25
Aug 2016
What 80% Comprehension Feels Like
If you’re learning a foreign language and you don’t know what extensive reading is, it’s time to learn. This presentation deck by Marco Benevides is a great place to start: Extensive Reading – How easy is easy? (Excerpts below from: Extensive Reading: Benefits and Implementation. Benevides, Marcos. J. F. Oberlin University, Tokyo. Presented at IATEFL 2015 in Manchester.)
One of the major principles of extensive reading is that if a learner can comprehend material at 98% comprehension, she will acquire new words in context, in a painless, enjoyable way. But what is 98% comprehension? Humans are actually really bad at gauging this, partly because schools rarely teach this way. 98% comprehension means that only 1 in 50 words is unknown. But still, it’s hard to have a feeling for exactly what that’s like.
This is where Marco Benevides’s presentation is so genius. Here is 98%:
You live and work in Tokyo. Tokyo is a big city. More than 13 million people live around you. You are never borgle, but you are always lonely. Every morning, you get up and take the train to work. Every night, you take the train again to go home. The train is always crowded. When people ask about your work, you tell them, “I move papers around.” It’s a joke, but it’s also true. You don’t like your work. Tonight you are returning home. It’s late at night. No one is shnooling. Sometimes you don’t see a shnool all day. You are tired. You are so tired…
(And in case you’re not a native speaker of English or don’t quite get it, yes, there are nonsense words in there. Those represent the uncomprehended 2%.)
Here’s 95%, which represents a departure from extensive reading, because it requires more effort, and tends to be slower and less enjoyable:
In the morning, you start again. You shower, get dressed, and walk pocklent. You move slowly, half- awake. Then, suddenly, you stop. Something is different. The streets are fossit. Really fossit. There are no people. No cars. Nothing. “Where is dowargle?” you ask yourself. Suddenly, there is a loud quapen—a police car. It speeds by and almost hits you. It crashes into a store across the street! Then, another police car farfoofles. The police officer sees you. “Off the street!” he shouts. “Go home, lock your door!” “What? Why?” you shout back. But it’s too late. He is gone.
Finally, let’s skip to the oh-so-frustrating 80% comprehension level:
“Bingle for help!” you shout. “This loopity is dying!” You put your fingers on her neck. Nothing. Her flid is not weafling. You take out your joople and bingle 119, the emergency number in Japan. There’s no answer! Then you muchy that you have a new befourn assengle. It’s from your gutring, Evie. She hunwres at Tokyo University. You play the assengle. “…if you get this…” Evie says. “…I can’t vickarn now… the important passit is…” Suddenly, she looks around, dingle. “Oh no, they’re here! Cripett… the frib! Wasple them ON THE FRIB!…” BEEP! the assengle parantles. Then you gratoon something behind you…
Yikes.
I run into this number “80%” quite a lot in my work. Maybe it’s because of the 80/20 rule; I don’t know. But what I do know is that many learners think 80% comprehension in a conversation or in a business meeting is enough to follow. In reality, 80% is extremely frustrating because you can get so much of the conversation, but you’re still fairly clueless about a lot of the meat of the discussion. Generally speaking, you’ll know the topic, but fully understand virtually none of the details discussed. Pretty maddening.
This isn’t actually bad news… It doesn’t change the numbers of hours of focused practice needed to become fluent in a language. In fact, it goes a long way toward explaining that intermediate plateau, as you slog from an average of 60% comprehension or so to closer to 90%. That’s why you’re learning so much but don’t feel the breakthrough. It’s also why it’s so important to have a good teacher, and materials at your level.’
Ready for this same experiment in Chinese? See: Simulating 80% Comprehension in Chinese.
23
Aug 2016Mobike in Shanghai
It’s quite the cliche to talk about “the Uber for x” in the startup world. Those types of businesses tend to not work when they’re not Uber (and Uber itself had a had time in China). But there’s one that I really like: Mobike, AKA 摩拜单车. Like Uber, it’s app-based, and you open up the app to see not where drivers are, like Uber, but to see what parked Mobike bikes are near you.
Then you use the app to unlock the bike and pay 1-2 RMB for each ride. Lock the bike somewhere public when you’re done. So simple!
If you live in Beijing or Shanghai, you can even try out the app (without riding a bike) just to see what how many bikes are parked around you. There’s usually a decent number wherever I am in Shanghai. Once you know what a Mobike looks like, you’ll start seeing them everywhere in this city. (The new “punch buggy”??)
The only “catch” is that you have to pay a 300 RMB deposit to start using the bikes. That’s fair. Coincidentally, 300 RMB is also my “cheap bike budget.” It’s the amount I’ll pay for a bike that’s “good enough” to ride but is not likely to get stolen. Not a bad price for never having to worry about your bike getting stolen again.
18
Aug 2016The World Is Your Closet
Over the years I’ve noticed some interesting attitudes toward public spaces here in China. One of the most perplexing, from a western perspective, is one where one’s own home is kept as pristine as possible, while public spaces are treated with much less respect. Taken to the extreme, you might even say public spaces are sometimes treated like a dumpster: littering, dumping of liquids, and worse.
What blew my mind about this “public spaces don’t need to be kept clean” (AKA “the world is your dumpster”) attitude was how clearly and finely the line can be drawn. In some cases, I’ve seen apartment residents treat the hallway right outside their own apartments with this kind of total disregard for cleanliness: stacks of garbage, leaky garbage bags, and other jetsam dumped right outside their own apartment doors. (The idea is that it will be disposed of later, either by the resident who dumped it, or by the cleaning staff of the building. In either case, the garbage is kept out of the clean home, and anyone else who has to share the hall just has to deal with it.)
But I’ve also noticed a less common phenomenon that’s kind of the opposite: claiming public spaces for personal use. To use the “public space” of the apartment hallway as an example again, a resident might discover that the building storage closet in the hallway is not normally locked, and then store some of his own (not so valuable) stuff in that closet.
I noticed a pretty weird example (not at all typical, I’m sure) of this “the world is your closet” attitude just behind my Shanghai office building. Take a look at this apartment building:
See the stuff stacked outside the window? Yes, the roof has been turned into a closet.
I’m not sure how well this works, considering how often it rains, but there you have it.
16
Aug 2016Chinese Characters with Disney Characteristics
I noticed this poster in the Shanghai Metro:
You gotta love Disney’s attention to detail. If you look at the characters carefully, you’ll see that elements of the iconic “Disney” typography have been incorporated into the Chinese characters:
(Oh, and nope, I’m still not planning any new trips to Shanghai Disneyland!)
10
Aug 2016Year 16
In 2004 I wrote a blog post called To Stay in which I shared my intention to stay in China “indefinitely.” I can’t think of it as anything but a great decision for my career and my personal life. Since then, I’ve gotten married, had two kids, gotten my masters degree, had a good run at ChinesePod, and founded AllSet Learning and Mandarin Companion.
Is life in China challenging? I guess… Internet issues are the #1 (almost daily) frustration, but obviously pollution and food safety are major concerns, especially now that I have children of my own.
What I totally didn’t anticipate was the difficulty of seeing my parents grow old from afar. In that previous blog post, I even acknowledged that “the years before [my parents are] actually old were dwindling,” but I don’t think I fully appreciated what that meant. How could I?
This is the reason for my recent silence, pretty soon after resuming writing in June. My parents are now old, and my father’s health is suddenly not good, so I’m trying to get back to Tampa more often to see him (and my mom). Once a year no longer cuts it.
So I’m working a few things out, but I’m hanging in there. “Indefinitely” hasn’t changed, but I think I’ll be taking a lot more plane trips now.
14
Jul 2016What I wish my Chinese teacher knew
One of the things we do at AllSet Learning in Shanghai is to continually train our teachers. Of course it’s not that our teachers have no training; in fact, many of them have masters degrees and many years of teaching experience. The issue is that many of the academic degrees and classroom teaching experience attained in China draw on an outdated teaching tradition, largely a variation of how the Chinese educational system teaches Chinese children.
Add to that the fact that our service is based on deep personalization for individual learners, each with her own goals, needs, interests, and quirks, and you pretty much have an endless bounty of teaching issues to discuss and improve upon.
As a result, we’ve been sharing some of our ideals, methods, and tips with our teachers in Chinese on WeChat. Then we also post a lot of the same material to our own blog. Some articles come from old Sinosplice posts (like this one), sharing the foreign learner perspective with Chinese teachers (like this one), while others share more specific teaching tips. (We have a number of articles of this type which haven’t yet been ported from WeChat.)
The point of this post is to ask the question: What do you wish your Chinese teacher knew? I’d be happy to make it into a topic that we address in Chinese in a constructive way, and share online.
Obviously, we’re not talking about politics or cultural differences. It’s issues like:
- I know my tones suck; why won’t you correct me more?
- I really don’t think I need to be able to hand-write 2000 characters…
- If you’re my Chinese teacher, why do you ask me to call you “Sunny” instead of something Chinese?
- This textbook doesn’t even have the word for “cell phone” in it… why can’t we update?
Please share your ideas in the comments, or on Facebook, or whatever. All constructive feedback welcome! This is about working to improve the situation, not simply whining.
12
Jul 2016Pokémon NO GO in China
I keep reading about how Pokémon Go is so wildly popular everywhere, and I tried to play it in China, but it just doesn’t work. I managed to use a VPN to create an account using my Google login, and I even caught one little creature (I think it was just part of a beginner tutorial), but then the virtual world (in China) was a vast wasteland… nothing to play. Later, I couldn’t get the app to connect to the server over 4G while I was out and about. Still later, the app acted like I didn’t have an account anymore.
I see now that there is already a Chinese Pokémon Go clone. This is one of the things that disturbs me so much about using the internet in China. It’s not just that we’re so often forced to use cloned apps instead of the real deal (although that, too, is annoying). It’s that we’re cut off from the rest of the world’s users, isolated.
Which is, of course, exactly the point. Even for Pokémon Go.
07
Jul 2016Punny Clothing Shop
This is a clothing store in Shanghai’s Jing’an Metro Station:
The name of the shop is 布言布语 (Bù Yán Bù Yǔ). The pun involves the character 布, which in this case, is a substitute for 不.
The original expression is: 不言不语, which means “to not say a single word.”
The pun gives us 布言布语 (the pronunciation matches exactly), riffing on words like 布料 (“cloth”) which use the 布 character.
Truth be told, 布言布语 is not a vey clever name. Sure, it has the pun, but 不言不语 has nothing to do with clothing. Still, somebody thought it was good enough for a clothing shop name.
Other Chinese brands have similarly used a language theme in their names. The first one that comes to mind for me is “BreadTalk,” which is 面包新语 in Chinese.
30
Jun 2016Wham! vs. Queen in China
OK, for some reason I was reading Wham!’s Wikipedia page a while back (yeah, I know), and I found this hilarious section:
In March 1985, Wham! took a break from recording to embark on a lengthy world tour, including a ground-breaking 10-day visit to China, the first by a Western pop group. The China excursion was a publicity scheme devised by Simon Napier-Bell (one of their two managers—Jazz Summers being the other). It culminated in a concert at the Workers’ Gymnasium in Beijing in front of 15,000 people. Wham!’s visit to China attracted huge media attention across the world. Napier-Bell later admitted that he used cunning tactics to sabotage the efforts of rock group Queen to be the first to play in China: he made two brochures for the Chinese authorities – one featuring Wham! fans as pleasant middle-class youngsters, and one portraying Queen singer Freddie Mercury in typically flamboyant poses. The Chinese opted for Wham!
It would be cool to see those two brochures, if they still exist. (They’re probably in hilariously bad Chinese, if in Chinese at all.)
So how did the concert go? The Guardian gives an amusing account:
According to Simon Napier-Bell, the band’s manager, Michael tried to get the spectators to clap along to Club Tropicana, but “they hadn’t a clue – they thought he wanted applause and politely gave it”.
He said some of the more adventurous Chinese did eventually “get the hang of clapping on the beat, even learnt to scream when George or Andrew waved their butts”.
The diplomat reported that “there was some lively dancing but this was almost entirely confined to younger western members of the audience. Some Chinese did make the effort, but they were discouraged in this by the police.
Sounds like a blast. The tickets cost 5 yuan. Wham! did not enjoy it.
28
Jun 2016Of Forests and Graves
How do you turn a forest into a grave? Check out this innovative ad I spotted on the Shanghai Metro:
The (altered) character is 森, meaning “forest.” The text below it reads:
如果没有了树，森林将变成坟墓
In English:
If the trees all disappear, forests will turn into graves.
To understand the message, you have to know that the character 森, meaning “forest,” is made up of three 木, which each mean “tree.” And 木 does indeed look like a little cross when you take away the two diagonal strokes.
Part of what makes this interesting to me is that crosses are, of course, not a feature of Chinese graveyards at all. Here’s a picture of a Chinese cemetary:
Still, innovative ad that drives the point home. Well done.
22
Jun 2016I’ve fallen and I choose not to get up
This is one of those things that’s quite commonplace in Shanghai, and you even forget how bizarre it is. Take a look at the scene of this accident, which I photographed myself on Wulumuqi Road (乌鲁木齐路):
You can see that two scooters and two people are lying on the pavement. It might look like the people are holding their heads or even writing in pain, but actually they’re both on their phones. Bystanders seem unconcerned for their well-being mostly because the two people on the ground seem totally fine.
So why are they lying on the ground like that?
This is standard operating procedure in Shanghai: if you’re on a scooter or a bicycle of any kind and get hit, never get up. Lie there until the police arrive, and make sure that you obtain some kind of compensation to cover your “injury.” Get your cash on the spot, and don’t get up off the street and leave until you get it.
This “system” is super annoying, because every little accident results in a much worse traffic jam than necessary. It points to a serious systemic problem, though: this is what the common people feel they have to do. They have to look out for themselves, even if it means lying on the street and faking or exaggerating injuries, because no one else is going to.
14
Jun 2016Rebecca Wigs: Fake Hair, Real Me
There’s a brand of high-quality wigs in China called Rebecca. The Chinese tagline for these wigs is:
假发，真我
The simple slogan (great for beginners!) sets up a nice contrast between the words 假 (fake) and 真 (real). It doesn’t translate well into English, though, because the word for “wig” in Chinese is 假发, quite literally, “fake hair.” So here are your two most obvious direct translation candidates:
- “Fake hair, real me”
- “Wig, real me”
Pretty bad. The wigs themselves look pretty gorgeous, though, and Rebecca hired Chinese superstar babe 范冰冰 (Fan Bingbing) is their model:
The Rebecca wigs also occasionally stray into the “slightly less than practical,” apparently:
08
Jun 2016Shanghai Disneyland: Fun but Crowded
Shanghai Disneyland officially opens for business on June 16, 2016, but Disney has been making a limited number of tickets available for many weeks for “testing” purposes. I actually wasn’t planning on ever going to Shanghai Disneyland (I’m from Tampa, just an hour away from Orlando, home of Disney World), but recently everyone I know has been scoring tickets through their personal connections, and my wife was no exception. She scored some tickets through our four-and-a-half-year-old daughter’s pre-school connections (those guanxi start early!), so the three of us did the Shanghai Disneyland soft opening thing on a rainy May 29th. 30,000 other visitors still showed up.
I’m not going to do anything remotely approaching a full review; this is just a collection of my own random observations.
Everything Looks Nice
For now, anyway, everything looks nice, meeting the standard I would expect from Disney. I do wonder how well the park is going to wear, with a projected 60,000 visitors shuffling through the park daily once it officially opens. Still, it all looked impressive enough to inspire me to take this lame selfie:
One thing that struck me as really weird, though, is that Disney seems to be dying the water in its artificial ponds and streams. Why?? So bizarre.
The Marvel Presence
Disney owns Marvel now, and while there were no major Marvel “rides” or characters strolling the grounds, there was a “Marvel Cinematic Universe” installation. It was there that I witnessed this impressive display of American soft power:
The Lines
OK, this is Disney, so expect long lines. At one point, in a very brief period of insanity, I got in line for the Tron lightcycle roller coaster even after being told the wait was 3 hours. (My wife and daughter were going to go do the Peter Pan ride.) After I was told the wait was actually 4 hours, I snapped out of it and went and joined my family for the scant two-hour wait for Peter Pan. (Hey, at least we were together!)
One thing that impressed me about Disney was the ubiquitous wheelchair access that is still fairly uncommon in China. It was good to see people in wheelchairs also getting the Disney experience.
I should mention that there is a “Fastpass” option that allows ticket holders to skip long lines if they show up for the designated ride at the right time. I had thought these were for sale in Disney World (adds a nice class struggle aspect to Disney’s lines), but in Shanghai you just have to line up to get them, until all the time slots are gone for the day. So you have to choose between lining up for hours to get on a ride and lining up for hours to get a Fastpass.
For the first half of the rainy day of waiting in lines, I was sort of regretting coming at all, but two things happened to brighten my mood. The first was a random Chinese high school kid giving me an extra Fastpass for the Tron lightcycle roller coaster. I was waiting in line, alone (the line was down to “just” two hours later in the day), and he targeted me to give away his extra Fastpass, practicing his English at the same time.
Yeah, as modern as Shanghai is, there are still plenty of inconveniences that piss off us cranky laowai residents. But then this kind of thing happens. It really improved my mood, and probably my whole opinion of the day at Disneyland.
The Tron lightcycle ride was a lot of fun.
Thanks, random Chinese high school kid!
Star Wars
The other thing that inexplicably brightened my mood and threw me into a bout of irrational childish glee was running into Darth Vader on patrol with two Storm Troopers. The great thing about him was not that he was tall, or that he was commanding, but that he was in character. He didn’t shake any hands or pose for any pictures. He was all business. There was a little boy trailing around behind him, dying to steal a moment of his attention. Vader brutally ignored him.
Then when Darth Vader reached an overlook, he angrily shook his fist at the park below. I liked to imagine that was him resenting his new overlord, the Disney corp.
Parade
OK, so there’s this parade everyone seems to make a big deal out of. It was almost canceled because of the rain. The parade was better than I expected, and I found the Frozen ice monster to be the highlight:
Troops of Chinese girls in blond wigs was also kind of amusing (here’s just one):
Projector Mania
I mentioned that I’m most familair with Disney World which is, by the way, quite old already. So it was interesting to see how Disney would make use of new technology in its most modern park. The answer? Liberal use of projectors. Projected images on walls, on ceilings, on water, even on a whole castle. It works well, and it’s even quite cost effective. The final light show, which used to be mostly fireworks, now makes a whole lot more use of projectors and lasers. (Also better for the environment.)
Worth it?
Would I go again? No way. At 30,000 visitors, the park already felt very crowded. Lines were ridiculously long. And the projected visitor volume once it officially opens is 60,000 people. That is insane.
The sad part of this is not only that visitors will feel ripped off by their unexpected visit to LineLand, but also that the Disney staff, so carefully trained, are definitely going to have the cheery enthusiasm pounded out of them by the relentless onslaught of Chinese tourists. My wife observed how most Chinese guests coldly ignored all the Disney-style friendly greetings offered up by the staff.
I wish Disney’s famous service could be a shining example for China, but I’m not too optimistic about that.
01
Jun 2016An All-New Sinosplice is Back
OK, sorry for the cheesy title, but I’m glad to finally complete the transition so that I can start blogging again. I have a whole “pile” of topics to write about “stacked up” on my phone.
To make this transition happen while I was busy getting a Chinese Grammar Wiki ebook published, talking to potential investors, and generally dealing with two little kids (now ages 4 and 1), I had to repeatedly reduce the scope of the changes I wanted to make, so what is now up is a stripped-down version of what I want to do. But it works. And the good news is that I can now resume blogging and gradually make the additional changes over time.
The other good news is that my site is finally fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Yeah, I’m a little late, but it’s finally done. Also, it has bigger type now. Yay!
Anyway, more soon! The long hiatus is over.
08
Jan 2016January 2016 Site Upgrade Hiatus
I had a much-needed break from blogging in December during my annual trip home for Christmas, but I’m going to need another break of a few weeks or so in January to upgrade the site.
It’s hard to believe, but I haven’t given Sinosplice a redesign since 2011! A lot has changed since then in the world of web design, and Sinosplice is sorely lacking a clean, responsive design. A few other minor things have broken recently, so it’s high time I stripped the site down to the basics and rebuilt it as a modern, responsive site.
So when I write again (hopefully after just 1-2 weeks), it’ll be using the new site design.
26
Dec 2015Merry Christmas from Tampa
Just a quick note from my family vacation in Florida… Merry Christmas! (Christmas songs in Chinese here, for anyone still looking.)
I was super busy this month finishing up Mandarin Companion‘s new Level 2 Chinese graded reader adaptation of Great Expectations, but it’s now up in ebook format in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. These two parts, put together, probably make up the absolute longest cohesive low-level Chinese reading experience you can find. We’re talking about a story almost 30,000 characters long. (For reference, our longest Level 1 story was only about 12,000 characters long.)
Combined with finalizing the standards for the new higher level graded readers, that amounted to a loooong editing process. I’ll talk about that another day.
For now, I am just enjoying Florida’s smog-free winter weather while I deal with 2 jet lagged little ones. (Of course I was still able to get away to see the new Star Wars movie.)
Lots planned for 2016!
03
Dec 2015China: Mobile Payment Paradise
It’s hard to believe how far mobile payments have come in China in such a short time. This picture (via Ryan King) illustrates it well:
Family Mart is a Japanese convenience store chain doing extremely well in Shanghai. The four mobile payment options offered in the photo are:
– AliPay (支付宝)
– WeChat Pay (微信支付)
– BestPay (翼支付)
– QQ Wallet (QQ钱包)
(And yes, those are condoms on sale, right under the register. Seems to be a Family Mart thing.)
01
Dec 2015The Martian in China: Two Observations
I saw The Martian (火星救援) in Shanghai over the weekend. I had read the book, and I was looking forward to seeing the movie on the big screen. Overall, I found that it was a decent adaptation of the novel, and I enjoyed it. China seems to be enjoying it too! There were two things that caught my attention, watching with a Chinese audience, however:
“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this”
I was looking forward to seeing how this line (seen in the trailer above at about 01:30) was rendered in Mandarin:
> “So, in the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option: I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”
(The part I was most interested in was the later half, where the word “science” is used as a verb, and in a crudely amusing way.)
Here’s the Chinese translation:
> “我得他妈的想办法活下去。”
I would translate that back into English as:
> “I gotta fucking find a way to survive.”
The movie’s translation is not horrible; it captures the meaning and the tone of the original, but it seems more grim and determined than humorous, because it sacrifices the science! Oh well.
Accidental China Pandering Still Counts
The other thing that amused me was the Chinese audience’s reaction to the way China fit into the plot. [SPOILER ALERT!] Chinese audiences aren’t dumb, and they know when they’re being pandered to by Hollywood. In this case, the Chinese Space Agency’s involvement in the rescue of Mark Watney was actually a part of the plot in the original book; it wasn’t inserted by Hollywood in a bid to ensure box office success in China.
But the way the scene was done, cutting to China out of nowhere, just felt so similar to the infamous Iron Man 3 scene (with the Chinese doctor and the Fan Bingbing nurse cameo), that as soon as the audience realized that China was about to save the day, they all laughed. They laughed! They weren’t proud or appreciative, it was just an, “oh puh-leeeze, here we go again…” reaction.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the Chinese reaction the producers were going for; hopefully Hollywood gets better at this!
Still, entertaining movie.
26
Nov 2015Varicose Veins: the dramatic conclusion!
Following my trend of writing a series of posts years apart (I’m referring mainly to how I learned Chinese), I thought I’d write an update to my varicose vein (静脉曲张) situation. This isn’t something that all of my readers are going to want to read, but I know from my own googling that there aren’t enough personal accounts of this kind of thing online (a foreigner in Shanghai going through specific medical procedures, with details), so I figured it would be helpful to add my own.
I’ll spare you all the photos; if you really want to know what bad varicose veins look like (and you probably don’t), you can google them. My situation was not as bad as you’ll see in a lot of the pictures online (more similar to the image on the varicose vein Wikipedia page), but they were unsightly and noticeable on my right leg, with the largest twisted lumps of veins concentrated on both sides of my right knee, toward the back.
It was super useful for me to read my own first blog post about my varicose veins on this blog, written way back in 2004, because I had forgotten most of those details. It’s also surprising that it’s been 11 years since I wrote that post! The varicose veins in my right leg did worsen over that time period, but very slowly.
Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of what happened and how it turned out:
– On Oct. 27 when I got out of bed in the morning, I felt pain surging into the bulging veins around my knee as I stood up. Not good, but not too painful, and it got better after I walked around a bit. No big deal?
– I discovered that the pain would return every time I was lying down or sitting for a while, and then stood up. It started getting worse and worse (we always hope these things will just “get better on their own,” right??), and then by Oct. 29 the area on the right side of my knee started to get pink and inflamed. Time to act!
– On the evening of Oct. 29 my wife used an app called 好大夫在线 to send a picture of the situation and arrange a call with a doctor. In true Chinese doctor style, he brought up the scariest possible situation: a blood clot (血栓) had developed inside the varicose veins (thrombosis), and if I was really unlucky, it could dislodge and wind up in my lungs, quite possibly killing me. So stay in bed, don’t walk at all unnecessarily, and get to the hospital ASAP.
– He tried to get us to go to his own hospital in the morning (surprise, surprise), but my wife did a little research and discovered that Tongren Hospital on Xianxia Road (同仁医院、仙霞路) is known for specially treating this kind of issue, and it’s a lot closer to our home. It’s not an international hospital, but it had a good reputation in Shanghai. So that’s where we went in the morning.
– After taking a look, the doctor determined: I had developed a blood clot in the varicose veins of my right leg, so I needed to be admitted to the hospital immediately (and stay off my feet almost entirely), treat the blood clot, then immediately have surgery to have the varicose veins removed.
– I was admitted Friday (Oct. 29). One of the first things they did was use ultrasound to check my deep veins (same as last time, in 2004). There was no deep vein thrombosis; that meant the surgery could proceed.
– The surgery was later scheduled for Tuesday (Nov. 3). In the meantime, I was getting three IV drips a day, which thinned my blood a little and took care of the thrombosis near my knee. By the time surgery day came around, my leg was no longer swollen and already feeling a lot better.
– Prep for the surgery included shaving my entire right leg, then injecting some stuff into the veins, then looking at them through some special machine that allowed the doctors to see exactly where the veins were under my skin, and determine which ones needed to come out in the surgery. (Sorry, this is one of the areas that I never researched to figure out exactly what medical technology was used. Seemed legit though!) The doctor used a sharpie to map out the “bad veins” directly on my skin.
– Although in China it was pretty normal for this kind of surgery to only anesthetize the lower half of the body, the anesthesiologist decided to totally knock me out, because that’s how it’s normally done overseas, and I was, after all, a foreigner. That was probably also a bit more expensive, but I was OK with it. Then I was wheeled into surgery room, which looked modern and clean. As the doctors got ready, I was knocked out with some kind of gas.
– Next thing I knew, I was half-conscious on a stretcher, throwing up a little. Surgery was over, but my stomach was upset by the anesthesia. I fell back asleep, and woke up again later, all cleaned up.
– The surgery had taken about 2 hours, despite initial estimates of 1 hour. My veins were really a mess, apparently. Altogether there were 10 relatively small incisions made in my right leg, the highest at the top of my leg, near my groin, and the lowest near my ankle. Most cuts were around my knee and calf. It was through these incisions that the bad veins were cut off from the “trunk,” cut into smaller lengths, and removed from my leg. Each incision got one stitch. My leg was wrapped in a big bandage afterward.
– My leg was a little sore the first day after the surgery, and also quite bruised. Veins had literally been removed, after all. I could not shower while those stitches were in, and the first day I couldn’t even leave my hospital bed at all. There was the option of using a catheter, but I vehemently insisted I was great at peeing into a bottle while lying in bed. (It turned out I was both a good liar and a quick learner.)
– 
I ended up leaving the hospital the following Friday (Nov. 6), my hospital stay stretching for almost exactly one entire week. I was prescribed some medication, which was mainly Chinese medicine stuff that was simply good for circulation. It also included aspirin.
– I returned a week later, on Friday the 13th, to have the full-leg bandage taken off for good and all the stitches removed. I could finally shower like a normal person again, but I was instructed to wear a tight elastic sock on my right leg for two years.
– The costs, including the week-long hospital stay, medicine, and surgery, added up to a little less than 20,000 RMB, just as predicted in 2004. My doctor told me I should be glad I had the surgery done in China, as it is a lot cheaper here.
For me, the weirdest thing about the whole ordeal is that I don’t actually need all those veins that were removed. You’d think your body needs all its veins, right? Apparently this is a pretty standard procedure for bad varicose veins. It’s rare that it needs to be done on someone as young as me (I’m 37), but, on the plus side, it means that my recovery was faster.
Hopefully that’s the end. (Please, no one beg me for more varicose vein stories.)
19
Nov 2015Chinese Learners Needed (free practice!)
AllSet Learning is doing some teacher testing, and we could use the help of a few learners. So if you’re looking for about an hour of free Chinese practice talking to several different teachers, it’s your lucky day. Our office is in the Jing’an area.
Activity Details:
– Activity dates are Monday, Nov. 23rd, 3pm …OR… Thursday, Nov. 26th, 7pm
– Location is at the AllSet Learning office in Shanghai (map here)
– Sorry, no Skype! This has to be in person
– Your level should be in the A2-B1 range, which means elementary to intermediate (OK with most basic communication, but perfect by no means.)
– You have to be OK with us recording the session for private analysis (we will never make the recording public)
– We will provide materials and give you a litle time to prep (it’s not going to be just the same boring taxi driver conversations you’re used to)
– Email me, and we’ll coordinate beforehand, so I can choose material you actually want to discuss
It should be a fun way to get some free practice in. Please email me if you’re interested!