New Experience In Home Country

Yisi Zhan

Even though I’ve been back in China for more than a month, I’m having a quite different and brand new experience from what I ever had in the past 21 years in this country.

I was greeted by Sophie from Vision in Practice (ViP) in Shanghai, and had the orientation during the weekends, getting to know the staff of Huaqiao Fundation, which is the supporter of ViP.  The following week, I went to Xiantao where we have the project with Aipu Eye Hospital.

Arrived in Pudong National Airport in Shanghai

Streetscape of Xiantao city

Xiantao is a city in central China, which history can trace back to the Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 11^th Century-771B.C.). Living here I can feel the deep culture ambience, the beauty of city and kindness of people.

The Aipu Eye Hospital is famous in this area and has ten branches around Hubei Province aiming at eliminating avoidable eye disease. The Xiantao hospital is the first and largest one of the group and major patients are the elders. 

During the past weeks, I got along really well with the people here. They’ve treated me like an important guest. Besides my work, I have had three rounds of transformative leadership training with the hospital staff, which is among the three main aspects of the project. Every round last for one week and nearly all of the 70 employees took part in them by different batch. They have provided me profound understanding of the project going on in the hospital and knowledge of the staff.

Group photo of one batch from first round training

trainer from ViP is giving a lecture

The other training of the project is clinical training targeting on the doctors.

Dr. May(from ViP) is introducing a new technique to two 

doctors in Aipu hospital through real case with patient.

 

Staff members in the hospital are so nice that they not only take care of patients but also treat each other like families. During the staff conference every month, they celebrate birthday together.

Celebrating birthday party for staff who was born in May with cake and gifts.    

During outreach eye camp, I found people grow plenty of lotus in the countryside and have the roots made into different kinds of dishes. It is worth mentioning that there is one kind of food only offered in Xiantao through the whole country, which is called baby lotus.

Baby lotus




Lotus pond in ancient Mian City

 

It’s been lovely experience working here, living in a place I’ve never known in my country, talking to people with an unfamiliar dialect and getting to know a concernful profession related to people’s livelihood. It’s my first time writing a blog, I hope you enjoy reading this. I’ll share more interesting things later.