Shanxi Province site visit

A few weekends ago, Sarah and I joined Drs. Zhao and Qiao (btw, their names are pronounced J-ow and Chow) to watch the launch of the international START-UP study, which will study the accuracy of 5 different low-cost screening methods, including one that has never been used before! We went to Shanxi Province, which is famous for two things: history and coal mines.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to see any of the history, but we did breathe in air that made Beijing seem unpolluted. As you can see by this picture, of our ride, the pollution was so bad it was almost like being underwater!
Did you notice what we were driving around in? That's right, we traveled via ambulance fleet. The second reason we were there was to take lots of pictures to show the Fogarty that we actually do epi research at field sites, not just write epi papers in the office. So here's a picture of Sarah and Eunench, our colleague at the hospital......and one of me pretending to do work with UEuench. Nerd alert: the machine we're pretending to use is careHPV, which provides super-cheap, rapid results for HPV DNA--and it's a big point of the paper I was working on, so it was really cool to see what it was and how it works.

The craziest thing we saw there was how the projects start in China. Everyone lines up in white coats outside the hospital entrance
where the important people all give speeches (including the local head of the Communist party). They then light a long row of fireworks that don't make any light, only smoke
and TONS of noise.

When they're done, there's a lot of left-over trash in the street.But never fear: there's a man with a specially created street sweeper ready to clean it up.At night, we went to an ENORMOUS banquet.
That was like, 1/3 of the room. Anyways, the tradition in China is that everyone has little goblets of wine, and, when they say "gan bei!" (bottoms up!) to toast, it is considered extremely rude to not mimic how much the person leading the cheers drinks. As in, if the person gulps it all down, you have to as well, regardless of how drunk you feel. Luckily, there is only a big sip or two in the goblet each time, or you would die because...first, you have to toast everyone at your table, sometimes individually. Then all the important people come around to each table, and you stand up and gan bei with them...then because we're American, Sarah and I had to go around to each table too...and then a lot of Chinese researchers came up to honor us by toasting us. Best toast of the night: "to the health of Chairman Mao, who made this country great!" If we had had full glasses of wine, we would have been taking our pimp rides (sirens blaring) to get our stomachs pumped.

And then the fun starts with KARAOKE. People are called up to sing, and then you give the people fake flowers if they are good. There are all sorts of risque jokes, including when this random man sang a song to one of the researchers from San Fran
and ended it by saying in English, "You are so beautiful. Please come to my house anytime." Because we were American, we had to sing as well, but I didn't want to ruin Chinese-American relations by piercing ear drums, so I was the official photographer while Sarah and San Fran colleagues sang "I will Always Love You." It was one of those, "Where am I and what am I doing with my life?" moments.