China Interrupted

Saturday we arrived outside of Jiezi, a small old city about and hour and a half outside of Chengdu. We were at a lovely resort owned by Six Senses whose culture is quiet and environmentally focused.  They had their own garden, drove us around to and from our room to the restaurant in golf carts and bowed and scraped to assist in our every need.

 

I felt like my back/butt was getting better – either that or the combination of muscle relaxers and tramadol that I had brought with me was kicking in!  We went to dinner and ordered pan fried dumplings and kung pao chicken – sounds safe, right?  Wrong! The chicken arrived first and the chicken had pieces of fat on it – gag!  The dumplings arrived dry, but they did bring some dark vinegar and sliced ginger on request.  Still, even those were not quite right.  It was sort of a surprise!!!

We didn’t care because on Sunday we were going to see the pandas at a panda reserve and we were signed up to be volunteers, i.e., we could prepare the bamboo, sweep up after the bamboo banging and later, feed the young pandas – very special.  I was only going to do the feeding, but John did all. Needless to say, just watching the pandas in all their different enclosures was a very special treat, especially toward the end when we twice saw two playing with each other.

When we arrived at the facility our first stop was to sign a learners permit agreement/release, put on special clothing –a blue denim jumpsuit with a panda learners logo-and were given gloves.  I held my hands out wide to the woman to request the largest jumpsuit; instead she gave me a bright green stretchy t-shirt that fits John  — a truly lovely sight!!!  All the other volunteers were in blue denim jumpsuits.

Watching John slam the bamboo on the ground was fun.  Then he went around behind the building to sweep so I missed that treat…

Then we walked from one area to the next – it was huge!  Amazingly, the reserve in 2018 received 180 million (this is not a typo) visitors, only two million of whom were Western.  It was quite busy.  Mostly people were very nice about letting me get by on my scooter.

 

We went to see the red pandas.

And more pandas — and videos!

This looks like a pouty little boy to me!!!!

Then came the most special time of the day.  We were going to feed the pandas.  The guide told the other people “seniors first”, so we went in one by one and fed the panda while she took pictures and video – so exciting and so much fun.

We next went into Jiezi, starting with lunch.  We told our guide we wanted a local noodle place – and we got it – best food since Beijing!  Not a western face in sight!  Delicious noodles in a light spiced soup….and John used chopsticks for the first time in his life – and did very well.  I got more splashes on me than he did (no surprise to me). Lunch for three (we included our guide) with a large beer was 50 yuan (approximately $7.00 U.S). The owner gave us a 5% discount for unknown reasons and joined us for the picture below.

The town is very old and is really just one main street.  Now it is all shops with residences above.  We had a great time looking at the wares, especially the food and the children.

 

It’s bacon that’s hanging.

HOT!

 

The area is most famous for its mountain range with one especially large mountain famous for the origins of the religion Taoism.  There were lots and lots of tour buses there to go hike on the mountain – but not us! We took pictures of ourselves instead back at the hotel.  The girl before us had an unusual pose – so John mimicked her.  Hysterical…..

Feeling unadventurous at dinner, we chose the western restaurant and shared spaghetti Bolognese and spaghetti with olive oil and garlic – both tasted great.  Luckily we had stopped at a convenience store and bought snacks and sweets so we had a little chocolate from a Dove bar and some Oreos back in the room. 

And now starts the “China Interrupted” part of the story:

My back had started hurting more later in the afternoon that day, but I awakened at 3:00 a.m. in excruciating pain.  John found me both medicines and, eventually, I went back to sleep.  Unfortunately I was no better in the morning so we cancelled our tour for the day and drove straight to the Western hospital in Chengdu to see if we could find out what was wrong with me.   We were already packed to move to Chengdu for two nights, so that part was easy.

When you first arrive at the emergency room, you go to the triage desk and you are assigned a patient number. I was patient number 6,777,328 at this hospital this MONTH. Our guide said they treat about 300,000 patients a day. You then get a card- about the size of a credit card-and pay an initial fee.

You then see a doctor who, in my case, prescribed x-rays.

You then pay an x-ray fee and go from emergency to the main hospital to radiology and wait until your number comes up. My number was 303.

After x-rays, you wait until the doctor reviews them and writes a report. Then you wait until you are allowed to print the x-rays and report from a terminal in the waiting room. Then back to the emergency room doctor who recommended a “bone doctor.”  The ER doctor said my pain was caused by a curve in my spine; that was no surprise — I’ve always had it.  I wanted an MRI to get more detail.

According to the emergency room doctor, my condition didn’t qualify for an MRI. Back to the fee window and wait for the bone doctor.  And so, finally, we met with the bone doctor who also wouldn’t order an MRI, so I asked for some very strong pain medication to get me home.  Guess what I was offered.  IBUPROFEN!  I already had muscle relaxers and strong pain medicine with me and had taken it, and it wasn’t working!!!!  I wanted percodan/percoset or oxycodone!!!!!!  But there was no way that they were going to give me that. Instead, they prescribed a Tibetan pain patch. Back to the fee window, then the pharmacy, and finally back to our car. Surprise, the Tibetan pain patch didn’t help much.

So, guess what – we changed all our plans, went to McDonald’s for a 4:00pm lunch, and explored flying to Shanghai that night to see if we could use our October 31 Shanghai-DFW tickets to fly home on October 22. Miraculously, it looked as if it might work, so we decided to head to the Chengdu airport to make a 7:30pm flight from Chengdu to Shanghai. 

We are both so disappointed to cut our trip short!  We arrived in Shanghai around 10:30pm and an hour or so later arrived at the Peninsula Hotel in Shanghai where we originally had reservations for October 27-30.  It’s a great hotel where we have stayed on a prior trip to Shanghai.

In the morning, John went to M50, an art area in old warehouse buildings not too far from the hotel, while I stayed in the room working on my blog and looking at the beautiful views.  Here is some of what he saw.

And back at the hotel…

And then off to the Shanghai airport.

We were both so unhappy to miss the remainder of our trip in China — more pandas in Chengdu, a night in Chongqing ( a “village” of 35,000,000 people with a $6 billion real estate development John was looking forward to seeing), a three day Yangtze River Cruise ending with a tour with the Three River Gorge Dam, and four days in Shanghai at the end.

John gets a huge gold star;  on the flight home there was only one seat left in business which I was in.  He spent fourteen hours in coach next to a Chinese woman who spilled a drink on his jeans early in the flight!!!!

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Now an update: got home around 5:00pm Tuesday (having left Shanghai at about the same time on Tuesday), got a prescription for hydrocodone from my internist late on Wednesday, had an MRI Wednesday night at 9:00 p.m., filled the prescription for hydrocodone Thursday morning (from which I got little or no relief), saw my pain doctor on Friday morning……now scheduled for a pain shot on Tuesday morning for a severely herniated bulging disc at the intersection of L5 and S1, causing a flattening of the nerve at S1 and an immediate prescription for percocet (oxycodone with acetaminophen)-twice as strong as hydrocodone and appears to be working.  I can make it to Tuesday just either lying on the bed or reclining on the sofa recliner; it hurts now to either sit or stand!!!!  But now I have hope!

Sorry I don’t have the rest of the China story to tell,

Beth