落叶归根

The two Chinese idioms/proverbs I used in this entry are pretty much the only ones I know, so don't get any ideas that I am so learned (the two-syllable pronunciation of this word), haha.

So as I mentioned last time, I spent last weekend in Guangzhou, and it was a lot of fun. I think the following pictures encapsulate my trip very nicely:
At the Beijing airport, I saw this sign informing passengers how long they'd have to walk to get to the furthest gate (C20). Guess what gate I boarded at? Yup, C20.

In addition to his restaurant in the Seoul airport (see my Facebook pictures), Jackie Chan owns a cafe in the Beijing airport:

I think ALL waiting room seats in ALL airports should be like these!

Dinner on Friday night was at one of my favorite restaurants in Guangzhou, at which you eat hotpot, but with porridge as the base instead of broth!

Group picture with my GZ friends, all current/past students at SYSU. From L->R, Athena, Tina, Gary, me, Wayne, Liang Feng, Yang Daizhi, and Dandan:

One of the foods I was craving was 莲子双皮奶 (literally, lotus seed double-skin milk), which is lotus seeds on top of a custardy-type dessert made from the milk of a water buffalo (purportedly):

The Liang Family Garden in Foshan (my dad's family's hometown). Wouldn't you like to have a garden like this to relax in?

Huang Fei-hong and my dad's family are from the same hometown (as is Yip Man, kungfu teacher of Bruce Lee):

In front of the Ancestral Temple of Foshan. I am too awkward when asked to pose for a picture by myself...

This picture does not begin to capture the strength of the storm that suddenly appeared as we took the bus back to GZ from Foshan...the roads flooded in less than an hour. For my Chinese-reading readers, it really was 倾盆大雨:

The other foods I was really looking forward to in GZ were 鱼片粥 (fish porridge) and 手拉肠粉 (literally, hand-pulled noodles) (in this case, of the 叉烧 (BBQ pork) variety). The 肠粉 here is so much better than in the US (although Tai Son in Westminster comes close). Observe the thinness of the noodles, as well as the addition of vegetables and mushrooms in the filling, instead of just meat:

Shenzhen, China on the left, Hong Kong on the right. I had to cross the border into Hong Kong, because my visa allows a 60-day stay, while if I didn't leave and come back, it would have been 64 days. I didn't want to risk a huge fine and delay at the airport when coming back to the US.

Chris (Chinese 10 BX buddy currently teaching in Shenzhen), me, Wayne, and Wayne's cousin at the tallest building in Shenzhen:


All in all, a fun trip, and I didn't get sick. I like GZ and Hong Kong, because every time I go, I feel like it's a very familiar place. When I stepped off the airplane in GZ, I immediately recognized the smell and the (humid) atmosphere, and it gave me a very...nostalgic and comfortable (mentally, not necessarily physically) feeling. I guess it's because it's my family's 祖籍 (ancestral home). I wonder if I'll have the same feeling when I go to Shandong province? Or to Cambodia in the future?

Leaving Beijing...

...only for the weekend. I head to Guangzhou tonight for the weekend. Friday, to visit the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, where the fellow I worked with for a while is a resident; Saturday, to go to Foshan; and Sunday, to go to HK very very briefly to renew my stay in China and to hang out in Shenzhen for a little bit.

If you are in China and need to buy plane tickets, buy from Ctrip >>> eLong. If you use a foreign credit card for eLong, they put you through a big rigmarole in getting it verified. A lot of nonsense.

Update after this weekend, with pictures of the excellent food I am planning on eating in Guangzhou =D

Interesting day...

...in ophthalmology today, my first day (I took yesterday off due to my illness).

It started this morning, when we saw 40 patients in half a day. I thought that it was crazy-busy at the Beijing University ophthalmic center, but it was decidedly crazier here at PUMC's eye clinic. The clinic consisted of one hallway lined with multiple exam rooms. Here, one room contained one professor, one resident, one medical student, and sometimes four to even six or seven patients and their families (and one visiting medical student...me!) in an area of no more than 100 square feet! Privacy is definitely not something that is thought about terribly hard. I saw some interesting cases: one patient had a visual field that was classic for a homonymous hemianopia (she likely has an infarct in the right temporal-occipital area of her brain); a little 7-month-old girl had likely bilateral retinoblastoma (she has leukocoria, and a B-scan shows masses in her eyes that have calcifications); and there was a man with retinitis pigmentosa.

In the afternoon, there was a 50-year-old man who had had a stroke 9 years ago, with left hemiplegia and moderate dementia who came in to clinic. My resident had seen him in the ED yesterday, and today, we were going to examine his fundus. When the patient was wheeled in in his wheelchair for the exam, my resident took off the patient's sunglasses. The patient got mad and said, "Give back my glasses!" and proceeded to start hitting my resident with his right (good) arm! My resident got backed up into a corner for a few seconds and couldn't escape, but he eventually sneaked out the door behind the wheelchair. The patient then proceeded to get up out of his wheelchair (keep in mind only his right leg works), and he picked up a short metal stool that patients sit on for the slit-lamp exam. The professor smartly took the stool away, as it looked like the patient was going to threaten my resident some more. Now disarmed, and with the resident out of arm's reach, the patient had one last stand and spit at him! My resident retreated down the hall. Needless to say, we decided not to examine the patient today. My resident took it well (at least on the outside), but I have to say, I would have been really freaked out had I been in his place. Afterwards, we took turns trying to lift that stool with one hand, and it weighed at least 25 pounds. That patient was really strong, and had he thrown that stool at my resident, or something, that would really have caused some serious damage. It was quite the eventful end to an interesting day.

One thing that I will never get used to is some of the bathroom habits in China. A lot of the little kids and babies here wear what my classmates and I call, "no-butt pants." Basically, they're pants with a slit in the crotch/butt area that allows for peeing and pooping without dropping their drawers. It can be cute when they're walking around with their naked butts showing, but I often wondered what happens when they're indoors and need to go to the bathroom. I found out today, and it was gross. I saw the little girl mentioned in the last paragraph being held awkwardly over a wastebasket in the hallway, and then I suddenly noticed a stream of fluid, some of which was going into the wastebasket, but most of which was spewing out into the middle of the hallway floor!!! And then sort of pinkish-purplish poo started coming out, too, but thankfully, that mostly ran into the wastebasket. And everyone went on as if nothing had happened. I'm sorry, but if China is going to improve its standing in the world, people need to educated on simple public health issues such as these. It's dirty and unclean, despite the fact that it may be "culture" or "custom." Cloth diapers are not expensive and are reusable. Use them. But that's just me. I'll get off my soapbox now.

Ill in China

First, I wanted to say hello to 大姑妈 and 二姑妈, who I've noticed have become followers of my blog! =D

One of the things that I will miss the most about PUMC is the awesome breakfast options that exist in the cafeteria. I normally don't eat breakfast back in the States (actually, I often feel nauseated if I do), but here, I have been looking forward to breakfast every day. Here are a few examples of my favorite breakfast foods here:
Hard-boiled egg, vegetable bun, and 豆腐脑 (literally, tofu brain):
豆浆(soybean juice), 韭菜包(chive bun), and egg:

青 菜粥(vegetable porridge) and tea-leaf egg (I have this image saved turned 90 degrees counterclockwise from this; not sure why it uploaded this way):

Thursday night (local time Friday 1 am, actually) was when my classmates found out their match results for their residencies. We went out for Peking duck, and then to the Houhai area afterwards, to hang out at a non-smoky, quiet bar.
Here's the Peking duck:

Hah, just kidding; here's the real thing:

Houhai at night:

A nice piece of artwork that was hanging in a storefront:


On Friday afternoon, a 6th-year PUMC student took us to Qinghua University for a tour of the campus and then a talk to 1st- and 2nd-years, for their English club. The campus was nicer than I expected, and many parts looked like a typical "American" college. I still like Beijing University's campus more, though...more of a Chinese feel to it...
Here I am in front of the first building built on the campus:

Qinghua does have a neat observatory that stand alone:

Trees are blossoming all over the city:


Then on Saturday and Sunday, I went with some of my classmates to Chengde (承德), where the Qing Dynasty emperors Kangxi and Qianlong spent many of their summers at the Mountain Villa (避暑山庄). On Saturday, we went to a couple of the temples that surround the Mountain Villa, Puning Si (普宁寺) and Putuozongcheng Temple (普陀宗承之庙). Pretty neat places. I'm too tired to write about the history of these places, though, so unless someone is really interested, I'm just going to show pictures:
The CCTV building is quite impressive in its scale (it's bigger than I thought it was):

The view from Putuozhongcheng:

Putuozongcheng is a really large Tibetan-style temple:

It is difficult to describe just how large this statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, at Puning Si, really was...23 meters (75 feet) does not really enable one to imagine the largeness of the statue (the largest wooden statue in the world):

Chengde has lots of these policewomen (and policemen) telling people to mind the traffic:

It was a little disconcerting to eat in a restaurant that featured deer heads on the wall, but I had to try Manchurian-style food:

One of the little temples/pavilions in the Mountain Villa (coincidentally, this one was called 金山(Gold Mountain), which was also the name given to America by the Chinese immigrants in the mid-1850's):

Unfortunately, on the Sunday of the trip, I developed some sort of acute gastroenteritis that lasted well through Monday. I abstained from food for two whole days (only taking in oral fluids to keep hydrated and to get some electrolytes in), and on Monday night (tonight), I tried to eat a few crackers, even though I wasn't hungry. Fail. I felt nauseated again. This is the sickest I've ever been (at least that I can remember), and I really hope that it goes away soon. I guess I did pretty well, though...I have previously spent 17 weeks living in China, and this is the first time I've gotten any sort of stomach malady. Still, it's not very fun.

Sorry...

...for the lack of posts recently. I am going out of town for the weekend and will post another long entry about the exciting events this week (massage, Match Day, going to ChengDe)!

Beijing Weekend No. 2

This, I think, is going to be a rather long entry again. I wanted to first talk about my awesome Friday morning in the ophthalmology clinic at the Beijing University Eye Center and some of my observations (partly to make my notes from that day more coherent so I don't forget them) before moving to more fun stuff, so some of you might want to skip down a few paragraphs.

So as I mentioned in my last entry, I went to the Beijing University Eye Center at 8 am on Friday morning. Clinic lasted until about 1:15 pm. We saw 41 patients in those 5.25 hours and could have easily seen more, but Dr. Wu said that since the weather had turned worse (it was windy and cold), many patients didn't come (same as in the US!). Out of those 41, 14 or so had a history of acute angle closure glaucoma! Crazy! It is definitely much more common over here, which makes me that much more interested in the research project I'm working on over at home on why more Chinese get PACG than other ethnicities.

I noticed many unique qualities of the ophtho clinic here during that morning, and I'll talk about them in no particular order (the order that I wrote them down during the day. First, Dr. Wu used the direct ophthalmoscope to examine the patients' fundus and optic nerve head! I have seen exactly zero ophthalmologists in the US use a direct ophthalmoscope...they all have their own lenses to look in the back of the eye at the slit-lamp. Second, doctors' visits are super-cheap...around 6-10 yuan for the exam. That's around $1. Third, the professor had a set-up in the exam room in which she sat at a desk facing the door, with the slit-lamp to the side. A medical student sat at the desk opposite the professor, with a computer. As patients came in, the student handled their forms and patient cards, and also inputted data into the computer. She also printed out receipts for the patients to take to the cashier. It made the whole process so much more efficient than in the US, although the student definitely seemed like a cashier at times rather than a student learning about ophthalmology. The patients' hospital cards have some computer chip inside, so that when it's placed on an electronic sensor, the patients' info (name, age, DOB, etc) automatically pops up in the database! You don't have to waste time typing it in, etc. The way that patients get "appointments" is that they have to line up early in the morning to get numbers to see certain doctors, and when the numbers run out for a professor for that day, then the patients in the back of the line don't get to see that particular doctor. In a way, I like this system, because it really equalizes people, in the sense that even the poorest person can see a renowned doctor, but at the same time, someone who came from a faraway province might not be able to get a number that day and would have to come back the next day or the next and have to spend money to stay in the Beijing to wait for an appointment slot. This issue also forces doctors to schedule surgeries or laser procedures very soon, for example, the next week. It also forces the patients to make decisions on their medical care very soon. It cost 3000 yuan for an operation and 160 yuan for a laser (the exchange rate is about 7.5 yuan to the dollar, so you do the math). Another difference is that patients are ultimately responsible for their medical records, imaging, test results, etc. They carry their medical record, which was essentially a small booklet, around with them, and they can have different booklets for different specialties. They also had their visual field results, UBM images, etc for the doctor to look at. One last important issue for the doctors to think about is that there are large differences in the prices of medicines. Although this is often the case in the US, insurance plans will often cover the price, whereas there is no such system here. For instance, prostaglandin analogs, which are first-line therapy for glaucoma, cost 200-300 yuan (closer to 300) per bottle, while timolol, a beta-blocker, is not as effective (it's second-line therapy), but it costs 5 yuan per bottle. Unless the patient is relatively well-off (i.e. has a job, etc), they obviously choose the timolol. All very fascinating to observe. Here's the eye center...it's really big...the second floor is clinics, third and fourth floors are inpatient wards, the fifth floor is for ENT and stomatology, the sixth floor has offices, and the other floors have research labs and lecture halls:


Ok, so now to the fun part of the weekend. Friday night, I went with my classmates to 南锣鼓巷 (NanLuoGuXiang), or South Bell and Drum Lane, which is a hutong with a bunch of small stores and pubs along the sides. We did some browsing in some of the shops, found two massage places to go back to later, and eventually settled on a smoky bar to hang out in, although as most of you know, I don't drink EtOH. I thought it was a little ironic that their beers cost 10 yuan, while my cold "milk chocolate" was 30. It was pretty nasty. They served it with ice in it, so it was super-dilute and didn't taste like chocolate at all. There were tiny flakes of chocolate throughout the drink, which makes me think that they just tried to mix those chocolate flakes in with cold milk and then iced it even more. And of course, tons of people were smoking, and my lungs and throat couldn't handle it. My nasal passages and throat were congested and scratchy all day Saturday, too. I had to shower when I got back because I smelled like cigarettes. The only saving grace was that the waitress girl was kind of cute, but not even that could make up for the fact that my life expectancy dropped by a few days, and my cancer risk went up a bit after that night.

On Saturday, my friend Wang Fengdan, who is a student from PUMC who went to UCSF last year, invited us UCSFers, along with the other PUMC-->UCSF exchange students from last year, to her apartment (in which she lives with her husband) for lunch. It was really fun...we ate hot pot and then played some Mafia afterwards. They have a really nice place and it was fun to be around my PUMC friends again. Here's a pic from hotpot:

The night was pretty fun, too. We went out to a club that had mostly Chinese students, but also a lot of (tall!!) Europeans/Americans. The UCSF/Harvard students went, as well as a few PUMC students. The music was typical American club music. It was SUPER-loud, but I finally remembered to take earplugs to a club! My ears were very happy afterward. I experienced neither tinnitus nor muffled hearing s/p (status-post) clubbing, for the first time. The cover was 'only' 50 yuan. Here's a picture of me and Susan (from Harvard) showing off our "bling" (our coat check bracelets):

And this is me with Fan Cong, a 7th-year PUMC student (who is also interested in ophtho!). Her English name is Cletty, which she made up. It's a mix of "clever" and "pretty," which seems to be a good name! Almost as creative as my friend from Guangzhou, who originally named himself "Roham," a mixture of "Ronaldo" and "Beckham," his two favorite football players! Hehe. This picture shows just how smoky it was inside (though not as bad as the bar the previous night):


Sunday, I met up with my friend Wang Yao, who was our calligraphy teacher at Beijing University nearly four years ago and is now a graduate student in Chinese at Beijing University. It started out badly, as I wasn't able to find her in the huge subway station. I eventually found her at the entrance to the mall, outside the subway station, after 20 minutes and four phone calls. We went to a restaurant called 外婆家 (Grandma's Kitchen) that serves food from the Yangtze River area; it was pretty good...we ordered a ton of food for just us two. Here's a picture, with a list of the food, from left to right, below the picture:

Stinky tofu, sauteed greens, an awesome chicken dish with super-tender chicken, Dongpo pork, sesame buns, fried shrimp, preserved egg and fish soup. I managed to carry a conversation (for the most part) in Chinese for three hours, although I flubbed a lot of my words and pronounciation 2/2 nervousness. She was also nice enough to take me to buy some shoelaces to replace the ones that had split in half on my dress shoes, before she went to meet up with her boyfriend.

The subway ride on my way back to my dorm was PACKED, but it wasn't even the worst I had seen (last Sunday was 10 times worse). This picture doesn't come close to capturing how crowded it was in the station and on the trains:

On the way back to my dorm, I stopped in the record store, FAB, where I saw a mass of people by the CD's. It turns out that some singer was there signing records for his adoring fans. I just looked him up, and his name is 乔任梁. His English name is "Kimi." Um. I have nothing to say. This is what he looks like from 30 feet away (his face is half-covered and he's earing a green shirt...behind that blue roll in the front):

I just looked him up, and he looks like a girl, so I guess his English name is appropriate....?
And walking back on Sunday at 4:30 pm, this was the line that was already starting to form to get a number to see the doctors in clinic on Monday....

All in all, a pretty fun and eventful weekend. This week will also be eventful, as 1 am Friday local time is match time for my peers! We will be crossing our fingers on Thursday night (and going out to pre-celebrate, hehe).

Rounds, Rounds, Go to rounds, I fall asleep! (to the tune of the Beach Boys' song)

This blog was supposed to be published last night, but my Internet was super-slow and I couldn't upload any of the pictures I wanted to.

Today (Wednesday) we had professor rounds, in which professors in many specialties come to round with our teams on especially difficult/confusing patients. It ends up being a LOT of talking/discussing, though, because ... well ... it's medicine! So I fell asleep for most of it. Ugh. But now would be a good time to describe some of the differences in rounds here vs. in the US. If you are not in the medical field, it might be more interesting for you to skip to the pictures below...

At least in the general medicine ward, we start with signout at 8 am. Everyone, from attendings, residents, students, and nurses attends, and signout is given by a nurse; afterwards, some of the residents/students also give brief updates on their patients. We finish by 8:15, and we do rounds with the attending around the table. That takes 45 minutes to 1 hour for 15 - 18 patients. We then do a quick round of bedside rounds with the attending, mostly just asking how they are, doing some reassuring and telling them the plan for the day. Then it's either time to do some work, or go back and talk some more about the patients. It's interesting, because the attending is involved in this whole process, whereas my medstudent friends know that the attending only makes an appearance around 10 am, for attending rounds! Another interesting point is that during the table rounds, the attending does most of the talking, regarding what the plan should be and why, and maybe doing some brief teaching, i.e. on likelihood ratios, why sputum culture is not helpful in cases of community-acquired pneumonia, etc. It's much different from rounds in the States, where the attending asks residents and students for their input and practices the Socratic method. The bedside manner is also somewhat different. The attending takes the front role in talking to the patient, and it's somewhat more of a paternalistic relationship, in which the attending is reassuring the patient, telling him what the course of action will be for the day, etc, rather than involving the patient in the discussion as well. However, when a procedure is to be done, i.e. a bone marrow biopsy, the MDs won't do it until they discuss with and get consent from other family members!

Today, after my morning naps in the professor rounds, I headed to the Beijing University Eye Center to meet with a professor there, who is interested in doing research with us. She was really nice and offered to let me shadow her once a week (probably as much time as I can take away from PUMC without feeling too guilty). I feel a little traitorous, but I kind of want to experience different clinics and see how they differ! It will be interesting, but that means I have to wake up really early this Friday (clinic starts at 8, and it takes just over an hour to get there from my dorm).

And now, for some pictures from tonight, when we went walking to the WangFuJing Snack Street to see what interesting things "on-a-stick" we could find. (Ann, no cheese-on-a-stick was to be found, despite my exhaustive search =P)
Those are scorpions-on-a-stick in the back, and silkworms-on-a-stick below, with stinky tofu at the very bottom of the picture. I had the tofu -- pretty tasty! (And not very smelly, actually).

Close-up of the stinky tofu:

Here we have some sheep-kidney-on-a-stick, sheep-hearts-on-a-stick, and urinary-incontinent-shrimp-on-a-stick.

Starfish, beetles-on-a-stick, and centipedes-on-a-stick:

Some very festive apples:

One more picture from the Great Wall...this time a group picture:

Censorship

I saw a link on msnbc.com for a picture slideshow about the Dalai Lama and his 50 years in exile from Tibet. I wanted to learn a little more about the circumstances that led to his exile, so I Googled him. I tried the first couple of links (Wikipedia, and his official website), but they didn't open. I shouldn't have been (and wasn't, really), suprised that the pages wouldn't open -- I mean, he is in exile from China, after all! I wonder if this post will get censored?

Update

Since I got politely called out by a friend for not updating, this will be a super-update! Also, since another friend politely requested some "cool photos," this one will be chock-full of them!

First, I wanted to talk a little bit about my rotation so far. So far, I've spent three days in the general medicine ward. Internal medicine is structured somewhat differently from the way it is in the States. In the US, there are pretty much only general internal medicine wards, and cardiology is the only subspecialty that has its own separate ward. All the other subspecialties are consult services. Additionally, the patients on one particular team might be spread among three different floors, and six different wings of the hospital. However, in China, each subspecialty has its own ward, and all the patients of that ward are located in one wing of the hospital. Rheumatology, infectious disease, gastroenterology, pulmonology, and even dermatology each have their own inpatient wards! As it turns out, most of the patients on the "general" medicine ward I'm on have rheumatologic problems, as that's what the hospital is known for. So it's been interesting (four out of the 34 patients on the ward have Takayasu's arteritis! [pulseless disease]), but difficult for me to follow, as 1) I haven't seen too many rheum patients so far in my training, and 2) even if I knew some of the medical terms, the doctors talk too fast in rounds for me to follow even 30% of the time.

That's probably enough of work-related stuff for now. In subsequent posts, I'll talk more about differences in the schedule/structure of rounds, as well as the EM department, which are pretty interesting. Also, I look pretty cool in a long white coat, haha. It's difficult to sit with one on, though, so I guess it's good to get some practice in before intern year!

On Friday, I got out early, so I went to the Temple of Heaven (I'd gone to the Temple of Earth a few days prior). The last time I was in Beijing, the Temple of Heaven was undergoing renovations, so we didn't get to go. The two temples were interesting, and they were both surrounded by large parks in which people went to exercise, hang out, and enjoy the sunny weather. The Temple of Earth (ToE) is simpler in structure, and is located a few km north of our school. The main altar at which the emperor made sacrifices is a three-tiered altar, square in shape, due to the fact that Chinese belief holds that the Earth was represented as a square.

In contrast, the Temple of Heaven (ToH) complex, which is located a few km south of our school (along the same meridian as the ToE), contains a similar three-tiered altar, but circular in shape, because that's how Heaven was seen.

As a note of cultural interest, the emperor's seal often was in the shape of a circle on top of a square, because the emperor was seen as the link between Heaven and Earth.

In addition to the altar, the ToH complex contains the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, a three-tiered pagoda-like structure, which is intricately held together without any nails! I got to speak Cantonese and ask a tourist from Hong Kong to take this picture for me:


On Saturday, all eight of us students from UCSF and Harvard, along with a couple of PUMC students, went to the Jin Shan Ling and Sima Tai parts of the Great Wall. Actually, we hiked the Wall from that first part to the second part, probably around 7 to 9 km. It was really fun, although some parts were pretty scary because of the steepness, or in one case, lack of steps to help get down from one watchtower to the wall. Some parts were really steep:

And here I am with the Great Wall:

There's an old saying in Chinese that goes, "不到长城非好汉," or "Anyone who has not gone to the Great Wall cannot be considered a true man/hero." I'm not sure if the converse is true, but I've been to the Great Wall three times now, so I'd like to think I'm a 好汉. I definitely felt the effects of the hike/being out of shape today, as my quads and feet were rather sore. My neck was sore, too, but I think that's because I slept on my pillow kind of funny.

Today, Sunday, I went again to the Olympic Park. My dad contributed $100 as an overseas Chinese to the Olympic construction fund (or something like that), and we got a certificate saying something about how his name would be displayed somewhere in the Water Cube. I thought it was going to be something like a brick (like at Centennial Plaza in Bakersfield, or the steps to Coit Tower in SF), so I went on a quest to find this brick. Unfortunately, I think I was misled or mistaken, as it doesn't exist. But the Water Cube was really pretty, and I got to see the swimming pool in which Michael Phelps won his eight gold medals, and the diving boards from which Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia dove!
H2O^3:

Water Cube:

The Bird's Nest was also really neat, although I didn't buy a ticket to go in:


As I mentioned in my last entry, today was also International Working Women's Day, and I made the mistake of going to Xidan, which is a major shopping district, to walk around for a little bit. First of all, at one of the transfer stations on the subway, it took me 20 minutes and three subway trains for me to actually get onto a subway car, because there were that many people there. Once I got on the subway, I couldn't move even if I wanted to, because we were packed in there really tightly. It was about as bad as New Year's Eve in Kowloon earlier this year. Once I got to Xidan, it was also really crowded in all the malls, because most of the stores had sales for Women's Day. I also didn't really enjoy the selection of clothes at my normally favorite stores (Bossini, G2000). I also thought the bookstore at Xidan, apparently the biggest in Beijing, was not as good as the Wangfujing bookstore, but that's just me.

That seems like a pretty anticlimactic way to end such an awesome blog, so I'll end with a contest: the first person to write the correct answer in the comments for this post gets 5 points (a la Mr. Cantrell at Stockdale), in addition to some sort of souvenir when I get back, or a postcard! The question is, what is the purpose of this contraption, found in most of the subway platforms in the city?