The Accidental [Eastern] Tourist

[david_dawei]

Day 9:

Mou Tai finally arrived. I have never had the pleasure of this drink and tonight I finally understand why. I am presented with a bottle with two shot glasses which seem to hold about 0.5 oz each. I quickly realize that it will take about 50-70+ shots to finish this bottle with another person, which is 'uncle'. This bottle is 53%/106 proof. I'm surprised that it's more pleasant than I expect for 53%. But 50-70 shots later, it gets really old, but I endure it. Afterwards we consume a few bottles of beer. Since there is no opener available, I show how to open one bottle with another; then with a lighter, and finally with a knife. It is all simple physic if you can get it. In chinese, they call this Kung Fu; yes, same as the martial art since the core meaning is 'hard work'. I am told by one guy that a past friend could open a bottle with his finger tip using Qigong. I am intrique but only wonder if it is enough intrique that I'll actually pursue the idea. for now, there is only two words: Gan Bei. oh.. and Shui Jiao (sleep).

[Dave&Hong]

I've enjoyed reading this very much! It's making me homesick for my wife's hometown though!! Have fun David

[HongKong2LA]

A fascinating story David. The way you tell it makes it is easy to picture all the players. A real pleasure to read. Thanks for sharing your story with us.

[RobertH]

Dose anyone get some action in this story?

[Stepbrow]

Nice to read about your adventure David. A few of us are drawn to the northern part of China. Maybe the air pollution in Shenyang aggravated your ear infection. It was always bad every time I was there. Overall sounds like quite an adventure. Glad you are having a great time.

[david_dawei]

Dose anyone get some action in this story?

you should feel lucky I even revealed her name; that's as much as you may ever know about her

 

 

Nice to read about your adventure David. A few of us are drawn to the northern part of China. Maybe the air pollution in Shenyang aggravated your ear infection. It was always bad every time I was there. Overall sounds like quite an adventure. Glad you are having a great time.

I have to admit, the air looked quite dirty when I arrived... but I thought it was mostly the weather change was a shock to my system. My ears do not sit well with cold weather; in fact, I always sleep with socks on my feet or else my ears hurt in the morning. I know that sounds crazy, and one chinese doctor told me too... but you cannot dismiss tried and true experience.

[david_dawei]

Day 10: TCM

Being in china is always a good lesson in traditional chinese medicine (TCM). In the US, I do follow some principles and tend to try to take chinese medicine over western medicine. The #1 principle that I'm always reminded while here could be summed up in this dictum: Cold water outside; Hot water inside.

 

Washing in cold water is not just due to poor, economic reasons; it actually makes alot of sense in regards to protecting one from 'external pathogens', which in TCM accounts for most sicknesses. It helps to seal up your pores and avoids dehydrating the body. As well, it keeps the face tighter and appearances smoother.

 

Most are aware of the ubiquitous drinking of hot water. After I returned from each trip, I will do that for a while in the US but then slowly go back to my heathen, cold soda drinking ways. My Tai Ji teacher (chinese acupunturist) always tells me to not drink cold soda; I've never told him I do that but I swear it's like I'm wearing a sign on my forehead telling him I am.

 

But in the last few years I've found that my stomach is 'hardening' up, so I'm trying to get more serious to changing some dietary ways, including sticking to hot water. I've got plenty of green tea at home, and some red tea which was recommended to me for the immune system.

 

Like many issues, TCM has a very ancient beginning (and much lore) and spans many concepts beyond just 'medicine' proper; it deals with the basic health and function of the body in relation both internal and external issues, for example; how the regularity of the universe and nature influenced man's body and how this applied to the body as well.

 

These observations about nature lead to the eventual development of not just TCM but many other issues including Feng Shui, yin yang, martial arts, and other daoist ideas. But what resulted is a medically, systematic and unified theory which ties together nature and man. The goal was one of internal harmony (health of the body and organs, including thinking and emotions) and external harmony (relationship to nature and it's influences on the body).

 

Thus, the body (mankind) as a microcosm is just a part of a larger universal one. There is no separation between man and the universe (or god), in this point of view; reality is ONE all inclusive notion. As such, everything simply operates according to interdependent patterns and processes (thus, processes within a single process). But ultimately, what mechanism drives all this? What is the SINGULAR principle that everything derive it's ability to operate?

 

to be continued...

Edited December 20, 2009 by DavidZixuan (see edit history)

[Batmaniac]

Weird, I got a mop slap in the heat of Shenzhen June of '08 when I washed with cold water. I was so hot and sweaty from being outside and it felt so damn good!

 

As far as the soda, the acupuncturist thinks warm soda is fine? I drink cokes, but never as much as some of my friends. I don't think it's good for you hot or cold. Personally, I drink Coke and Dr Pepper sans HFCS when I can find it and even then on a limited basis. Although i went a little wild in September with Mexican Coke. We had a brief torrid love affair. Still get together in small doses.

[chilton747]

My wife has many different teas at the house...........one for every part of the body sounds like. Some of them come from the woods here in the form of herbs and vegetation she finds.... Jinyinhua and dandelion for two. She uses the dandelion to relax muscles when they are aching.

She also brought up some wood ear, cooked it and ate it down. She is a proponent for TCM.

[david_dawei]

Dao and De: The Way and the Virtue/Power

 

A slight detour to talk about Dao. The ideas behind Dao are far reaching and split into philosphical dao and religious dao but I'll stick to the core understanding of the word and comment a little on the famous book which lead to the two camps.

 

This mechanism or principle mentioned in the previous post is what the ancients called 'dao' and gave rise to the teachings of daoism. In it's most original form, dao is like a road which provides a 'way' or 'path'. Over time, dao took on more metaphysical connotations to be that aspect by which all things operate/self-generate/come forth. The basic principle is Zi Ran (×ÔÈ»), sometimes inappropriately translated as 'nature' but naturalness is closer and self-so (or it-self-so-ing) is an awkward but even closer meaning.

 

I will show a passage from the Dao De Jing (The Classic of the Way and Virtue attributed to Lao Zi). This is a later title given to the book once it was accepted as a classic, 'Jing'. It was originally referred to only as the "Lao Zi" £¨old master), and then Dao De. While the book starts with Dao chapters and then breaks to De chapters in any translation today, it originally started with the De chapters; the compilers must of switched the order to simply follow the accepted titling.

 

The "Dao" (µÀ£©character is a head with hair tied up walking along a road; some think the original was maybe an animal with antlers.

 

The "De" £¨µÂ£©is much less understood and harder to explain. It is often translated power or virtue but not like a western virtue or morality since this is a Dao-principled De (it's not a human trait, although the pictograph is of a straight heart along a road).

 

'De' is a corollary to the Confucian idea of the 'nature of things' (in fact, Lao Zi never used the confucian term, 'xing'). Whereas Confucius's teachings were primarily humanistic (man centered, and thus ethical and moral virtue arises), Lao Zi was dao centered (and man simply abides in and inherits from the universal principles of dao; 'De' in man is human virtue but a principle or power). Thus, whatever man has is by virtue of being a part of the whole; The whole is found in all the parts in the form of 'de'.

 

Chinese - pinyin - common translation

--------------------------------------

ÈË·¨µØ - ren fa di - man models [after] earth

µØ·¨Ìì - di fa tian - earth models [after] heaven

Ìì·¨µÀ - tian fa dao - heaven models [after] dao

µÀ·¨×ÔÈ» - dao fa zi ran - dao models [after] naturalness

 

The simple parallel structure is almost a hereditary picture of how Zi Ran is in all things.

 

It should be realized that Dao does not model or conform to something; It is the principle itself. But when one starts off at 'man', we tend to see man as modeled after or conforming to some way or [natural] law, and so translations simply apply that in parallel to the rest of the lines. Unfortunately, it feels like it makes sense at the start of the translation but most translations end a little awkward when applying to the last line of describing Dao.

 

Another issue not often realized is that 'fa' originally had an animal in the ancient character which is completely gone in the simplified version. Then, it soon took on a legal connotation and was used to describe the "Legalist" (fa jia) of Lao Zi's day. Thus, the modern use of 'fa' is 'law', but this is not a good fit as a translation (although one can say that law is a model or standard by which conformity is expected; and combined with the idea of Zi Ran, one arrives at the acceptable idea of 'natural law').

 

Anyways, some of us researched and debated these simple lines ad nauseum at another site and I finally struck upon this slightly less conventional rendering to fit the passage and convey the universal idea of Dao:

 

Humanity's pattern [is] earth

earth's pattern [is] heaven

heaven's pattern [is] dao

dao's pattern [is] naturalness

 

Whether one thinks about weather patterns (changes in temperature), earth core patterns (plate movement), planet patterns (maintain orbits), or man's bodily patterns (regulate or maintain temperature and movements), one can see that the body (like everything else in the universe) naturally follows some inherent pattern (or natural law) which maintains it.

 

The inherent ability for all things to naturally regulate, maintain, operate, function is the idea behind [universal] dao. That this property is in all the 'ten thousand things' is the idea behind [individual] de. This is the 'dao' (way) of 'de'.

[david_dawei]

Weird, I got a mop slap in the heat of Shenzhen June of '08 when I washed with cold water. I was so hot and sweaty from being outside and it felt so damn good!

 

As far as the soda, the acupuncturist thinks warm soda is fine? I drink cokes, but never as much as some of my friends. I don't think it's good for you hot or cold. Personally, I drink Coke and Dr Pepper sans HFCS when I can find it and even then on a limited basis. Although i went a little wild in September with Mexican Coke. We had a brief torrid love affair. Still get together in small doses.

I'd like to ask around about that (cold shower if overheated)... Certainly the cold shower [in winter] (in theory) is to close off the pores from the external temperature causing some problems. In TCM, they will often describe health problems as 'cold' or 'wind' or 'heat'.. and the idea is that literally the cold or wind or heat has entered the body from the external world and creates a health problem. I'm now wondering if the problem with closing off the pores if you are overheated is that your body cannot dissipate the heat away; in other words, leave the pores open (no cold water) naturally (either don't shower or use lukewarm water) until they want to close later.

 

Re: Warm Soda. NO... no soda at all! Cold soda the worst!!

[david_dawei]

My wife has many different teas at the house...........one for every part of the body sounds like. Some of them come from the woods here in the form of herbs and vegetation she finds.... Jinyinhua and dandelion for two. She uses the dandelion to relax muscles when they are aching.

She also brought up some wood ear, cooked it and ate it down. She is a proponent for TCM.

what's also interesting is that some chinese medicine you might buy (let's say) online, the pills can be tea extract.

[chilton747]

My wife has many different teas at the house...........one for every part of the body sounds like. Some of them come from the woods here in the form of herbs and vegetation she finds.... Jinyinhua and dandelion for two. She uses the dandelion to relax muscles when they are aching.

She also brought up some wood ear, cooked it and ate it down. She is a proponent for TCM.

what's also interesting is that some chinese medicine you might buy (let's say) online, the pills can be tea extract.

 

I see that in the Chinese herb stores here and supermarkets as well.

[Batmaniac]

Cold vs Hot . . . It's very interesting. I totally buy into the hot tea stuff. Other aspects . . . well . . . My physician buddy and I ate 5 dozen raw oysters between the two of us a couple of weeks ago at a bar and got sick as hell 24 hours later from them being tainted with the norovirus. My wife insists we were only ill because we ate oysters at the wrong time according to Chinese medicine. They are a cold food and should never be eaten in the winter. I tried explaining this is the best time and the rule of thumb about the "r" months, but she'd have none of it.

[david_dawei]

Cold vs Hot . . . It's very interesting. I totally buy into the hot tea stuff. Other aspects . . . well . . . My physician buddy and I ate 5 dozen raw oysters between the two of us a couple of weeks ago at a bar and got sick as hell 24 hours later from them being tainted with the norovirus. My wife insists we were only ill because we ate oysters at the wrong time according to Chinese medicine. They are a cold food and should never be eaten in the winter. I tried explaining this is the best time and the rule of thumb about the "r" months, but she'd have none of it.

if you had asked her prior to eating, she would of told you not to eat (and she'd of saved you from the virus) or she would of predicted your illness if you ate them (and she'd of mop slapped you worse than the virus)... either way, she was destined to be right