A Night out with the Medical Community of Changsha

*This blog was written December, 1, 2006. Look forward to more blogs I have written in the past few months coming soon.*

My friend Dr. Ray invited me for a night out on the town last night with some of his medical colleagues. Dr. Ray is a Chinese national who spent some time in Canada for med-school before coming back to Changsha to practice surgery and finish his schooling –Chinese-style. He and I became good friends after I edited a medical paper he authored on a new surgical procedure for fixing hernias. He submitted the paper to be published in an international surgical journal and he wanted me to proof it before he sent it in for review. As a result, my name will soon be affixed to a published medical paper… I’m sure this will come in handy when I apply to med-school…cough cough.

Anyhow, last night I joined Dr. Ray and about five other doctors at a raucous club on Jie Feng Lu, a street filled with dozens of bars near the center of Changsha. Things went from sober to decidedly unsober in the span of maybe 20 minutes. There I was, watching men who had been in the operating room only hours prior, pounding away shot after shot of whiskey and tea (a popular mix in China). The docs were having a grand drunken time and, when they weren’t toasting each other or toasting me, they were dancing with every girl in site.

One of Dr. Ray’s friends, an oncologist with a round head and a firm handshake, was particularly giddy with booze and would toast whoever was closest to him with a full shot whenever he made eye contact. When our first round of merriment ran dry, the oncologist joyously handed hundreds of Renmenbi (the currency in China, literally “The people's money”) to the nearest cocktail waitress for a new bottle of whiskey.

There was really only one fitting response to the whole surreal scene: I danced, I drank, and I partied, and the whole time, a team of medical professionals joined me in the action. Suffice it to say; I can’t quite imagine a similar evening unfolding in the states, which is too bad really. I’d love to know how many shots of whiskey my stateside doctor could take before he would willingly climb on a stage and grind with the nearest lady.

Fun and Games: The Internet in China

As a corollary to my last posting... A great article appeared in the New York Times recently about internet usage in China. While in America we use the internet primarily for information gathering, emailing, and, to a lessor extent, social networking, in China the net is primarily used as an entertainment gateway. The article talks in length about QQ, an instant messaging program that virtually everyone in China under the age of 35 uses. Rather than screenames, QQ users have long numbers as their identifiers. One of the questions I most get asked by my students is, "What is your QQ number teacher Zach?" I do in fact have a QQ number and I have used the program a few times, but honestly, I find it a bit maddening. QQ mirrors all the ways in which modern Chinese youth culture is quirky and nonsensical to me as a Westerner. It is flashy and filled with cutesy little do-nothing features as well as millions of different bleepy noises alerting you to everything from the fact that a buddy has just IMed you (a sound like someone knocking at your door) to a sound that can alert you when...well, I don't really know what it is supposed to point out, but it sounds like a llama giving birth to a toaster.

Also, I'm in Japan now for about two weeks, so look forward to some blogs about the land of the rising sun in the near future.