Busy Weekend and Chinese Medicine

This was a busy weekend for me. On Friday night, I went to the night market in Tai-Zhong. On Saturday, I ate dinner with Dr. W and Dr. K (a pediatric oncologist/hematologist and a pediatric geneticist/endocrinologist, respectively). They knew my brother when he was here 2 years ago. We ate traditional Hakka food (one of the ethnic groups in Taiwan) and drank pearl tea from the place where it was originally invented (in Tai-Zhong).


Sunday morning, my friend "Jenny" took me to eat sao bing you tiao, which is basically a flat sesame seed bread with a piece of fried dough inside, delicious! We then went around and visited the famous temples in Changhua that I had not seen yet. One is a 300 year old Confuscian temple, the other a 100 year old Japanese temple.


On Sunday, some friends took me to Sun Moon Lake (Re Yue Tang), which is one of the most famous spots in Taiwan. It's a beautiful mountain lake with a famous temple on an island in its center. It is the largest lake in Taiwan. I think I remember some photos my parents took of this many years ago; the traditional fishing boats are gone but it's still beautiful.





This is a famous old train station my friends said that my father would recognize.





Today, I went to the Chinese medicine clinic and learned a little about what they do. They ran several tests on me and it was a lot of fun.

Testing my voice:

Testing my heart rate variation:

Testing my pulse:

Testing my tounge:

Testing my energy meridians:

This is the chief resident (with a nurse) explaining to me that I have too much fire in my body. Thus, I get thirsty more easily, among other things.

Afterwards, I sat in on the Chinese medicine outpatient clinic and watched the doctor take pulses, perscribe medication, do acupuncture (alone or with flames or electricity, depending), bone/joint manipulation, the application of herbal plasters and the like. It was really interesting and I'm looking forward to going back tomorrow.