My latest trip to Lingshan and Tachuan villages(1) Recently I have joined a Wechat Group, which is called Every Day Relaxing Outdoor Group. They almost hold trips to different places every week. As a result, now I think whenever I want to choose somewhere to go, I can just join them hit on the road. Last Sunday, I took a trip with them to Lingshan village and Tachuan, both locaed in the Yellow Mountain area. The weather was perfect last Sunday, and it still felt like a fine day in the fall, sunny and warm with that incredible blue sky. We visited the Lingshan Village first, which was a small typical village in the Yellow Mountain area with the Hui Style building. Though Lingshan isn't as famous as Hongcun or Xidi in the Yellow Mountain area, which often appeared in movies. There are some benefits with this village as well. First they don't charge you for your visiting, and the local villagers are not commercialized that much. When you passed by, they were busy with what they were doing, just a few houses sold some stuff locally in front of their doors. The common view in the coutryside nowadays in China is many houses are locked and empty, not well-maintained, as if they have been abandoned by the owners for a while. It was very quiet and peaceful there. Two buses brought us about 100 toursits there and I guess this broke the tranquility of the village. We had our lunch in the village and the restaurant by the road might have to hire all the young labors from the village to help, delivering the dishes. Ten people shared one table with 13 dishes! Those local dishes tasted really good, of course with bamboo shoots and tofu, which are too common on your dish table around this area. We visited its old clan temple, memorial archway, her old street, as well climbing up to a nearby hill to have a better view of the terrace, though in the early winter, not too much to see in the fields, it's still a golden view.

A transition time I guess this is a transition time of my life.I had stopped visiting this website for over last three years, until I was back last week. Lucky as I was! About three years ago, I found a good teacher who is a Christian, who was willing to give himself to help others. He is a natural talker and during every session he gave to me, one question after another, there were no awkward moments as between strangers or those who have a different background met on line to talk, who would face those moments left nothing to talk about. We talked about all kinds of topics, movies , cultural differences, hot social issues, even my life stories freely, and every time the conversation just flew between us...... Twice a week, I felt so content with my study and my life, since every week, I would have something to look forward to. Nothing could be better than a good teacher, a wise mentor, a very kind and inspiring soul as a company. Life was no longer a lonely journey for me. That was this period I gradually quit visiting this website. I don't think I took everything for granted. I always felt enormous appreciation towards my teacher, as well as our Lord. I knew nothing could stay forever, even if you never really wanted to let it go. When it stopped suddenly two weeks ago, it has left such an empty space in my life! Whatever how much I have been missing it, I will have to let it go, getting on my journey of learning and exploring. I called this a transition time of my life. I put it here just as a reminder, with faith and hope, please never stop your steps, and please keep going. This solitude might be another test from our Lord for the strength to grow.

I was Fooled I was fooled by someone. In fact, the cell phone message was sent to me on the day of Dec 28th, and I just hadn’t gotten any time to check it and I had almost forgotten it till last night— “How are you? I have just changed my cell phone number. I ordered a song for you with my thoughts. Please call 125904713, and listen to it! There are some words from me after the song, and then you will learn who I am, Zhang.” I thought of Miss Zhang who is my classmate from college right away. Now she still teaches in the college. And we still keep in touch. My second thought was wow; she became a little “romantic” this time. I dialed the phone number, and it first informed me with how much it would cost me to listen to it, and of course I kept it going. But coming with the song, it was a love story with something like without you I felt so lonely… I was completely confused! Ok, let me keep to the last minute for his or her words, then I would know. At the end of the song, finally there came a strange man’s voice: 就给你点一首歌，没什么啦。 Did I know him? I tried to think of any possible guy named Zhang with that voice in the past, who might have a romantic feeling on me, and still kept it. Then my answer was negative! So I had reached my conclusion that he must have ordered the song for a wrong number. I thought what a poor guy he was! But wait, when I mentioned it to Jiang, and she laughed loudly and told me that I had been fooled. She had gotten the same message as I had! How I couldn’t pick it out that that was a fraud! A guy fooled me, and fooled as many people as he could to raise the click rate to that site! I am always proud of my ability to identify good or bad, false or right, but I was cheated on the last day of the year. Maybe my nostalgia about the previous year made me weak and I was a little sentimental last night. But it was not that bad fraud playing on people, don’t you think?

Are These What We want? My last week of training, I worked in the ICU. Only very sick patients who needed to be carefully monitored would be admitted to ICU. Most of them are caused by car accidents or the patient who just took an operation has some complications. When I was there, coincidently, almost every morning, we would see one or two new patients admitted the previous night because of traffic accidents. Those patients often looked scary with their wounded body. The first morning I went to this new ward, I saw a young man lying on the bed, and his head was swollen. He had a deformed and ashen face. Yes, ashen face, that’s the new term I have just learned. It came into my mind at the time. His story was he drove a motorcycle bumping on a car. Very soon, his heart stopped running in that morning, and we did CPR on him. When I took the doctor's place to press on his chest with my hands, I could tell there had already had no life signs in him. As the policy in any resuscitation goes, we can only give up in 30 minutes after the Cardiac arrest. Following the declaration of the death to the family, the desperate mother cried in... On Friday, my last day in ICU, a 54 years old man was newly admitted also the night before. It was said his case was a tricycle crashed him down, and then crossed over the lower part of his body. He was lying in bloody linen, and he has already been in coma with a ventilator helping him breath. We wanted to put him in clean, but the order was we couldn't move his body any a little. He had a severe inner bleeding, and it has caused the over swelling of his two thighs. No access to his lower cavalla vein to block the bleeding, it means no operation that could be done on him at the time. The doctor who was in charge of him told me: now we much left him to his God. Instantly, we blamed all these to their bad lucks. I knew there was something else wrong, and I supposed everybody else there knew that. However, most time, we just don’t want to be aware of the truth. When one of my friends, a current traffic policeman, who deals with traffic accidents everyday as he described his job to us, somewhat covered his car number during one trip, he ‘flied’ us back by his car, instead of driving us back. When the evenings fall, people tend to not obey the traffic rules, I guess. On another aspect, as the living standard has dramatically improved, it has become a fashion to have a driving license, since it means you have a car or you will soon have one. In old stereotype, only the rich can own a car, and it used to be a symbol of status. But I am shocked by the way most people would like to do—go a backdoor to get a driving license as soon as possible. So, I think we would expect more and more “road killers”. Everyone can easier to learn this. It won’t be surprised to work in hospital to see as many as tragedies caused by traffic accidents.

Why don’t we celebrate Christmas? My friend from the States has decorated his house for the coming of the Christmas on next Thursday. Today when we talked on line, he showed me around his living room. There is a beautiful Christmas tree hanging with small gifts and colorful lights in the corner. On the table, there are several Santa Clause’ faces mugs. Yes there is a Santa Clause standing in the room on the other side of the corner. When my friend pressed somewhere, the Santa Clause started twisting his waist and dancing. “How nice it is!” I gave him my comments. My friend said. “Yes, my wife loves it!” My friend has happily married to a China woman this year. He added, “My wife has invited 10 friends come to spend the Christmas with us.” I guessed, “Are they all Chinese?” He answered “You bet.” I continued, “When they talk, they must all speak Chinese. You are excluded from their conversation.” My friend laughed, “Yes, you are right. But I can pick up a few words here and there. Last time, when they talked, I heard of them saying that: ‘ta shi lao wai’ -- Wait a minute! I am a foreigner? No, No, No, I said‘I am not a foreigner! You are foreigners.’ They all laughed.” The phone rang and my friend didn’t pick up the phone as usual. It was from his wife. His wife was working, but she was supposed that her husband might have been talking to his female friend from China around this time. My friend said that every time, she would intrude since she knew I might be on Skype talking to you now. Afterwards, she would say something like you preferred to talk to your friend rather than your wife. My friend has a jealous Chinese wife. But he confirmed to me that it was fine not to answer the phone and they played a small game with each other. I thanked for my friend introducing his culture to me, someone who spends all her life in the East. I do like to see how an ordinary family from western world would like to celebrate their Christmas. My friend doesn’t have any children, but I guess that all the children there are looking forward to receiving gifts from Santa Clause around this time. When the snow covers the ground, it is cold, quiet but slivery outside. As if I could visit invisibly outside in the dark, I saw all those lights, the laughter, the singing spreading out of every single house, even the smell of the foods that were delicious had already taken up the entire table. This is a time when people just get together, relaxed and feel happy. Everyone tends to be nicer and friendlier. It is a religious holy time, but a national holiday. With its cultural distinction, it brings people with many good feelings and memories, as well the connections with another world. Even for someone far from the east, I can feel the warmth of it and I admire the celebration of the day. When I walked on the street this afternoon, it was cold and sunny. There would be no snow next week. I noticed that a few modern decorated shops had put up small Christmas trees in the hall and a fake Santa Clause standing by the door. Suddenly, I heard of a tender voice behind me,” Mom, why don’t we celebrate Christmas?” A school girl was holding her mother’s hand, looking at the shop. The mother answered, “Christmas is not our holiday, it is the day that Jesus was born and it is celebrated by those countries that Christianity is dominated. It is the western holiday. When you grow up, if you study in the United States, you will celebrate it.” The girl wondered and said, “I don’t mind, Mom. We have Spring Festival! I can’t wait for our Spring Festival.”

What would be like to live in an area with 4500 meters high altitude? One of my colleagues has finished his work in Tibet for the last eight months. He took part in a project called Support Tibet which was initiated by our government. Last Friday, he came to my department and I was interested in his life in Tibet, and we had a short chat. Is it a beautiful place? Yes, it is. The sky there is very blue when the weather is nice. In the countryseat where he served was almost no industry, and only one Blanket Factory went bankrupt. But that is a terrible place to live in. Could you imagine living at the altitude of 4500 metes? Maybe there are some places lack of water or something else, but what you are lack of there is oxygen. When you walked on the street passing by a dog, the dog would lie on the ground and didn’t bother to open its eyes. When you want to do something as taking a bottle of water from the first floor to the second floor, you have to move slowly. You really have to watch carefully about spending your energy, doing a little things but taking a great time to recover. Even so, you will get a terrible headache for a few days when you first arrive. You can not easily fall asleep during your evenings because of lacking of oxygen…… Local people are very religious. They are poor, but they will still be willing to sell everything they have and donate all their money to temples. When they need to make any decision, they always go to temples to ask for an answer. For the monks who serve in temples, they are monthly paid by the government and they enjoy a high rank in the society. But you really can not read their minds and what they are thinking about. Tibetan people have their rules to settle things. For example, if you drive a car and hit someone to death unfortunately, your punishment more likely is required to work for the family for a year… My colleague can be regarded as a skillful surgeon working over there. And the local doctors who once trained in our hospital have already moved to a lower area and chosen to live in cities. Life at that altitude is harsh. When the government suggested financing people, who live more than 4500 meters altitude to move to a better place, they turned it down and they wanted to keep living on their ancestors’ land. The transportation was not good and only one bus travelled between my colleague’s working hospital and the nearby city. It was worth since it was a totally different experience, my colleague concluded. Now I keep wondering what would be like to live on the roof of the world and how difficult it could be by the shortage of oxygen. Life might be truly simple and serene and I just have to prove it by myself one day.

Do we make ourselves smarter? One of my colleagues has retired recently. When people from HR department made a mistake of her birthday and noticed her to retire earlier, she got very upset. Working for the government or any job like that, you want to stay at work as long as you can. Since it means money, power etc. This reminds me of something that people sometimes do in the country. Obviously, they think they are smarter than others. In our country, when children turn to seven years old, they are admitted by primary schools. But listed as one of those countries that pay much attention to their education, many parents here prefer to send their children to school before seven years old. So there is a compromise to meet this requirement. If you want to send your child to school before seven years old, you have to pay additional money to the school such as 2000 yuan for one month in short. In that case, if your child is four months younger than seven, you will have to pay eight thousands yuan to school just let your child to be accepted. Is it unfair? How can a couple control and give birth to their baby after September when the new semester starts so they don’t need to pay the extra money? Many smarter parents figure out a better way to handle this by changing their babies’ birthday on paper, and many follow this strategy. It takes some efforts to do that, but it saves lots of money for the family. However, if the parents have ever hold a vision of the future, the possible consequence of this no-harm cheating, they might hesitate to take any action. Do we really make ourselves smarter? Another story was brought up by a friend today. She told me of her condominium she intended to sell but she would not get the value of the house deserved. How that comes? I want her to clarify her story. She told me that it was all because of one of her colleagues’ stupid decision. Following the first tide of housing commercialization in China, she got the right to own the department her school provided with, and she lived with many other teachers in that building. The money they needed to pay for the apartment based on the floor space of the house. Before that, there had had no official paper record of those departments they lived in. One of her colleagues took the responsibility of measuring and filing the papers. My friend and many others were told that when measuring it, they didn’t cover the balcony of each condominium which it should be covered. Everyone was happy and thought it was smart to neglect the space of the balcony so that it saved money for all of them. The cost of house has been skyrocketing ever since. Now since on the official paper, it doesn’t cover the square of the balcony and it won’t be counted in when if someone wants to put it into market. Overall, they all lose a large amount of money because of this “smart” choice at the time. When we look around, it’s not difficult to find people around us who are willing to take advantage of everything and make any effort to benefit themselves. They count on any step they take and they think they are the smartest ones. However, our channel vision has limited how far we can go. I guess the wisdom of human being never falls on people who are rush for self-benefit.

Am I Sick? When you sat in your chair and felt relaxed on your Saturday morning, nothing particularly got in your mind and one of your hands might unconsciously move around. But suddenly, you felt that there was something wrong. Your hand touched your neck by accident, and under your fingers, there was a node just as small as a bean. It drew all your attention immediately and your heart seemed brought up to your throat. You used your index finger pulp carefully press on the right of your neck, then with your middle finger. Both fingers released to you the same information that it was there, a small soft bean-like alien settling under the skin of your right neck. You couldn’t wait to touch the left side of your neck, but it was unusually smooth. You were overwhelmed by your discovery，“Is that a signal of cancer? Am I dying?” Looking around your room and your toddle daughter who was playing in the corner, you felt that your tears had already filled in your eyes. Life is pretty good and you just start a good life after years of efforts. You thought of your loved partner and your parents, what would be for them if you died? And the process of dying though was scary! All kinds of thoughts occupied your mind, and now sitting in your chair you were petrified. It seemed all you could do was to wait to be sentenced when you went to see a doctor. Is this a joke? No, it happened to Xia, a middle school teacher. She called me on Monday morning and asked me to bring her to see a senior doctor, since I work in hospital. When we met, she told me about her worries. She didn’t sleep very well for the last two days since she might have developed a cancer. If she hadn’t told me her worries, I would have never known that she was a worrier. She is a young good-looking woman, with a smile always playing around her fresh face. In fact, she looks healthier than I am! I walked her to my old unit while comforting her. I once worked in a surgical unit. Doctor Z was in office. After having checked her neck, he said, “Nothing is wrong but a small lymph node there. Have you got a tooth problem?” Xia shook her head, “No, but my skin on the shoulder has some infection.” Z examined the involved skin and explained to her how an infection like this could induce the reaction of our lymphatic system. It was not a cancer and there was nothing needed to be worried. Xia thanked me for my help and left hospital. I thought she should have felt relieved. However, I got her call again next morning. She was still somewhat worried and she wished to see another senior doctor. If both doctors said it was alright, then it should be alright. Could be any chance of misdiagnose of her case? This time, I brought her to see the dean in another surgical unit. The dean is a senior doctor and a woman. She went on the same procedure as Z did. She told Xia,“There is muscle there. You might touch the muscle.” Juan insisted,“No, here.” She guided my colleague G’s hand moved on her neck. G checked carefully and said,“There is a small lymph node there. No worries! You see, if you touch a small lump, two things need to be remembered. One is to check it is fixed or you can move it; the other thing is to see if it is soft or solid. If the lump is a soft one and it is moveable, usually, it’s not a bad one.” My colleague noticed that Xia seemed not be convinced and she directed Xia’s fingers to touch her somewhere on the back of her neck,“Can you feel it? I have one which is both bigger and harder than yours.” I could see the tension on Xia’s face finally disappeared, “Yes, you have one! So it’s not a cancer! Ok, now I am relieved.”

Did this happen to you? When you sat in your chair and felt relaxed on your Saturday morning, nothing particularly got in your mind and one of your hands might unconsciously move around. But suddenly, you felt that there was something wrong. Your hand touched your neck by accident, and under your fingers, there was a node just as small as a bean. It drew all your attention immediately and your heart seemed brought up to your throat. You used your index finger pulp carefully press on the right of your neck, then with your middle finger. Both fingers released to you the same information that it was there, a small soft bean-like alien setting under the skin of your right neck. You couldn’t wait to touch the left side of your neck, but it was unusually smooth. You were overwhelmed by your discovery，“Is that a sign of cancer? Am I dying?” Looking around your room and your toddle daughter who was playing in the corner, you felt that your tears had already filled in your eyes. Life is pretty good and you just start it after years of efforts. You thought of your loved partner and your parents, what would be for them if you died? And the process of dying though was scary! All kinds of thoughts occupied your mind, and now sitting in your chair you were petrified. It seemed nothing you could do but wait to be sentenced when you went to see a doctor.