Last Days in Xining

We completed our four-week rotation in Tibetan medicine last Friday, and as our culmination project, we gave a presentation on one of the patients we met in the hospital. We discussed his history, examination, diagnosis, and treatment from the Tibetan medicine perspective.

In the afternoon we were joined by Drolma and Tarvinder and went to People’s Park located near the heart of the city. It’s a beautiful park with a lake, zoo, stage, amusement park, train and more! We rode a zip line across the lake, watched a few dance performers, wandered through the zoo and amusement park, rode a boat on the lake, and took many, many pictures. The park seemed like an oasis tucked away and hidden from the rest of the city by its trees and beautiful vegetation.

Later that evening, Renchen organized a graduation dinner for us at a delicious Chinese restaurant. He and Konchog presented us with certificates of completion and kadas, Tibetan prayer scarves. After dinner, the celebration continued at the Tribal Sun, a noma, which is a Tibetan nightclub where performers sing and dance. It seems that they usually sing and dance to pop songs but wear beautiful traditional garb.

What a wonderful last evening with our fellow medical students and teachers! It was a great four weeks and we learned so much! We’re so thankful to have had this opportunity and look forward to integrating what we’ve learned in the future. It’s been fascinating learning about a medical system so different from our own, and it has been truly eye-opening. We hope the dialogue among Tibetan, Western, and other medical systems continues. We all have so much to share and learn from each other!

After the rotation, the Californians returned home to Stanford and the Canadians continued their travels around China as well. It was wonderful sharing these four weeks together, and it was fun comparing notes on our experiences thus far in medical school!

And again, we'd like to thank everyone who made this program possible, especially Dr. Phuoc Le and Renchen Dhondrup!