The Great Wall Music Festival + the Horrors of a Chinese Hospital Visit

Hello everyone! I haven't posted recently because I've been so busy with work, but am finally making time to write a little something!

At the beginning of May, I took a weekend trip to Beijing. My first order of business with a meeting with UN Women. I met with their director last month in Beijing, and this time I got to meet with the woman that is in charge of overseeing the All China Women's Federation (ACWF) political participation project, the only currently on-going women's political participation project right now. We had an amazing meeting where she agreed to help connect me with ACWF so that I could hopefully do some site visits and interview village women who participated in the program (that would be the crowning jewel of my project if it happens!). She seemed very excited about my research and actually thought it was important and meaningful work! It's so nice, especially on days when you're feeling a bit lost in your research, to have someone in the field acknowledge the work that I'm doing and see its value for themselves without me having to explain and justify what I'm doing.

Due to some recent challenges I've encountered in my research, I've been rethinking my goals for the end of the project and what I should expect to get out of my Fulbright year. Am I a total failure if I don't produce anything? What if no one will publish my work? Is what I'm doing really that unique? etc. A wonderful friend and fellow Fulbrighter gave me some great advice, which is that no matter what happens at the end of our grants, we're going to learn a lot about our topics and essentially be "experts" on it. So in light of that conversation, I've been feeling much better about my work. And on top of that, this meeting with UN Women was SO encouraging!

The beautiful and stylish Finnish woman from UN Women who met with me also gave me some great career advice on how to get into UN work. Unfortunately, I can't intern for them until I'm enrolled in a Masters program. However now I'm considering delaying my masters for another year (the original plan was to start in fall of 2014 because I don't come home from China until December of 2013) so that I can gain some more work experience to figure out what to get a higher degree in. But how am I supposed to do that if I all the internships I want require masters degrees already?!

Anyways, after the meeting was my dearest Australian friend, Kate's, going away party. She's on basically the Australian version of the Fulbright, and has to return soon to finish her degree. We're all very sad to see her go, but I currently am planning to come visit her in December in Australia!! Woo!! Zan, who lived with Kate this spring after I left Beijing, organized a surprise dinner party for Kate at a delicious Guizhou restaurant. Then we went to one of Kate's favorite hangouts, Great Leap Brewery, where a million of our friends came to say goodbye to Kate. We're going to miss her so much!

Kate and I at Great Leap for her going away party!

Saturday a bunch of my friends and I went to the Great Wall Music Festival. To begin the day, we went to 3sums, a new burger joint that specializes in combos of exotically flavored sliders. They were pretty delicious! I got a "french" (pate and fried egg and mayo burger), "mexican" (black bean and corn burger w/ salsa and gaucamole), "yankee" (the classic american cheeseburger), and the "greek" (a lamb burger with feta cheese). Guests were tied to their orders by stuffed, colored giraffees...turned out not to be so precise, but a cute idea! They also had a drink special that day specifically for the Great Wall Music Festival. 

The lunch gang: Me, Kate, Jeremy (who came with me from Xi'an), Julian, Natalia, and Rebecca

And of course in typical Chinese fashion, the event was terribly disorganized and chaotic. We arrive at the parking lot where buses are leaving from and there is no line, no designated bus parking, no order whatsoever. A bus pulls in and about 100 people rush the bus before it even stops moving. People were pulling their friends onto the bus through windows, and climbing over each other to get on. It was actually a stampede. But let's just think about this for a second. How hard would it be to have 4 employees with a megaphone, and some rope to make a nice line for everyone to wait in? It would have taken a lot less time to load the buses, prevented people from being trampled, and made everyone's lives a lot less stressful. But that's just too easy I guess. What's a music festival without stampedes and bleeding feet? After our group of about 20 friends got split up in the mad rush, 5 of us made it on a bus, with only 3 seats. But "we made it!" we thought. WRONG. Our bus broke down before even leaving the parking lot. They'd already stamped our bus tickets too. The bus driver ordered everyone off and back into the masses to fight for another bus, with no mention of our already stamped tickets. Luckily we quickly made it onto another bus, and they didn't even bother to check for tickets. After an hour long trip during which a random concert-go-er put his own iPod on the bus speakers and blasted techno music, we arrived at the Great Wall. We briefly reunited as a group when we arrived:

NOTE: we don't know the two weirdos in the front. They just jumped in...

You were not allowed to bring in any drinks, water included. Once we got inside, we discovered that ALL food and drinks were 50RMB each (about 8USD. By comparison, a bottle of water usually costs 2RMB, and a bottle of chinese beer about 4RMB). We bit the bullet, and got into yet another mass that was waiting to buy drink tickets. About 5 people from the front, they finally decided that making the crowd into a line might be a good idea and stopped selling tickets until everyone backed up into a line. Ya, like that's gunna work. An hour later, we got our drinks tickets and went to buy food when, surprise! There's no more electricity at the food stand so they can't cook hot dogs, the only food available, anymore. Great. After these small disasters, we finally got into the crowd to dance and enjoy the great music! The rest of the evening was really awesome. Andy C, one of the world's greatest DJs, opened and was followed by David Guetta, the headliner for the show. He was AMAZING!

The Stage

The Great Wall at night

Luckily getting home was not nearly as chaotic as getting there. After wandering the totally unmarked and unattended parking lot of buses, we finally came across an empty bus getting ready to head back to Wudaokou, where I used to live near Tsinghua University. It wasn't exactly where we wanted to go, but it got us back to the city. Once we got to wudaokou--starved from not eating since our noon burgers (it's now 1am)--we went to our favorite 24 hr dim sum restaurant by Zan and Kate's apartment. Overall, a great day!

After a delicious brunch, I returned that night to Xi'an to resume my normal workweek. Unfortunately that Tuesday, I had to go to the Chinese hospital for a minor ailment. In China, people don't "go to the doctor". Instead you go straight to the hospital to see whatever specialist you need. Upon arrival at the hospital, I wandered the floors looking for the correct department. Finally I saw people lined up near the entrance to the dept I wanted so I asked a woman in line what they were waiting for. She explained that I first needed to register and sign into the hospital, and also pay for the check up. She pointed me to a window down the hall, where I paid 7RMB (about 1USD) for my exam and "signed in", which consisted of me writing my name, age, and sex on a paper booklet that they stamped. I returned to the line, where people were waiting to sign into the department and get their name on the list to be seen by the doctor when they return from lunch. After putting my name down, I was told to sit down and watch for my name on the monitor mounted on the wall. Once I saw my name, I walked confused back to the desk, and the nurse led me to a room full of crowded people huddled around a few desks. "Desk 2" the nurse told me. I walked over and quickly saw the protocol from there, despite everyone having a number based on their order of arrival, was to shove your booklet into the doctors face until they took it. Once I managed to get my booklet in the hands of the doctor, she asked me, "so what's wrong with me?" I looked around at all the Chinese people who began to lean in closer to hear to me explain in broken chinese (I don't know a lot of medical/body part words) my symptoms. 0 doctor-patient privacy. It was pretty embarrassing  Finally the doctor switched over to broken english, and between the two languages we pieced together what was going on. She then sent me into a room with several exam tables, not separated by anything, to wait. After the exam was over, she gave me some papers and test tubes to take to the testing room, which was ambiguously "on the 2nd floor". So I wandered down there, with test tubes of various bodily fluids in hand. The first "help desk" I approached immediately pointed me down the hall without even letting me explain what I was looking for. Several more of these generic "Straight ahead" interactions later, I ended up in the line for blood testing. "Ok," I thought, "maybe the doctor wants me to have blood taken. That's possible," so I hoped in the line. When I got to window, the nurse yelled at me, and said "Why are you here? You're supposed to go down the hall." "WHERE down the hall?" I asked. "THAT way," she said generically pointing to the left, which was a row of chairs along the wall. I wondered into the hallway, thoroughly frustrated and with tears slowly rolling down my face as I try to keep from all out sobbing. A friendly old 厉害 (fierce) Chinese lady came over to me and asked what was wrong. I explained that "I was a foreigner," (duh, she could see that) "and I don't understand how the hospital works, and no one will help me, and everyone is yelling at me, and I have these test tubes in my hands, and I just want to leave!"She grabbed my paperwork from me, and hustled over to the nearest desk. After bowling those waiting patiently in line out of the way with her arm, she shoved my paperwork at the nurse, and yelled at her for me. The nurse explained to the old lady where I was supposed to go, and the nice old lady walked me there. They told me to come back in 1 hour for the results. Results in hand, I returned to "Desk 2" doctor, who announced she was taking a 20 minute break. Finally she returned, prescribed me some medecine, and I escaped the hospital. Other observations from my 4 hour hospital stay: It was dirty. About as dirty as your normal Chinese establishment, but I found this pretty troubling considering this was a hospital. I'm surprised I didn't leave sicker than I was when I arrived. People were being wheeled around on stretchers or in wheelchairs by their families members. People were lying in their own pajamas directly on the beds, with no paper or sheets. Other patients were sitting in the hallway waiting area, which stank of Chinese bathroom, while their spouses or friends held their IV bags above their heads. It was the strangest thing. There was no mention of insurance throughout the experience, but it was only about 400RMB in total anyways (about 70USD). The dirtiest place were the bathrooms. There were 2 squat toilets, and 1 western toilet. None of the door locks worked. The floor around the toilets was covered in multiple days of urine and excrement and blood. There was no soap or paper towels near the sinks. It was SO revolting. I've seen worse bathrooms in China of course, but not in a hospital! My advice to everyone in the future: if you can, suck it up and pay whatever it costs to go to the "western" hospital; bring a Chinese friend; and bring lots of a cash (they won't treat you until you pay up front with cash). For more information about the terribly broken healthcare system, check out this great podcast by Sinica (I was lucky I didn't have to deal with bribes!).

And Congratulations to all my US friends graduating this month! It's been a rather nostalgic time for me, with my one year anniversary of graduating this past week. Of course everyone on Facebook is posting exciting Senior Week (a week of fun and celebration for Vassar's graduating seniors) pictures and statuses that make me miss the great times my friends and I had this time last year all together! And many of my friends got together at Vassar this month for Founder's Day, Vassar's "spring festival". But naturally living abroad, you miss out on a lot of things...

Stay tuned for a new post soon on my first Chinese wedding (that I attended...I've yet to get married in China, but who knows, I still have 5 months!)

May Day!

May 1st is International Labor Day, a holiday celebrated in many countries that have a history of labor movements. In China, it is a rather large holiday full of fireworks and parades. My University was closed for 3 days around the holiday, and many businesses and offices were off yesterday too. To celebrate the holiday, a few friends and I went to 法门寺 Famen Temple, a temple outside of Xi'an. I was invited by friends of the Chinese organizers of our little outing and didn't really know much about the temple, other than that it was supposed to be historic. Upon arriving at the temple, I was surprised by the entirely brand new temple. In typical Chinese fashion, there is a huge pavillion at the entrance, complete with water fountains and stone elephants:

From there, we walked down the long pathway leading up to the main temple. Along the way, there were various bodhisattva statutes, which our Chinese friends had to pray at. EVERY one. So it took us about an hour and a half just to walk to the main temple. It was a beautiful day though, and we all enjoyed the sunshine (some of us a little too much- I'm pretty sunburned now...).

Of course we had to take silly Chinese tourist photos...

And imitate all the bodhisattvas

attempting to not get totally sunburned (and failing)

BEST PARASOL EVER

We finally arrived at the temple (yes, the large gold diamond-thing that looks like it should be used to communicate with aliens). 

Then we explored the inside of temple, although apparently we missed the major attraction of the whole temple. I finally figured out the story of the temple yesterday, after we had already come back. Apparently the provincial government was trying to build something and accidentally discovered that beneath this really old temple was an entire basement of buried treasure, complete with one of buddha's fingers now on display in the main room of the modern temple. They then built this entire temple complex in 2009, and made the basement of the main temple area into a museum with all the ancient artifacts they found. Unfortunately  no one told us about this awesome museum, and there were NO signs so we actually didn't see the temple. We also didn't see the really old pagoda housed on the side of temple complex, which again had no markings or signage. Typical China, always messing up their best tourist sites with weird, kitchy, new development around the actual site. And then not telling you anything about it...

Despite missing the major sites, it was still a great day in the sun with friends! And while I was expecting a historical site, I enjoyed seeing this modern buddhist temple, which was pretty unique from what I've seen in China. Definitely worth a visit for anyone passing through Xi'an!