Ancient Medicine Modern World

In the summer of 2005 I left Asia and returned to the USA to practice the medicine of China in Seattle. This blog has been a chronicle of that chapter, and like all chapters there is an end. This is it.

Yong Kang Clinic has changed hands and become Ageless Acupuncture. My address again is Beijing. There is a new chapter as I again dive deeper into language, and work to bring more of the medicine written in Chinese into English. This particular chapter draws to an end. But, the journey that began eight years ago on Yong Kang Street in Taiwan where I first began my study of Chinese and learned to drink Pu-er tea continues.

It can be followed……HERE

Unlike Taiwan’s damp wind that blows like a smothering grandmother’s kiss; Beijing’s wall of dry sand filled bluster is like the smack of a binge economy gone on the rocks. Startling in its invisible blinding strength; sheets of dust, sand, now falling leaves, and a confetti of litter all take to the sky and shimmer like a 3rd world aurora borealis.

Wind in Chinese medicine is both a pathogen, and the result of illness. But, it shows up too in human relationships. Usually as anger and a blindsided confusion. A relationship dance where after a few seemingly routine steps there is suddenly a gaping void of misunderstanding. Such has been my dance with the publishing house in Beijing where I erroneously thought a job awaited.

Actually, there is a job here. There are two of them in fact. But, just because a need is waiting to be filled, and I have the qualifications to fill it, does not mean that job is mine. There is navigating “human resources,” which has very little to do with qualifications, and everything to do with neither agreeing or disagreeing to disagreeable terms. Us Americans like the terms of a deal clean and clear; upfront and agreeable. The Chinese? It is more like get on the boat and let’s see how your weight and momentum jibe with our flow and direction.

My Chinese is not great, but I do get by. The black box of culture though, that is a completely different story. It is oh so easy to seduce oneself into thinking you actually understand, when in fact the wind blown sand has distorted your vision.

In the first Chinese class I attended in Taiwan there was a very intelligent and well spoke Australian, who had was in the process of repeating this most basic entry level course. For the third time.

His habit of an immaculate English vocabulary was an un-vaultable wall which prevented him from learning to crawl in Chinese until he could walk, run, fly. I thought about him the other day when I found myself on the thin ice of a conversation that had suddenly become tangled and complex. There are some words that tickle the ears with meaning, they provide an ephemeral connection to understanding. But, understanding and expression ride different neural pathways; once the conversation returns back to me those stepping stone words have vanished. I can detour around them, but they have not planted in my mind, and so they cannot be formed with tongue and breath. Had I bothered to grasp those words and immediately turn them back in a short reply, they would have had an opportunity to plant in a fertile moment.

By, grasping a few words and repeating them. Like making conversation about a subject you know nothing about. You can keep it going a long time if you toss a few just words back in your reply!

The trick to keep the conversation going at the speed of the tongue, instead of the ears.

This comes from the smoky lobby of a Beijing hotel. Perhaps it will take more than patriotism to advance the cause of public health.

Xinzuobiao is a vertical community just out past the Fang Zhuang exquisite food street; where the towering new China bumps up against city peasant markets, broken pavement, dust and Soviet era utilitarian boxes of concrete. The subway with its new Olympic induced lines flow new underground rivers of people as the roadways triple park themselves into an endless traffic jam of new car prestige. Xinzuobiao is where I’ve found a short term apartment while the publishing company here in Beijing and I decide if we want play together for the next 6-12 months

Traffic through out China flows according to the rules of mass and momentum where the bigger vehicle has right of way, and streams of turning cars will not be deterred by the color of the traffic light. There is,however, a curious phenomenon where the gathering mass of pedestrians will overtake that of the cars. It takes just one person, like feeling into the right location of an acupuncture point, to walk into the space of traffic that tips the balance and turns lose the human tide.

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The lingering slow autumn blew away overnight into a clear skied chill that by evening had the piecing reminder that Beijing winters are cold to the bone. Sudden and abrupt as a stubbed toe, the season turns now turns cold.

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On the fast train headed to Nanjing. Across the aisle happen to be a couple guys from Seattle. They are here with a team of Chinese and Germans working on green environmentally sustainable communities of 250,000 to one million. Stuff we talk about as being economically “unfeasible” have ALREADY been done here. Communities that are built to be BOTH environmentally green and economically sustainable; they are actually doing it here. Oh, and by the way, China is the world’s leader in manufacturing wind turbines for generating electricity. There might be a day soon, very soon, when we are buying the world’s next major energy source that is not dependent on oil. We will be buying it from the Chinese. It is a sobering thought that the inventiveness that has for so long been associated with America, is now being cultivated in the East.

They litter the corners of intersections like giant green boxy roaches; gather in clusters at the exits of subways and massive shopping malls. In Chinese they are joking referred to as “electric donkeys.” They serve as three wheels of cheap convenience. For half the price of a taxi, two people can turn a half hour walk into a five minute ride.
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But, generally only after an iron test of wills.

As a foreigner, one often has the privilege of paying an extra fee for a life lived in the middle kingdom. White skin and a big nose means there are a few extra RMB that may be lifted from the pocket. The usual five kuai fare becomes six or seven to wheel a foreigner to their destination. It is not a lot of money, perhaps 15-30 cents, but like the constant drip of a water torture it has a way of generating an increasingly painful irritation. Like every moment in China, it is a negotiation.

It is not personal; it is the simply the prejudice that foreigners should pay more. These drivers have their own vision of the American dream, which entitles them to a slice of that glorious pie. But, still there are days I’d rather walk than give them that satisfaction.

All places have their oddities, annoyances and delights. China should be different from no other place, yet perhaps because it is such a land of contrasts; peasants bicycling mountains of recycle on a 12 lane rush hour highway, as traffic honks its way past a hodge-podge of Soviet concrete boxes lost amidst the wild spring of architectural forms that look like something out of tomorrow’s imagination; socialist rhetoric that falls on the ears of those in the midst of the wildest of capitalist exploits; government black chauffeur driven Audis vying rush hour with buses full beyond bursting; coal fired breakfast stalls on the street that evaporate like morning fog with the din of a new day in the northern capital; perhaps it is the contrasts that have me biting down the unexpected taste of cultural shock. I remember a time when all this was normal. But, that was years ago, and without this past three year sojourn in the USA.

Fall blue skies with avenues of wind ruffled willows play hide and seek with the grey coal acrid pollution that stomps down like a leather jackboot. Side by side are yesterday’s failed business that leave a vacancy of broken fixtures and ever grey dust and the new businesses that saw and paint their way into existence with a speed we would not recognize in the west. To say that change happens fast in the Middle Kingdom would be an understatement at best.

The Vancouver International Airport is a marvel of art and engineering, waterfalls and environment sounds, soaring curving roofs and glassy mazes that are completely in contrast to American cattle corrider and utilititian squares.

Water sounds and saltwater smells greet the weary traveler as they enter the great hall of immigration. It is soft and inviting, and while there is padded carpeting underfoot and a lack of the ever present orange alert fear, the officers at immigration are flak jacketed and armed. Soft does not mean weak. It is such a wild contrast from American airports that always leave me feeling like I’m walking on just the other side of the wrong side of the tracks.

Somewhere on the road between Wuyi Shan and Jiuhua Shan there was a town that involved in a bus change. It was the summer of 2005. Anwei Province Chinese summer hot, with a roasting heat that vied with the humidity and gritty air. Restrooms in Chinese bus stations are by definition a moment of endurance. But, this one due to the lack of running water was a collection station for buckets of piss. Having already been weeks on the road at this point it did not register as disgust or surprise, more like that initial feeling of something being not quite right, like when your car has been broken into, and your first clue of an ajar door registers simply as “oh, that’s odd.”

Today boarding American Airlines flight 1593 conjured up an image of what a Russian Aeroflot flight in the 80’s might have been like. The seats are ratty and frayed. The cabin is dirty. Obviously a family with small child recently occupied these seats; there are telltale cracker crumbs and a nebula of cookie dust. As we taxi out to the runway the head flight attendant informs us there will be no coffee or tea on this flight, nor water to wash our hands in the bathrooms. This plane is not carrying any water.

It registers as odd, but surprisingly without a feeling a surprise.

Gratitude is the first thing that comes to mind.
The splash of summer flowers spilling out into a sidewalk draped in September blue sky.
The smell of vegetables off gassing fecund fields.
Travelers and locals allowing life, for a moment, to unwind outside the their usually consensual reality.
Seasons of salmon gray rain that warp time with its incessant fall, fall, falling. And storms that blow up from the Sound with an impersonal vendetta.

Three years ago I returned to a Seattle that seemed quieter and more empty than my Asian addled senses remembered it. Pike Place Market was the only part of town that reminded me of the electric vitality that is any street in Asia. I was missing it before I even got on that plane which brought me back here. The experience of Asia has been like the fish sauce of a Malaysian curry. You don’t taste the fish sauce itself, but without it the flavors of curry don’t expand to their full dimension.

Gratitude is what I notice as books that have traveled more borders than most Americans make their way back into boxes. As a younger man, departures called forth fear and hopeful excitement. At this stage of life, it is more like admiring the  texture of a well worn shirt made of quality cloth. Its history worn into the weave. There is sadness, but more there is appreciation. These past three years in Seattle, creating a gem of green quiet in the bustle of Seattle, has been a blessing to me, and hopefully for my community as well.

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Yong Kang Clinic will disappear. We all disappear. Disappear into something else. Water to vapor, wood to fire, heat and back to earth. All things cycle the wheel of being. Yong Kang Clinic at the beginning of Oct will become Ageless Acupuncture.

I will again fly west until it becomes east. Trusting the tide that pulls me back to the middle kingdom.