China Study Trip - Oct 2005

I was lucky enough to spend a month in Nanjing, China doing postgraduate acupuncture study. My time was divided between three different hospitals in Nanjing. The acupuncture departments were very busy with patients being treated in small wards with 6-10 treatment beds. It was not uncommon to have 10 patients at once, all with family members or friends accompanying them. The wards often became very lively, crowded, and smokey from the burning of moxa.

Most of the acupuncture patients came for treatment for problems such as: sciatica, lumbago, facial paralysis, and recovery from stroke, trigeminal neuralgia, insomnia and depression. I learnt and practised a lot of new techniques, and saw around 30 patients a day. I am very grateful to Dr. Xing and her colleagues for the expert knowledge they imparted, and their warm hospitality.

Nanjing was an exciting city to visit, as it was a real mixture of the traditional with the new. The scale and speed at which it is modernising was a real eye opener. The building work seemed to be going on non-stop 24 hours a day, and the buildings towering up into the sky. Some of the highlights including getting up at 6am each morning to practice Qi Gong in the park with the older generation Chinese people, cycling around in a swarm of bicycles, and enjoying some of the best and strangest food I have ever tasted. I hope to return in a few years and see and do more.