Ancient Medicine Modern World

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.