Today we took the girls to the local pool. It is a really great place. There are 3 identical and adjacent waterslides, a kiddie-depth pool, a wave pool and another regular, but deeper pool. The whole area is surrounded by lush greenery so it’s a little spot of solitude and coolness in a sweltering and busy city.
Click here to see Emily on the slide with a new-found Chinese friend

Click here for Simon and Madeline on the slide together

Well, I’ve got a spare moment because apparently I’ve just been banished from the kitchen with a broad sweep of the hand and a mouthful of Chinese comments from Professor Yeung. He is the senior guy in charge of the doctors here at the hospital. Physically, not an imposing man, about 5’2″, balding, about 60 years old I would guess. He is a jolly sort, always laughing about something cryptic during my daily ‘interview’ about my progress. We seem to be a constant source of amusement to him. Back to the topic, the guy can cook. He cooks up a mean stir fry, and, true to the region, it is smoking HOT. The volatile oils from the chilies he throws in there make us cough and our eyes water, just from briefly entering the room. The guy must have guts of steel. Not to mention the end pipe too.
He’s come to our rescue today as we learned another key bit of wisdom about China. When you buy a nice slab of meat from the open air market, you have to cook it that day. Putting it in the fridge was apparently not good enough and yesterday’s purchase looked dubious today. The Professor saved the day by giving us the scrunched up nose face saying it was a no go, then throwing it in a pot of boiling, salted water. He cooked it for a while, gave it a good sniff and declared it edible again. Good thing, that big slab of pork loin cost us a whole dollar!! The reason for my banishment was that I added some ginger and green onion to the boiling water, and I guess he needed to be able to smell the meat to tell us whether it was good or not. I guess we’ll all find out tomorrow…

Simon and Richard celebrated the American holiday with an early morning hike up a local peak, Zhong Po Mountain. It had a lake near the beginning, that may have paddleboats on it they think.

Along the way it was bamboo forest, and spruce higher up.

At the top was an observatory with views of the mountains beyond.


Here is some interesting fungi with a beetle eating the ants that were attracted to the fungus:

Not to be outdone by the Canadians, the 2 American brothers organized a fireworks display on the evening of July 4. Richard bought a huge block of large fireworks, for only $15. He also got 50 roman candles, one for each state. We had fun setting them off.


Richard and Gene are finished their stay here in Huaihua on July 7, and we will be sad to see them go.

Every weekend, weather permitting, the willing (and able) participants are loaded into the van and cars and taken on a ‘field trip’. I kind of feel like I’m back in school on these. So our first field trip was to a village from the Dong Dynasty. For those of you unfamiliar with Chinese pronounciation (almost all of you I think) it is pronounced TONG. News to me, good thing we have interpreters!
Anyways, this was a spot about 40 minutes out of Huaihua beside a small lake. The village was made entirely of wood and had the cool architechtural style that we associate with China.


The girls enjoyed running along the long hallways and climbing the stairs to the upper levels. Emily thought the big iron wok looked like a giant’s soup bowl. I’d love to see the fire they light in that!

We were served a meal which consisted of no less than 10 different dishes. Seated at our table were 3 children and a Muslim couple so there was way too much for us to eat at one sitting. We were able to take a fair bit of it back with us since we really enjoyed it!
After our meal there was a cultural dance performance which was quite interesting. We couldn’t understand a word that the announcer was saying (there were many Chinese visitors as well), but that’s ok.

As most of you probably know, we LOVE a party. So, we decided to honour our country’s heritage with a Canada Day celebration here in China. I brought a small Canadian flag to the local bakery, Will Long Cake (nice name!), so that I could order a cake with the Canadian flag on it. Even with my translator present, this process took about a half hour. When asked if I wanted fruit on it, I mentioned that cherries would be nice, and anything else except the cherry tomatoes that seem to be present on many cakes. You know, a tomato is actually a fruit! I didn’t say anything about the parsley that is also seen on the top of cakes, and yes, I got some. We were very interested to see what the final product was, and I am happy to say it was a success! Pink IS a shade of red, so no matter that the flag is pink. It looked and tasted great!

We also ordered some pizza from ‘Champion Pizza’ the local pizzeria. I have to say they did a good job too, much better than the two pizza offerings we had in Shanghai. These guys should give Pizza Hut a lesson or two. Firstly, they DO included tomato sauce over the crust, and the toppings were rather similar to what we expected. We ordered a Hawaiian and an “All-American”, which is a pepperoni pizza. Other patients brought some crackers, chips, nuts and watermelon to the party too.

Simon put together a bunch of photos depicting our life in Canada and played them on his computer during the party, and one of the staff brought out their big speakers so we could listen to the audio of our going away party in Revelstoke when Simon’s band, The Sofa Kings, played.
It was great to get most of the patients out together on a hot summer night to enjoy some good stories and laughter together. Miriam brought some nail polish and did the girls and some of the ladies nails too!

The guys especially enjoyed Simon’s fishing photos and a few diehards stayed late to watch 2 of his fishing movies. I say diehards because as soon as the sun starts setting, the mosquitos come out. I ran for cover to the comfort of our room.

I think we would have done Canada proud by our celebration in a part of the world so far (physically and culturally) from where we call home.

I’ve already given a brief accord of my treatments, but did not have any photos to illustrate at the time. We’ve managed to take a few photos, which, according to our instructional manual, is forbidden. You know me, I don’t follow rules if I can get away with it.
Here is a photo of one of my acupuncture sessions. As you can see, they are concentrating on my legs and arms. There is also one on each side of my temple. It varies from day to day. I am constantly amazed at how deep the needles go. The needles seem longer than the width of my wrist and I am pretty sure I can feel them touching the skin on the other side.

The past few days my acupuncture has stopped. It seems they do not do acupuncture on women ‘at that time of the month’. Instead I have points that are warmed up with an incense-like candle made up of the herb called ‘mugwort’. It starts with my centre, over my belly and a few on each leg. This treatment, also called moxibustion, stimulates the circulation.
After that I still have the massage, or ‘tui na’, on my arms and legs. I think the purpose of the massage is two-fold; to stimulate circulation to the area, and to coax the muscles back into full mobility, much like what a physiotherapist would do.

It seems that one can’t believe what they see on the internet. I for one, should know that. The gleaming white building with greenery surrounding that is shown on the website is either very old or someone is a photoshop expert.

This is the hospital, not so nice to look at from the outside, but it is clean and nice on the inside, which is what really counts. The staff here are great, and the fellow patients all speak highly of the treatment quality.
I started my treatments yesterday. As I had been forewarned, the acupuncture is quite painful compared to what I’m used to. Not for the squeamish of needles for sure! In Canada the needles generally go in about 1cm, here they put them right up to the hilt, about 4-5cms. It feels like the wrist ones go right through my arm, I think they almost do! And the ones in the fleshy part between thumb and forefinger I can feel under my mid-palm. Luckily I have a high pain tolerance and I remind myself that this is my healing journey. The ‘massage’ of my arms, legs, hands and feet is definitely not relaxing! I am wrung out, kneaded, slapped, shaken and ‘ironed’ like a bunch of laundry. I guess it stimulates the circulation, how could it not?! I also drink herbal tea twice a day, a lovely cup of dirt-tasting liquid. I knew all this before I arrived, so it is not a shock. Like we always say, “Every day is an adventure!”.

Huaihua is a city of about 5 million and growing. We know this, in part, because we can see the changes happening daily. There is construction near to us where they are building a new road, to connect to the bridge that has already been built, the road just hasn’t made it there yet. Also we sneakily use Google Earth to orient ourselves with our neighbourhood, and those images are rather outdated. We say sneakily because we don’t want any Chinese to know we have this VPN encoding system, since the Big Red Brother is watching you.
Some interesting transportation options always in 2nd/3rd world countries, this gives the phrase ‘wide load’ another meaning:

There are motorcycle taxis, you can tell it’s a taxi because it has an umbrella awning on it.
We went to the ‘Better Life Mall’ to the big supermarket. They employ 2-3 people per aisle to help you make your choices. I’m not one for full-service shopping so I think this is a bit annoying. Here’s the girls with their new set of fans:

We took the train from Shanghai to our final destination, Huaihua. It was a 20 hour journey so we got a ‘soft sleeper’ which is a 4 person cabin with beds. It was pretty comfy and the girls loved the bunks. Lucky for us there were two other kids about the same age as our girls, who could speak English! They were Chinese-Australians on the way to visit their grandparents. Funny how our first real conversation with someone was with a 6 year old.
The countryside was very lush and green, and with all the rain, we saw much flooding and many engorged rivers. There was not much for city life along the way, all quite rural. It looks like a tough existence for many.

When we finally made it to Huaihua we faced the task of getting our heavy luggage and 2 kids down and up sets of stairs to get out of the station. Of course there was someone offering assistance, or rather grabbing our bags and speaking rapid Chinese and starting to walk away. He was probably about 60 years old and managed to take our 2 heaviest bags. When we gave him money at the end he wanted more so we doubled it and then he tried for more. Funny, even non-English speaking people understand, “Bye, bye” and he and all the onlookers laughed that we did not fall for his big money scheming. Our pickup was not evident, since our train arrived an hour late, so we waited in the front of the station, again surrounded by 25-30 curious onlookers. I managed to convince someone to loan me their phone so we could call for our ride. While we were standing there waiting I glanced around, and saw this above us, to me, I think she looks like she’s fondling her nipple and flipping everyone the bird, quite a welcome to Huaihua!