Our morning call wasn't as early
as the days before, which was a good thing. We joined up with 24 students and 4
faculty from Iowa State University today so that was a lot of fun. Our
itinerary today is jammed pack with tours of the Beijing Emperor Special
Hospital of Femur Head Necrosis, the Great Wall, Olympic Stadium- Bird's Nest,
and China Agricultural University. Today is our last full day and we plan to
make the most of it!
Our
first stop was at the Beijing Emperor Special Hospital of Femur Head Necrosis.
Through connections with their patient Ty Eschenbaum, South Dakota native, we
were treated like royalty and were able to learn more about their impressive
healing treatment on femur head narcosis that uses traditional Chinese
medicine.
Femur head narcosis is the
deterioration of the femur head which is located at your hip. The femur head is
responsible for the majority of leg movement. The most common type of treatment
for this disease in America is hip replacement.
There are four types of
treatments used at the hospital based off of an herbal supplement mixture and acupuncture.
The doctor determines this mixture based on the patient's condition and rely
greatly on the use of x-ray to compare progress as all treatment is done on the
outside of the body. The founder of the hospital, Dr. Huang developed this
specific treatment and the type of x-ray that produces better pixelated images
and colored images that can show bone growth better than x-rays used in the
United States.
The hospital has treated over
20,000 patients from over 41 countries since 1993. Besides femur heads, they
can also treat ankle and shoulder joints. The efficiency rate for this treatment
is 97% and they have even had artificial joint companies come visit them,
because their treatment practice is decreasing the need for artificial joints.
Next we took an hour drive to the
Great Wall. On our way to the Great Wall, we got a briefing on the history
behind it. The oldest part of the wall
is 2,700 years old, which made the first construction start in the 7th century
B.C. All the different sections of the
wall combine to make almost 13,000 miles long.
With Mother Nature and time taking a toll on the Great Wall, only about
a third of the original wall is easily visible now. The contrition of wall was built by many
different dynasties throughout its history.
The section that we saw and hiked up was rebuilt by the Ming
dynasty.
The construction of the Great
Wall was done by three different groups of people. This consisted of soldiers, laborers, and
prisoners. Laborers were mostly peasants
that were forced to work. Prisoners that
worked on the Great Wall worked in 4 year periods. The work was hard and the conditions were not
any better. It is estimated that
throughout the history of the Great Wall, roughly 700,000 people died while
working on it.
When we arrived at the Great
Wall, we had two choices. We could
either go up the steeper and more strenuous route, or we could go up the easier
route. Most of the group between us and
the Iowa State students decided to be adventurous and try out the more
difficult route. Both groups headed out
on their respective stairways and quickly realized that the engineers of over a
thousand years ago were not exactly the same as they are today. The steps were very uneven with some being
only 2 inches tall and the next one being 18 inches.
The harder stairway proved to be
more difficult than anyone in the group had predicted. After the first 100 foot climb, our groups
quickly realized how difficult the climb was going to be and how out of shape
all of us felt. We had to stop several
times for "photo breaks" so we could all catch our breath before
reaching the top. After several photos
and some pretty sweet/sketchy climbing by Andy Rausch, we realized that almost
everyone from SDSU had made it to the top while only 1 Iowa State student made
it. GO JACKS!!
The trek back down was still very
steep and definitely made a few people feel uneasy, but everyone made it down
mostly alive and in one piece. We
rewarded ourselves with some cold water from the market and proceeded to buy
some pretty cool souvenirs before we left.
Next we went to a cloisonné
pottery shop and got a brief 20 minute tour of all of the 6 steps in making
these beautiful vases. We then continued to a great lunch with the Iowa State
students.
Following lunch we took an hour
drive to China Agriculture University where we met with students that picked us
out of the crowd by our "American" names they were give. We got to
know one another and then sat down for a briefing by Dr. Li who went to K-State
with our very own Dr. Thaler. He built the Animal Science Department from the
ground up and now they have a 600 sow farrow to finish research facility, and
better research facilities than just about any Animal Science Department in the
US. We then got a tour of the campus by our Chinese friends and had the
opportunity to learn of bit more about them as an individual and about the
campus. We continued to have a fun filled supper full of amazing food and
toasts. We had a wonderful time hearing about project these individuals we
conducting and many of us got their contact information for the future.
On the way back to the hotel we got to stop
by the Olympic park for a short 20 minutes to see the amazing structures that
were built for the 2008 Olympics. Although we are extremely tired and are ready
to come home, we intend to have an extremely fun night, exploring the night
life of Beijing. It has truly been a once in a lifetime experience but we can't
wait to see our loved ones once again. Hope you have all have enjoyed our
updates as much as we have and we will see you soon!!
Sincerely,
Kiera, Darrin, Tony
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