Chinese Headache Cure.....No Shit....

[hobbit]

Hobbit, there are still some people who use acupuncture for surgical anesthetic in China but it is really rare now. During the Cultural Revolution all the trained doctors were rounded up and re-educated... the art was lost. In the 1980's Chinese travelled to overseas Chinese communities and the back country of China to re-learn that which was lost. China's medical system is an exact replica of the Soviet medical system from the medical colleges to the hospitals. Even the new private hospitals are mimics and anesthesia is inadequate and Rx's for pain control are non-existant.

I don't know where you're getting your information, but nearly everything you say here is incorrect. I've mentioned before on ArmyRanger.com that my closest comrade from Vietnam is novelist Ken Miler. Ken speaks fluent Mandarin and spent ten years teaching at the National University of Taiwan. He married a Chinese woman, the air force Chief of Staff's sister. Ken's son Dennis is an MD who just spent two years traveling and practicing medicine in mainland China. His experience was diametrically opposed to the one you believe exists.

Remember that there are two Chinas. There is one China that populates the industrial cities near the coast. That accounts for 10% of China's population. These are the people that may or may not have access to Western medicine. The other China composes 90% of the population: rural peasants flung out over a vast and often very remote landscape. To these 1.1 billion people, Western Civilization can still be a dark and foreboding mystery. Folk medicine and acupuncture have reigned supreme here for 5000 years, and still do.

To assume that the Cultural Revolution had any real or lasting effect on anyone in China other than a few communist party functionaries, is folly. Though I’m loathe to admit as much, left-wing jorunal, “The Nationâ€

[bulldogg]

I'm in the belly of the beast. Been here for over five years. All of what I say comes from my own first hand observation. Talking, listening, interviewing the old docs, PLA vets of Korea, PLA vets of 79 border war... discretely but persistantly.

With all respect Hobbit, the Cultural Revolution still has a profound and lasting impact on Chinese society. Its education system is still proper fucked, the people have no moral compass and an immense volume of Chinese culture and knowledge has been lost. Traditional Chinese medicine was preventative not curative. Villages had a doc and he was paid as long as everyone stayed healthy, when someone was sick he was not paid... by the whole village. This has been lost. And after the Chinese opened back up under Deng they sent their top medical scholars to South Korea to study ancient Chinese manuscripts there because the ones in China had been destroyed... they had to go to Korea to learn about their own culture.

If you come to China it is possible to spend months or years here never seeing beneath the veneer. There is a duplicity in China and in Chinese people that takes a long time and a persistant lack of faith in everyone you meet to break through it. The government lies about its growth rate (FACT), the people lie about their culture and they will vociferously defend any of the shite the Central Government sppon feeds them through the state controlled media... and its ALL state controlled.

I know ex-pats who have been here for ten or eleven years who think China is heaven on Earth and that all life here is grand... self-deluded and they choose not to see it. I also know guys on the ground here who have been here a month, listened to me, called me a jaded bastard, sinophobe etc only to come back after a couple years and apologise and tell me how right I was.

Everything I had read prior and read since about China written by gwei lo's is unadulterated bullshit. I have seen the coastal areas and lived in the backwoods and visited 23 different cities the length and breadth and with my own eyes I can tell you its not what the media reports and its not anything the hacks in Washington understand.

The best way for me to fully explain it would be in person, guided tour, come spend a month with me and you'll walk away the only person who spent a month in China and saw the real deal. I speak the language and I can explain the culture, what's left of it. It would be time well spent.

EDIT TO ADD: Finished reading that Nation article... that is the biggest bunch of complete bullshit I have read since I got here that wasn't penned by someone from Zhongnanhai. Perlstein is a fucking idiot who has written down exactly what the Chinese wanted him to say. They hand pick the people journalists are allowed to talk to and they have handlers "interpreters" with them 24/7. You cannot go where you want or talk to who you want if you are a journalist here. THIS is a hack job written to smooth over any bullshit about China so the corporations can keep raking it in. Its treasonous.

[hobbit]

I'm in the belly of the beast. Been here for over five years. All of what I say comes from my own first hand observation. Talking, listening, interviewing the old docs, PLA vets of Korea, PLA vets of 79 border war... discretely but persistantly.

With all respect Hobbit, the Cultural Revolution still has a profound and lasting impact on Chinese society. Its education system is still proper fucked, the people have no moral compass and an immense volume of Chinese culture and knowledge has been lost. Traditional Chinese medicine was preventative not curative. Villages had a doc and he was paid as long as everyone stayed healthy, when someone was sick he was not paid... by the whole village. This has been lost. And after the Chinese opened back up under Deng they sent their top medical scholars to South Korea to study ancient Chinese manuscripts there because the ones in China had been destroyed... they had to go to Korea to learn about their own culture.

If you come to China it is possible to spend months or years here never seeing beneath the veneer. There is a duplicity in China and in Chinese people that takes a long time and a persistant lack of faith in everyone you meet to break through it. The government lies about its growth rate (FACT), the people lie about their culture and they will vociferously defend any of the shite the Central Government sppon feeds them through the state controlled media... and its ALL state controlled.

I know ex-pats who have been here for ten or eleven years who think China is heaven on Earth and that all life here is grand... self-deluded and they choose not to see it. I also know guys on the ground here who have been here a month, listened to me, called me a jaded bastard, sinophobe etc only to come back after a couple years and apologise and tell me how right I was.

Everything I had read prior and read since about China written by gwei lo's is unadulterated bullshit. I have seen the coastal areas and lived in the backwoods and visited 23 different cities the length and breadth and with my own eyes I can tell you its not what the media reports and its not anything the hacks in Washington understand.

The best way for me to fully explain it would be in person, guided tour, come spend a month with me and you'll walk away the only person who spent a month in China and saw the real deal. I speak the language and I can explain the culture, what's left of it. It would be time well spent.

EDIT TO ADD: Finished reading that Nation article... that is the biggest bunch of complete bullshit I have read since I got here that wasn't penned by someone from Zhongnanhai. Perlstein is a fucking idiot who has written down exactly what the Chinese wanted him to say. They hand pick the people journalists are allowed to talk to and they have handlers "interpreters" with them 24/7. You cannot go where you want or talk to who you want if you are a journalist here. THIS is a hack job written to smooth over any bullshit about China so the corporations can keep raking it in. Its treasonous.

Whatever.

[RRDTm3]

I have never had a headache

Mu Phang* I'll give a whirl

[bulldogg]

Mu Phang* I'll give a whirl

"harm the shepherd"


Or did you mean "mu feng"... "female seam"?

[ChipOnShoulder]

There does not need be be any kind of shit-fits either way. I am just saying that pinching the fuck out of the webbing between your index finger and thumb of either hand relieves whopper headaches for me, and that it was indroduced to me by a Chinaman when I was 11. It might be quackery, it might not....but it works for me.

If you keep whining about shit back and forth, I won't reveal the Tasmanian witch doctor formula for attracting 20 something chicks 10 at a time, no matter what age or physical shape you are in......Nor the Madagascar Mountain Man remedy for making the womens stop........

[BadMuther]

A Glock is a great cure for headaches too....of course you can only cure it once.

Seriously though, I sympathize with others who get frequent head pounders. I take 2000 mg of Ibuprofen a day. For me it works better than anything else. Acupuncture works though I've never tried it. It was dismissed as quackery three decades ago but now hundreds of medical doctors in the US practice acupuncture. It's the only anesthetic used for most surgeries in China and people remain conscious the whole time.

Brother, FYI NSAID's are like the 4th leading killer of Americans. That's a lot of motrin you are throwing down the hatch!

[hobbit]

A Glock is a great cure for headaches too....of course you can only cure it once.

Seriously though, I sympathize with others who get frequent head pounders. I take 2000 mg of Ibuprofen a day. For me it works better than anything else. Acupuncture works though I've never tried it. It was dismissed as quackery three decades ago but now hundreds of medical doctors in the US practice acupuncture. It's the only anesthetic used for most surgeries in China and people remain conscious the whole time.

Brother, FYI NSAID's are like the 4th leading killer of Americans. That's a lot of motrin you are throwing down the hatch!

The motrin only acts as a side benefit for headaches. My main motivation for taking it is old bullet holes in leg and arm joints.