facility only serves a handful of patients at the moment, but they are thinking of expanding it to serve the entire community.
Besides coal mines, Shanxi is famous for its vinegar and its noodles. They make over 100 different kinds of noodles here. During lunch post-site visit, we tried 8 different kinds of noodles, including cat's ear (a pasta-like noodle shaped like cat's ear) that is a Shanxi specialty. My favorites include a sauteed noodle with vegetable called "knife sliced noodle" and a noodle that was shaped like a shell and cooked with a bit of vegetable and shrimp. Knife sliced noodle is a noodle made by using a knife to slice thin slivers from a big chunk of dough. We added a bit of vinegar to all the noodles we tried. The people of Shanxi are extremely proud of their vinegar and insist that everything tastes better with it. One little boy I met a couple of weeks ago, whose father was from Shanxi province originally told me that he didn't want to visit America because the food would be bad since there would be no vinegar. I found that really cute and funny. Trying to explain that we do have vinegar in America did not really work. In addition to eating just about everything with their vinegar, the women also insist that it does wonders for your skin (even the doctor told us that!). I bought some back to Beijing with me (but just to use with food, not for any type of beauty treatment).
Rather than coming straight back to Beijing, I took the opportunity to stay in Shanxi for an extra day to visit Pingyao. Pingyao is an interesting mix of old and new. Pingyao contains a city within a city. The ancient city of Pingyao, which is completely surrounded by an intact Ming-dynasty wall (supposedly the last remaining in China), is a charming little area with hundreds of old buildings featuring Ming-dyansty era architecture complete with courtyards located inside Pingyao - a relatively modern city. It feels like you have stepped straight into the past (except for the throngs of tourists). Even my hotel had a small but beautiful courtyard and my room featured a Ming-style bed, which looks like a platform with bedding on top of it. Most of the city is extremely well-preserved, but some of the less touristy parts are crumbling. Through the doorways of some houses and in the smaller alleys less frequented, you can see buildings that are falling apart, although some are being renovated.
Pingyao used to be a financial center and a thriving merchant town in the Ming and Qing dynasties. I visited several old banks and former residences of wealthy financiers, as well as a few temples. Many of the banks and residences are like mini-cities inside. Some have hundreds of rooms surrounding several courtyards, all enclosed within its own set of walls on the outside. The architecture of the buildings were all pretty similar, so it felt repetitive after a while, although they were all quite beautiful. One of the most interesting complex was the ancient government buildings. A vast maze of courtyards and rooms, it featured a cool photography exhibit on some of its walls.
The modes of transporation in Pingyao was really varied. There were donkey carts, bicycles, mopeds, big golf-cart like things serving as taxis, tricycles, trucks with only three wheels, cars, etc. I rented a bicycle early this morning and biked to Shuanglin Temple, approximately 7km from the ancient city. Every time I ride a bike, I still feel a sense of trepidation because I'm terrible at it, and I hate riding on streets congested with vehicles of all kinds coming at you from every direction. I was relieved when I found it. There were few visitors when I arrived but there were dozens of art students from Xian making clay sculptures. Shuanglin Temple is known for its clay sculptures but time has really washed out the colors of the scultpures and most of them were enclosed behind a cage-like barrier, which really detracted from the experience. While I was there, a monk started talking to me and decided to tell me my fortune. He claims I will have an unhappy marriage. Talk about incentive to stay single. Most of the stuff he said about my past were completely off (was not sick last September and no one in my family was sick either) and I am not really superstitious so I'll let the comment slide.
I stopped by the Qiao Family Courtyard House, the site where Zhang Zimou's film Raise the Red Lantern was filmed, on the way back to Taiyuan. The guy who built it was a wealthy merchant in the Ming or Qing Dynasty. I remember watching the movie back in high school and thinking that the buildings were gorgeous so I was excited to see the place in person. To get there, I had my first China long-distance bus experience. There was no schedule, which was kind of frustrating - the buses leave only when they are full - so I ended up wasting almost an hour sitting on the bus. When I finally made it there, it was like a zoo. There were requisite red lanterns hung all throughout the main corridor of the house as I had expected, but there were also dozens of tour groups packing the place, following tour guides holding flags and talking into microphones or megaphones. There were masses of people everywhere. It was total chaos. The place is big, but not that big so I quickly walked around and got out of there.
Getting back to Taiyuan from there was my sketchy bus experience #2 in China. I had to go across the street and flag a bus down. The bus was dirty and gross but had no choice at that point. I managed to make it back to Taiyuan without any major problems and am back in Beijing now. Here for a day and then I'm off for 3 weeks! Visiting Guangxi, Anhui, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces for work, and then going to Hubei (to see the Three Gorges) and Chongqing for October holidays. Am really excited.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Settling into Life in Beijing
Prior to moving to Beijing, I figured I'd be working a lot less and therefore have a ton more free time to do things like read, learn Chinese, etc. I figured I'd go out on the weekends, but not so much during the week. However, since arriving, I've been out just about every night of the week. Between quiz nights on Tuesday nights and casual dinners and drinks with friends, it feels like I haven't had a moment of free time. I've been slowly checking out the restaurant scene in Beijing. Tried tons of Chinese restaurants for various provinces, including Gansu, Xinjiang and Sichuan. At the Gansu (a province in Chinese's northwest region), I tried "lamb's back" which was lamb's back cooked in a way similar to Peking Duck, with crispy skin and some meat you wrap with sauce and vegetables in a thin flour pancake, and bones that they cut into pieces to look like ribs. I even tried camel for the first time. At first, I didn't realize it was camel - it seriously could have been beef. Definitely the most unusual things I've tried so far.
Xinjiang province (really want to visit!) is another province in the northwest that is mostly occupied by the Muslim Uyghur minority as opposed to Han Chinese. The cuisine there is heavy on lamb, a type of bread called naan (but nothing like Indian naan) and noodles in a tomato-based broth with vegetables that reminds me of minestrone soup. The noodels are made by hand and has a thicker, chewier texture that is really delicious. I'm looking forward to visiting this region as either part of the job or for fun. It will be like visiting a foreign country.
Sichuan cuisine is popular and heavy on chilies. I still really can't tell the difference between the cuisines of the Han Chinese provinces, but Sichuan is easy to recognize since it is very spicy. There is a dish called Chicken with Chilies that is served to you on a huge plate covered with chilies. There's so little chicken in it that you really have to search hard to find a piece, but it looks really impressive. I find it rather pointless. I think Sichuan cuisine is okay.
Other foods I've tried here include pizza (not so great - something just not right about the dough and the cheese), American (terrible), Indian (not bad) and Thai (really good). Think I'm going to stick to Asian cuisines. One of my favorite restaurants so far is a vegetarian restaurant called Pure Lotus. The restaurant is so serene and beautifully decorated, and the food so simple yet delicious that the entire dining experience is bliss. I can't even think of a similar restaurant n NYC. The service here is also really good, which says a lot in Beijing since attentive service is almost non-existent. I'm usually just glad when the servers don't yell at me.
One of the people I've met here works for That's BJ, a free monthly magazine similar to Times Out or New York magazine. He says that I can do restaurant reviews for them in the future, which will be awesome. Looking forward to that.
The nightlife in Beijing I've experienced so far is definitely very expat oriented. Been to a couple of chill expat hangouts such as The Tree and Rickshaw. People are friendly and everyone seems to be a friend of a friend. I ended up going to the Summer Palace with a guy who was visiting Beijing for 10 days. He knew a friend who knew someone in Beijing who happened to have brought him to Rickshaw one night. Funny how things work out here. There are also modern, trendy bars with expensive drinks like Alfa. It's got couches and pillows and curtains that create small pockets of privacy inside a huge restaurant/bar. One of my favorite little bars so far is a tiny place located in an alley behind Gulou (the Drum Tower). It's got a rooftop area that is really nice.
I've also had the opportunity to go to a club here called Suzie Wong. The guys here claim that it's awesome, one of the few places which is classy, where the girls know how to dance and don't giggle. The truth is the place was rather boring with crappy music, and girls that did not impress. I felt like I was going to drown in smoke since smoking is allowed everywhere unfortunately. I think that when class = girls don't giggle, your standards have just sunk way too low.
And after being in Beijing for a few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that half of Beijing (including most of the places you want to go to be it restaurant or bar) is located in an alley behind something. Instructions like go around Gulou to the dark alley and walk down the alley until you see this bar, is not uncommon. It makes finding anything very difficult. I usually call the restaurant or bar in the cab and hand the phone over to the cab driver.
Besides eating and drinking, I have been taking time to see the local Beijing sites as well. The Summer Palace, which is a bit far from the center of the city in the northwest part of Beijing, is beautiful. It's very renovated, and as a result, the buildings are in great conditions and the colors on the various buildings are vibrant and pretty. The lake and grounds are pretty to walk around. However, there are so many visitors that it feels like a zoo. We climbed to the top of the main building and then went down to this street with little shops. The emperor and his many women used to go there to pretend to be regular people shopping. It feels straight out of Disney World, only it's a cute rendition of an old Chinese street.
The Temple of Heaven, which I visited after finishing up work one day, was filled with tour groups of Chinese and Korean tourists, but still felt a lot less hectic and crowded than the Summer Palace. The temple, with it's beautiful cobalt blue roof set against the clear blue sky (well, as clear as the sky in a a polluted city like Beijing can be) is absolutely stunning and magnificent. I seriously think it is one of the prettiest structures in Beijing. It is inside a big park with perfectly straight rows of old cypress and juniper trees. The grounds are extensive and there are many quiet corners to escape to, which explains why many local Beijing people just come for walks in the park.
Am in Shanxi province right now. Will write a post about my experiences here visiting the Children's AIDS hospital in Linfen (the most polluted city in China) and the ancient city of Pingyao when I get the chance.
Xinjiang province (really want to visit!) is another province in the northwest that is mostly occupied by the Muslim Uyghur minority as opposed to Han Chinese. The cuisine there is heavy on lamb, a type of bread called naan (but nothing like Indian naan) and noodles in a tomato-based broth with vegetables that reminds me of minestrone soup. The noodels are made by hand and has a thicker, chewier texture that is really delicious. I'm looking forward to visiting this region as either part of the job or for fun. It will be like visiting a foreign country.
Sichuan cuisine is popular and heavy on chilies. I still really can't tell the difference between the cuisines of the Han Chinese provinces, but Sichuan is easy to recognize since it is very spicy. There is a dish called Chicken with Chilies that is served to you on a huge plate covered with chilies. There's so little chicken in it that you really have to search hard to find a piece, but it looks really impressive. I find it rather pointless. I think Sichuan cuisine is okay.
Other foods I've tried here include pizza (not so great - something just not right about the dough and the cheese), American (terrible), Indian (not bad) and Thai (really good). Think I'm going to stick to Asian cuisines. One of my favorite restaurants so far is a vegetarian restaurant called Pure Lotus. The restaurant is so serene and beautifully decorated, and the food so simple yet delicious that the entire dining experience is bliss. I can't even think of a similar restaurant n NYC. The service here is also really good, which says a lot in Beijing since attentive service is almost non-existent. I'm usually just glad when the servers don't yell at me.
One of the people I've met here works for That's BJ, a free monthly magazine similar to Times Out or New York magazine. He says that I can do restaurant reviews for them in the future, which will be awesome. Looking forward to that.
The nightlife in Beijing I've experienced so far is definitely very expat oriented. Been to a couple of chill expat hangouts such as The Tree and Rickshaw. People are friendly and everyone seems to be a friend of a friend. I ended up going to the Summer Palace with a guy who was visiting Beijing for 10 days. He knew a friend who knew someone in Beijing who happened to have brought him to Rickshaw one night. Funny how things work out here. There are also modern, trendy bars with expensive drinks like Alfa. It's got couches and pillows and curtains that create small pockets of privacy inside a huge restaurant/bar. One of my favorite little bars so far is a tiny place located in an alley behind Gulou (the Drum Tower). It's got a rooftop area that is really nice.
I've also had the opportunity to go to a club here called Suzie Wong. The guys here claim that it's awesome, one of the few places which is classy, where the girls know how to dance and don't giggle. The truth is the place was rather boring with crappy music, and girls that did not impress. I felt like I was going to drown in smoke since smoking is allowed everywhere unfortunately. I think that when class = girls don't giggle, your standards have just sunk way too low.
And after being in Beijing for a few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that half of Beijing (including most of the places you want to go to be it restaurant or bar) is located in an alley behind something. Instructions like go around Gulou to the dark alley and walk down the alley until you see this bar, is not uncommon. It makes finding anything very difficult. I usually call the restaurant or bar in the cab and hand the phone over to the cab driver.
Besides eating and drinking, I have been taking time to see the local Beijing sites as well. The Summer Palace, which is a bit far from the center of the city in the northwest part of Beijing, is beautiful. It's very renovated, and as a result, the buildings are in great conditions and the colors on the various buildings are vibrant and pretty. The lake and grounds are pretty to walk around. However, there are so many visitors that it feels like a zoo. We climbed to the top of the main building and then went down to this street with little shops. The emperor and his many women used to go there to pretend to be regular people shopping. It feels straight out of Disney World, only it's a cute rendition of an old Chinese street.
The Temple of Heaven, which I visited after finishing up work one day, was filled with tour groups of Chinese and Korean tourists, but still felt a lot less hectic and crowded than the Summer Palace. The temple, with it's beautiful cobalt blue roof set against the clear blue sky (well, as clear as the sky in a a polluted city like Beijing can be) is absolutely stunning and magnificent. I seriously think it is one of the prettiest structures in Beijing. It is inside a big park with perfectly straight rows of old cypress and juniper trees. The grounds are extensive and there are many quiet corners to escape to, which explains why many local Beijing people just come for walks in the park.
Am in Shanxi province right now. Will write a post about my experiences here visiting the Children's AIDS hospital in Linfen (the most polluted city in China) and the ancient city of Pingyao when I get the chance.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Apartment Hunting in Beijing
After spending a week looking at dozens of apartments, my roommates and I settled on a large 3BR apartment in the MOMA at Dongzhimen. A big apartment complex whose occupants are reportedly 70% foreign, it's modern amenities is a sharp contrast to it's random location in a hutong in Beijing. It is an interesting blend of new and modern with old and traditional that serves as a reminder that I'm actually in Beijing. But rather ironic that I moved all the way to Beijing from NYC, and ended up living in a place called the MOMA. I definitely miss home!
There are a few major differences between apartment hunting here versus in New York City. Here, many of the real estate agents/brokers you use do not have their own private listings - it seems to be a shared thing. Thus, real estate agents compete with one another for business and many of them will try to show you the same apartments. In addition, the landlord is the one who ends up paying the fee (equivalent to one month's rent), not the renter, which is really nice. Apartments also come furnished. You can even request additional furniture and ask the landlord to change some of the furniture. All of this is negotiated prior to signing a lease. As a result, it took us 5 hours of negotiations and discussions before we were able to finalize our lease agreement and get the document signed. Ultimately, these differences make life as a renter so much easier in Beijing. The agents do much of the work, the landlord pays them and supplies you with furniture - all you have to do is show up. The only thing that's rather annoying is the fact that it is customary to pay a 1 month deposit and 3 months of rent upon signing. Good thing I have a savings account.
I spent last Saturday furniture shopping with my new landlord and one of my new roomates. We picked a couch and selected the fabrics to use. The couch, made to our specification, was delivered a few days later. Since we ordered several different things from different vendors, it has been a frustrating experience waiting for the deliveries. In China, punctuality does not seem to be important. In fact, the whole notion of time is somewhat disregarded. An appointment scheduled for 8am might very well become 6am without a warning and 7pm can become 2pm. Slowly, as furniture is delivered and replaced, the apartment is coming together. Can't wait until it's all set up.
Perhaps one of the most bewildering things as a renter is how electricity, gas and phone bills are paid. I don't really think people use personal checks and people don't receive bills in the mail either. Instead, you have to add value to a smart card by paying in advance at a bank and then sticking it into the meter to add credit it with units of electricity and gas. It's somewhat of a hassle since the lines at the bank are always a couple of hours long (when I went to set up my account, there were 119 people ahead of me according to the machine) but you can do it at some special automated machines too. It's an amazing business model for the electric, gas and phone companies. None of them will have cash flow problems since they are pre-paid, before their service is utilized. Even cell phones are pre-paid. You buy credit and then charge up your phone.
All foreign residents have to register themselves at the police station. I guess the Chinese government must really want to keep tabs on us. Need to do that this weekend.
There are a few major differences between apartment hunting here versus in New York City. Here, many of the real estate agents/brokers you use do not have their own private listings - it seems to be a shared thing. Thus, real estate agents compete with one another for business and many of them will try to show you the same apartments. In addition, the landlord is the one who ends up paying the fee (equivalent to one month's rent), not the renter, which is really nice. Apartments also come furnished. You can even request additional furniture and ask the landlord to change some of the furniture. All of this is negotiated prior to signing a lease. As a result, it took us 5 hours of negotiations and discussions before we were able to finalize our lease agreement and get the document signed. Ultimately, these differences make life as a renter so much easier in Beijing. The agents do much of the work, the landlord pays them and supplies you with furniture - all you have to do is show up. The only thing that's rather annoying is the fact that it is customary to pay a 1 month deposit and 3 months of rent upon signing. Good thing I have a savings account.
I spent last Saturday furniture shopping with my new landlord and one of my new roomates. We picked a couch and selected the fabrics to use. The couch, made to our specification, was delivered a few days later. Since we ordered several different things from different vendors, it has been a frustrating experience waiting for the deliveries. In China, punctuality does not seem to be important. In fact, the whole notion of time is somewhat disregarded. An appointment scheduled for 8am might very well become 6am without a warning and 7pm can become 2pm. Slowly, as furniture is delivered and replaced, the apartment is coming together. Can't wait until it's all set up.
Perhaps one of the most bewildering things as a renter is how electricity, gas and phone bills are paid. I don't really think people use personal checks and people don't receive bills in the mail either. Instead, you have to add value to a smart card by paying in advance at a bank and then sticking it into the meter to add credit it with units of electricity and gas. It's somewhat of a hassle since the lines at the bank are always a couple of hours long (when I went to set up my account, there were 119 people ahead of me according to the machine) but you can do it at some special automated machines too. It's an amazing business model for the electric, gas and phone companies. None of them will have cash flow problems since they are pre-paid, before their service is utilized. Even cell phones are pre-paid. You buy credit and then charge up your phone.
All foreign residents have to register themselves at the police station. I guess the Chinese government must really want to keep tabs on us. Need to do that this weekend.
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