I will never, ever, again only take a Kindle with me on
holiday, with no back-up from what I call real books, as I stupidly did. When I took the Kindle out on my first
evening in China,
I found that it had been damaged in transit inside my cabin bag. And that was that!
Although my Chinese hosts took it to a Kindle store to try
and get it repaired, it was beyond help.
This meant that I was left for 2 weeks without a book to read. At some
level this may have been good for my soul, because it forced me to do a lot of
thinking and a lot of planning of lessons for my Chinese students. Luckily, too, I had taken some of my Mandarin
studies with me and that helped save my
sanity when I woke, as I inevitably did, at 5 am in the hotel room.
But it was a warning to me never again to rely only upon
electronic books.
My second trip to China is now nearing its end and sitting
here in the hotel room in Nanning, just gently thinking things through, I’m
trying to summarize what I have taught my students and what the whole
experience has taught me.
I have been listening to Mandarin spoken at full tilt and in
great quantities by everybody around me, interspersed only with the pauses as
the important parts were translated into English for me. I found it interesting to note that more and
more of the few simple words I had learnt at my classes in London seemed to leap out of the sentences at
me, like carp leaping out of the lake I visited here. And just for that moment the speech appeared
to slow down as I recognised a word with some meaning I could attach to it,
only for the remainder of the sentence to become submerged attain in an
unintelligible jumble of sounds.
Although this was often confusing, as giving me only tiny glimpses of
meaning, it was comforting to know that I had indeed started to learn something
of the speech I heard around me. But
what a long way to go before I can engage in any real dialogue here!
At a more serious level, I come away delighted that the
students have learnt so much more than at my first visit, and that we have put
together some solid structures for future learning. It is intended that I go over there twice a
year, and Mei, who set in motion the whole train of five element acupuncture on
its journey back to China, will probably go a further twice a year, as well as
accompanying me. Her next visit is
scheduled for July, so the students will get more time to consolidate what they
have just learnt before I return with her in the autumn.
The number of my students has increased by a further 5 or
so, making abut 20 dedicated five element students. There are now two main groups, one based here
in Nanning and the other in Chengdu,
with a lone student hoisting the five element flag in Beijing.
We will organize the website forum they have set up for me a little
better, and they are arranging regular monthly meetings where they will help
each other with their patients.
I call them my students, but they are all either fully
practising acupuncturists or nearing qualification, so that their basic
acupuncture knowledge is well established.
If anything they have a much more solid foundation than comparable
practitioners here in the UK,
since they are blessed from birth with a deep understanding of the elements as
forming an integral part of their life, so that we already speak the same
language. This is so different from the UK, where I
well remember one student, after about six months’ training, asking, “But how
do we know that there really things like elements?” Here, by contrast, the elements represent the
symbols through which life expresses itself.
By the last few days of this fortnight, students had learnt
some very fundamental components of five element practice, such as different
needling and moxibustion techniques, how to carry out an AE drain, how to clear
possession and treat a husband/wife imbalance.
Most important of all, I gave them a clear schedule of how to structure
the first four treatments so that they feel confident that they know what to do
at the start.
We saw together some 30 patients, and I treated at least
another 25, because I gave each of the students a treatment. I felt it was important for them to
experience an AE drain and their element source points for themselves, as many
of them had not had any five element treatment before. Scheduling these treatments amidst the
teaching sessions was a logistical puzzle which taxed my Small Intestine’s
ability to sort to its limit, but I managed the last three treatments on almost
the last day. In doing this I only changed
the element I had decided upon for one of the students, and I can only hope I
am right with the others as I fly away to leave them to receive further treatment
from their peers.
Each day was filled with treating patients, helping students
treat patients, or helping them learn some of the five element skills they will
need, such as testing for Akabane imbalance and learning how to apply moxa
cones to salt for CV 8. This proved to
be an unexpected very local problem, because the climate is so damp and they
usually only use rock salt, that not only did the grains of salt stick together
in a tight mass but the thick grains allowed the heat through too quickly so
that I’m afraid I may have burnt the first person’s umbilicus without realising
it. Being Chinese, she never complained
of the pain and probably went away thinking that the pain was a necessary part
of treatment. After this we found some
thinner grains of salt, and Wendy devised a way of putting rice grains in a
little muslin bag to dry the salt out.
As usual, I learnt much from devising ways of teaching in
such a limited and challenging timeframe.
