Medical Physical -- China Style

I've never formally had a physical so when Onions hospital offered one to its employees, I tagged along and got one for free.  Seeing as the Chinese medical system records are still done mostly by paper, and without photo ID, I got a physical.  My official name is as a relative of Onions.  You start by filling out your medical booklet!

And it's run as a bunch of stations.  Doctors and nurses all gather at the hospital and everything is done in a morning.  First stop, blood sample.

Onions got us through the short lines first....blood pressure 130/80.  Negative on everything else....but I'm not exactly sure what I was being asked.

Eyes and ear check.  Everything normal.

Then things began to slow down.  Lines for each station, but they moved. 

First line was for the ultrasound.  No clue what it says.  But when the report comes back, Onions will interpret or I'll ask a Chinese teacher.

The ONLY time something was computerized was the bar code sticker for my chest x-ray.

I forget what happened here.  I figured out that this was the "surgical" report.  I think this is where the doctor felt my glands and had me swallow for him as he felt my throat.

The quickest EKG scan ever.  Onions had his printout at 9:58:56.  They had him off the table, I laid down and had the sensors on me and my printout was at 9:59:24.  But more importantly, what's going on with the bottom graph?  Why is there a big huge weird bump?

The doctors interpretation.....

Last stop....I think was internal medicine.  It's the one with a stethoscope.

Once we finished at all the stations we turned in our booklets, like turning in a final exam, and we'll wait for the report.  Total time?  Two hours.

Art and Friends

Lazy Saturday, Onions has to work and I get a text from my friend Milan (from Serbia) who is now working for an art dealer and he got me a pass to the big art show in town.

Milan works for the artist/gallery that produces these paintings.

The artist and myself.  I asked why he uses western subjects...and in his Chinese (which I got about 70% of) he says that painting is a western form (the gist) and that he will start painting Asian models.  He wants me to model!  I'm IN!

Ok, THIS is cool.  Here's a close-up of the Mona Lisa...

....!!!!!

Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan...no big deal, except why are they being painted by a Korean artist?

A classically American subject, but with Chinese faces.  I just don't ever picture Chinese construction workers being so nicely dressed.

That evening, I met up with Tina, a friend who was doing a tour of China with her family! 

Onions' Alma Mater

Flying down from Harbin to Tianjin on Sichuan Airlines, the route map shows the Diaoyu Islands even though it's not a destination.  Nationalism is rampant!

Why in Tianjin?  It was the visit Onions' alma mater "Zhong Guo Ming Hang Da Xue"

Civil Aviation University of China!  Founded in 1951 here in Tianjin right next to China's first military airport.

All couples get to see their lives before each other.  Onions lived in this dorm on campus for his first three years. Six to a room here. He was on campus for six total for an undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Turns out the dorms, still leftover from the early days of the university don't have bathing facilities, so he had to go to this and students still do) go to this bathing building!  NO AMERICAN kid would ever stand for this.

The building that house Onions' major!

Being an aviation university, the roads had airline logos and had aviation themed names!

Just in case you forget who's in charge!

All over campus he was commenting on the changes.  "This bridge has a new cover!"

His dorm for his last two years (there was a stop somewhere along the way to account for the sixth year).  Being a graduate student he now only had to share a room with one other person.

I had to ask why all the water bottles.  It's the water building of course.

Come in and fill your hot water bottle.  Duh!  It dawned on me that I now understand my grandparents obsession with the hot water bottle.

The lake at the center of campus. It was fun to experience the return to his alma mater. Someday he'll see Cornell!

Siberian Tigers

Leaving Hailaer on the overnight train, we arrived in Harbin for a day. The main goal was to see the Siberian Tiger Park and Breeding Center.  I didn't have high hopes and was anticipating a few sad looking tigers. I was happily wrong.

The main part of the visit involves getting in a bus and driving through the park to see the animals in their "habitat."

....and now we're locked in our bus driving through the park.

And the tigers just start walking around and checking us out. Some of them climb up and stick their faces right onto the side of the bus.

The park also breeds African lions.

After the bus ride, you are encouraged to purchase an animal to feed to the tigers.  Turns out since we arrived at the end of the day, they had already eaten.

A tiger amongst the remants of a former animal (my bet is chicken!).

The second half of the tour allowed us to walk through the more traditional zoo part of the breeding center.  Turns out the center has over 1,000 tigers on site!  The challenge isn't breeding them, but actually getting them back into the wild.

Tigers nap in all kinds of positions.

So, I have to say that I know understand why tigers are revered.  They are absolutely beautiful in every way. The way they look, move, stare...EVERYTHING.  I'm a fan!

A white tiger!

The center also has many of the other "cats."  I always thought that ligers were fake, but according to Wikipedia they do exist.  A liger has a male lion father and a female tiger mother.  Vice versa for the tigon.  The liger was no out of it's house so we didn't see it.

Another big lion, but we also saw leopards, lynx, puma...name a big cat, we say it.

Jaguar!  Ok, so I left the park inspired by these cats.  Perhaps someone will say that I shouldn't have spent money supporting this center from keeping the animals in captivity.....but I learned a lot and have a new appreciation for these animals.