My Journey of becoming a TCM Physician Chapter 2: Excitement, Departure and L.S. (diarrhoea)
As I am writing this post in hospital now, it brings me back easily to where I was when I was doing my rounds in hospital in China. But before that, let me cover the part of departure and uprooting from Singapore to China.
After 3 years of compounding myself with Western and Eastern theories and becoming a walking encyclopedia in medical knowledge, the time had finally come for the preparation to leave for China to complete the second part of degree for Chinese Medicine.
And it was during this time that suddenly friends who haven’t contacted for years would suddenly pop up to ask for meet up. If I put it in a morbid way, it felt as though people would only look you up when you were about to fall off from Earth. That’s what most of us felt.
Ok in any case, clothings, textbooks were stuffed into suitcases but accommodation was one big problem. Being the first batch for this joint venture of the 2 unis, a lot of things including modules, certifications, how lessons were being taught, our welfare in Beijing were well, on trial. So including accommodation, the schools were not able to provide us with hostel as we were need to attach to another hospital which was 1 hr drive from main school base. So the only solution was: we had to find accommodations on our own! Voila! So the best that both unis could provide was a SHORT TERM stay in the hostel in the main school base when we reached Beijing.
Weeks felt like days after the Final Year Project for Biomedicine degree. Eventually the time came for THE DEPARTURE. Tears and mucus flooded at the airport departure gates as the 60 of us together with families and friends bid goodbyes. You know, it is the ‘I thought I can take it but in the end tears still roll and nose still sour’ kind of scenes.
Goodbye Singapore. Welcome Beijing.
Air felt dry when we touched down. I still remember the cauldron copper statue at the middle of the Beijing Capital International Airport. It was still right after the Beijing Olympic at that time so banners and signs of that grand event were still hanging around. I was excited, yet scared at the same time. Actually more scared than excited, if I could recall.
Thereafter it was a whirlwind. We had to settle administration admission procedures to the school, head to the government sectors and police stations to convert our status to legitimize our stay in Beijing and also LOOK FOR ACCOMODATIONS OURSELVES. This was also the time when people started to have issues about who to stay with who and we had to start calling and dealing with China property agents directly! Basically this was the start point when our Chinese would totally become fluent within 3 days.
Nevertheless, everyone got a place to stay near the hospital that we would be attached to for the next 2 years. At this location, it was rather outskirt from the main school base and more heartland I would say. The key landmarks that provided our necessities for survival were the old fashioned shopping mart aka Fang Zhuang Shi Chang (方庄市场) , the big Carrefour, the bun shop (庆丰包子铺)，another local grocery mart 1 km further away called Wumei物美. The first few weeks we infiltrated this neighbourhood, everyone noticed us because we were different, in our dressing, the way we spoke. Usually they thought we were from the South such as Hong Kong or Xiamen. When we told the folks we were from Singapore, some didn’t even know where it was! Still! In this era!
However, there were cons exposing our identity (but it was a matter of time anyway). We became the targets for theft and few of us had stuffs stolen while we were walking around the shopping mart. So that was another lesson taught to us by Beijing: Not everywhere was safe and lala land like Singapore.
Lessons started almost immediately within second week. I’ll write more about that in my next blog. But another thing that welcomed us was our changes in health. About almost half of us started to have diarrhea and mild fever due to poor acclimatization to the environment (aka 水土不服) right into the second week of our landing. Fingers and lips started to crack too because of the dryness. Flu became a norm as we were still not used to keeping ourselves warm the right way.
Amongst all these, we still trudged on…… I mean there is a limit to s%$#T, or is it not?
Further reading:
Everything you need to know about Acupuncture
Men’s Health Series: Which is the Better Way to Treat Prostatitis - TCM or Western Medicine?
How do Acupuncture and Acupressure work and which is the Better One
Everything you need to know about Dampness
It is not normal to have cysts and fibroids
Why Everything Cold is Discouraged during Menstruation
