Back to Xuanwu for another day. By now, we're very familiar with Stepping Classroom No. 2. Today, we divide into two groups; mine heads to General Surgery. It could be interesting, although one of my friends groans--she despises the OR. We wend our way through corridors and staircases and end up in yet another conference room.
We're quickly shown the surgical ICU, which is very modern looking--probably the most Western-looking ICU yet. Then, we go visit a few patients: an old woman with abdominal pain that turns out to be recurrent cholecystitis, a middle-aged lady with small bowel obstruction from a large sigmoid colon carcinoma, and two women with large palpable breast masses (obviously advanced breast cancer). Interestingly, the woman with colon cancer was unaware of her diagnosis. Apparently, the hospital's policy (and the cultural policy in China) is to give the family the bad news, and allow them to tell the patient or not. We asked about patients who have no family, but weren't given a clear answer. I've always heard of these situations--they come up in ethics discussions frequently in the States--but never personally encountered one. The Chinese doctors had no problems with it, but most of us in the group were very uncomfortable with this idea.
The patients with breast cancer were told about their diagnoses. When we asked why, as opposed to the colon cancer, we were told that breast disease is more obvious and harder to conceal from the patient.
The weirdest part of the morning happened after we went back to our conference room. First, we were shown CT scans of the colon carcinoma and mammograms from the breast cancers and asked to interpret these films. Several of us did a passable job of mentioning calcifications, nodules, consolidations, and densities on the mammograms, but we had to be shown the colon cancer, because it wasn't immediately obvious (at least to me). Then, the attending asked us what we thought of the situation in Tibet.
Silence fell in the room.
We have not had occasion to discuss Tibet with any native Chinese, and now was not the time (I felt) to start. We tried to demur, but he was persistent. He told us that he felt Westerners were not given much news about Tibet, or it was limited or wrong. So we asked the natural question: What was the "true" news about Tibet?
He basically answered with the Party line: that some bad elements in Tibet had started causing trouble, and the army had to protect the people, and it was such a shame that it had to happen around the Olympics and tarnish the world's memory of the Olympics. A few students made concilatory remarks at this point: Oh, we're sorry about the Olympics too, and we hope that the world doesn't associate Tibet with the rest of the Chinese people, who have been so kind to us.
It was definitely interesting. Most of the Chinese whom we've asked questions about the government have given soft but politically correct answers. One resident, when he went out to a bar with some of our students, told a different story in the bar than in the hospital. He is an interesting type, having adopted a full Western first and last name, and he subscribes to Time and The Economist.
I found it interesting that the story being given now, in Tibet, is essentially the same story used in Tianenmen in 1989. I'm sure many people here see through some of this, just as they did then, but I'm sure we're the last people they'd tell. Still, though, this doctor was so emphatic about it that I felt like he was a true believer. I was really glad to get out of that room when it was time to get on the bus.
Back to lunch, and then my group went to neurosurgery in the afternoon. It was terrible. We sat in a plush conference room and watched presentations in broken English all afternoon. I played Solitaire on my cell phone the entire time. Many students fell asleep or read books. None of us were that comfortable, though, as we'd had to dress up for dinner this evening. Tonight is the Sichuan Restaurant Blowout, if you will. Halfway through the trip (or so), we have a fancy (and pricey) dinner at a Sichuan restaurant, and we invite university officials to dine with us.
On our way to the restaurant, we had an incident. Stuck in traffic on busy Qianmen, one student at the front of the bus noticed a mother sticking her bike out into the road, peering around the bus at traffic, with her small child on a seat on the back of the bike. She'd retract the bike when cars came too close, then stick it out again. He found this fascinating, so he tried to film this on his camera. As he pulled it out, though, she made it across the street, so he filmed the street around the bus for a moment. Classmates began hissing at him that the woman was staring at him through the bus window, so he turned off his camera. At that point, she came BACK across traffic (with her child) and started pounding on the bus door, gesticulating wildly and yelling in Chinese. Then, she went and stood in front of the bus as we got a green light. Our bus driver began hollering in Chinese at her, telling her to move, to relax, to get out of the way. This went on for about five minutes, until she finally gave up and left. The guy responsible kind of sank down into his seat until she was gone.
We parked in a hutong and began walking a short way to the restaurant. We were immediately besieged by vendors selling Mao watches, purses, postcards, and god only knows what else. We walked quickly and got to the restaurant.
Many dishes were served that night, and we drank 61 (750 mL) bottles of beer. Toasts were made by multiple students and many of the teachers and leaders, more as we had more beer. Eventually, the meal and the toasts were over, and we filed past the picture of Deng Xiaoping in the lobby (the restaurant was a favorite of his), back past the vendors to the bus, and home again, all the while still buzzed. The servers were well-trained, and refilled my beer glass every time it was 1/6th down, so I couldn't keep track of how much I drank.
Good night, indeed! He puts this meal at this point in the trip because most of us are kind of tired of China by this point. We've had issues with the food, though none more than the girl with anaphylactic allergy to peanuts (they fry everything in peanut oil here, so she's been subsisting largely on noodles and rice). We're homesick, or miss our significant others (except for the two couples on the trip). We're tired of each other to some extent (there's a ton of gossip and drama). So it's nice to go out and have a big fancy dinner that is NOT at the tourist restaurant.
Tomorrow is the Great Wall!
