Monday October 27th

After 10 hours of the deadest sleep that a human being could experience, I woke up to begin our ambassadorship program. I noticed a few differences between our hotel room and a North American hotel room - small things like the luxury items that they provide - in Canada we get shoe shine kits and things like that - here we get toothbrushes, combs and Q-tips. I am not sure which choices are better, but I know I used the items in this hotel more often than I use the ones in hotels at home.

We began the day with a wonderful breakfast - the hotel did a wonderful job of providing a combination of western and chinese cuisine (spring rolls and hash browns all on one plate). After breakfast, we spent a couple hours being briefed about all the important things to know about China (see the list below) - and then we were off on our first adventure of the day.


Things that are important to know about China:


- China is the third largest country in the world, only after Russia and Canada.

- China's population is 1.3 billion, with 16 million newborns annually; 7.5 percent of the population is over the age of 65.

- China covers four time zones. However, they all follow Beijing time; it is the only official time throughout the country.

- China's written language is standardized all over the country, but there are about 150 different spoken dialects (Mandarin is the official language)

- in written language there are 40,000 pictographic square characters in total, of which 10,000 are in current use and 3,000 in very common use.

- the majority of women's toilets in China are basically porcelain urinals in the floor - Western style toilets are not super easy to find.


Our guide Lixin informed us that one of the goals of our visit was to try several different kinds of authentic Chinese food. Our first meal was a wonderful lunch at the Tong Fulin Restaurant - the food tended to be more spicy and was indicative of a more traditional Beijing fare. The serving style in China is so good - plates of food are placed in the middle of the table on a lazy susan and you just serve yourself the foods that you want. Canadian restaurants should take lessons from this style of serving (less wait, more choices).


The professional delegates spent the afternoon at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of Beijing Tongren Hospital (I didn't realize that otorhinolaryngology was so hard to type!!). There was a lot of walking from site to site (the Beijing professors wanted to show us all of their services and sites), but we got to see many different things. The first place we stopped was the Rehabilitation Centre for young children who have newly gotten hearing aids or have gone through cochlear implant surgery. We got to observe three infants during their therapy sessions (one child had only had his hearing aids for two weeks).


Important information to know about disabilities in China:


- they have fewer than 500 audiologists and fewer than 200 SLP's.
- when clients have voice surgery (e.g., for vocal nodules), there is no one to follow up with therapy post-surgery (e.g., no SLP to provide voice therapy).
- due to the lack of SLP's, Chinese practioners have trained other people to do what we as SLP's do in North America.
- there are 27.80 million hearing impaired people in China - 20.04 million have only hearing impairment to deal with, the rest have multiple disabilities.
- audiologists often take their medical training first, and then take their audiological training after, giving them a great wealth of knowledge when they provide services to clients.

An ENT from the Tongren Hospital did a wonderful presentation about statistics related to hearing impairment; and Linda Mazzucco Peter provided an overview of the assistive technology programs available within Ontario.

After our professional visit to Tongren Hospital, we had a free evening available to us. However, the majority of people attended The Legend of Kung Fu at the Red Theater. It was amazing. There were children in the show as young as six, and they appeared as well trained as the adult Kung Fu artists.

The Legend of Kung Fu focuses on a young boy found wondering outside an ancient temple somewhere in China. He dreams of becoming a Kung Fu master. But things don’t go according to plan. The young monk called Chun Yi (the pure one) has to overcome many difficulties and temptations before he conquers and finally gets his sacred goal of enlightenment.

After the show, we headed back to the hotel, where I fell into bed again; looking forward to a good night's sleep before heading out on a professional visit again.