One of the enduring myths is that China now has so much money that it could buy the whole world if it wanted to - we'll see why this isn't quite the case in this series

It also seems to be an area which causes much confusion amongst the expatriate community here, and I wonder if it’s because they took the media reporting from back home at face value and screamed; “I’m going to be rich! So I’m heading to China!” before throwing all their worldly possessions in a suitcase and arriving in a country where they have no marketable skills, no real money to invest and are convinced that a career as an illegal alien (e.g. they have no residency visa or right to work in China) teaching English will suddenly spring board them into Bill Gates territory.

Of course that’s a hideous sweeping generalisation and many fine people teach English here too but it does seem to apply to much of the folk I see passing through Shenzhen, and much more so to those Westerners working in the interior of China.

I’d like to place some of the blame for this at the door of the New York Times, which ran an overly enthusiastic piece from a guy teaching at Tianjin University, exhorting the opportunities in China – despite his own Ivy league education sending him overseas to earn less than $3,000 a month at a premier educational institute here. But I can’t blame them because that was only two months ago and most of the delusional group arrived way before the article was published, though I’m sure that many others will turn up soon based on this exciting salary opportunity. They’re going to be disappointed in the main, China pays well qualified professional teachers a living wage – those without degrees or even an ESL qualification tend to find that they’re not going to make as much as they would in McD’s back home – though I’ll admit the money goes a bit further here.

But enough about English teachers – this is about the economy, though as we’ll probably see at some point in the series they have an impact on the economy here too.

What I’m going to start with tomorrow is a look at the big number, “China is the world’s second biggest economy and will soon overtake the United States as the biggest on earth!” (normally other writers feel a need to use more exclamation marks than that – you should stop reading anything these people write as it’s a crime against the eye and not in the remotest bit useful for emphasis).

We'll also see why Chinese people probably aren't stealing jobs from your country - unless of course your job was to eat metal objects like this chap - in which case - he wins.

And why that doesn’t mean that China hasn’t suddenly become a land of milk and honey for unskilled Westerners (or even in many cases for highly skilled Westerners), and why it shouldn’t scare people as much as it seems to do, and why for the average Chinese person this still isn’t much to celebrate but it is better than nothing.

There will definitely be some numbers tomorrow (including the big number) but I promise to keep them to a minimum, partly because it’s hard to type complex calculations in WordPress but mainly because I know they send most people to sleep. So until then dear readers, I bid you good night.

P.S. Shards of China is still going to be here everyday, apologies if gave the impression otherwise in yesterday’s post.

And here is my trusted friend, the Shards of China image - which I shall trot out faithfuly with every blog update

However I’m not going to spend any time feeling sorry for myself because it would be better spent working instead. With that in mind, I’m going to change my approach slightly for the next themes from Shards. I’m going to introduce a group of themes and then write about whichever one takes my fancy – so unlike the previous two I won’t continue on the same subject for a couple of weeks and then change, I shall flit between them as they take my fancy.

The new themes will start tomorrow and as I haven’t decided what particular order they’ll follow you’ll have to stick around to find out which one I’ll lead with.

So here’s what I’m going to cover:

Join me on a virtual tour of China..

Places in China – I haven’t actually travelled around that much in China, but I really want to so I’m going to do some research, and share some of my limited experiences with you

China’s Economy – You can’t really understand China until you get under the skin of some of the numbers that float around the media today and this appeals to my inner nerd

And while we meander through the Chinese economy let's be glad that this isn't our job...

Gender in China – This isn’t related to the sex and sexuality series apart from tangentially but I’d like to look at the roles of gender in Chinese society

I’m also going to keep hopping in and out of day to day life stuff, when I have something interesting to report – which given my current workload, may not be all that often for a few months. I’m good with that, it’s important to deliver my clients what they need at the moment and for me to stick a few squids (or RMB) in the bank too.

As I've already explained I've tried acupuncture and it wasn't good for me - the evidence suggest it's not particularly good for anyone eiher.

As with all things in China, there’s a simple answer and a more complicated one. My wife would (and does) seek treatment from a TCM therapist first. When, as it frequently does, this proves completely ineffective she will go to a hospital supposedly practicing Western medicine, where with absolute certainty she will be told to go and have an antibiotic drip once a day, every day for three days. Then when that fails, as it often does too because antibiotics don’t treat every disease only the ones which involve bacteria, she’ll ask me to look up the condition online and buy something appropriate from a pharmacy to treat it.

What I find strangest about this is not her reliance on traditional medicine, but her insistence on repeating this exact cycle even if she gets the same problem again – rather than go for what worked the first time; she has to try all the options once over in order to feel calm about it.

In my case and the instance of most (actually all – I think ) of the expatriates I know, it’s also a little complicated. In the year 2000 the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a study of health care by country in the world – China came in at number 144 out of 190 countries in the world. That’s a performance worse than Burkina Faso or Azerbaijan.

I’m pretty certain this is improving, but not as much as people might like you to believe. The one and only time I visited a Chinese hospital was with and for my wife, it was one of the biggest most modern hospitals in the city. She was asked to disrobe in front of an audience of other patients – who I had to chase out of the room.

The miracle of modern medicine inside a Chinese hospital, rooms full of patients on these drips are very common - mainly because hospitals make a lot of money selling them.

The Doctor (I use the term loosely) appeared to have no diagnostic skills whatsoever (it was a minor fungal skin rash) and then after a cursory look prescribed a sack full of pills. When I ran the names through my handy web search – none of them contained any form of recognized active ingredient. So despite the “Western” style hospital and “Western” style medicine – the treatment was a hugely complex placebo at best (the huge volume of pills is something Chinese patients expect so they can feel they have received value for money from their prescription fee). It was also ineffective.

So the answer here is; “Neither”. Mostly I use ibuprofen, and paracetamol if I’m struck with the cold/flu and water, I also keep a handy supply of loperamide around the house in case of the Beijing Belly but that’s it and fingers crossed it’s worked so far. But if I needed real medical treatment – I’d leave China and join the convoy of Westerners who do the very same thing each day and go to Hong Kong for it. Because Hong Kong offers the complete Western medicine experience and the level of training its doctors receive is the same as back home and unlike Chinese doctors they have no incentive to sell me pills, antibiotic drips (which became the rage here just after my visit to the hospital), etc.

My final words on this subject are that if Mr. Chen’s sugar pills work for you or any aspect of TCM works for you – then keep doing it, there’s no reason to discontinue a placebo because it’s a placebo, but only because it’s failing to do its job. In China itself you might want to consider the use of animal parts and resist that strenuously because of the impact that’s having on wildlife, and you might want to take care about which herbs are being put in your potion too in case they’re poisonous.

Tui Na

Here's "cupping" in action, see the burns forming under the glass?

This is a sort of massage which is supposed to work like acupressure (which is acupuncture without punctures). It is usually given to someone who is fully clothed, and there’s no oil involved. It uses thumb presses, rubbing, gentle percussive motions and stretches.

So massage but not as fun really – though I’ll take any kind of massage over no massage.

Cupping

This is one of those aspects of TCM that I’ll never understand you put hot cups on someone, they create a vacuum they suck in the skin and leave temporary burn/scald marks all over you – this is for the purpose of relieving an excess of water in the body.

It’s worth noting that we’re good at getting rid of excess moisture in our bodies – we urinate, sweat, spit and exhale – so this is a treatment for a problem we don’t have. And cupping won’t help with water retention issues either so don’t try this on your knees…

And a little Gua Sha in action - doesn't he look positively healthier? (Source: Wikipedia)

Gua Sha

More madness it’s a little like acupuncture except that you don’t make delicate little needle holes in people – you scratch large chunks of skin off of them using jade, stone, bone or whatever is handy at the time. It’s believed (by the extremely gullible) that this can even cure cholera – avoid where possible.

Die-da

This is a quick fix for bone setting used by martial artists in China, and it’s worth noting that it’s heavily recommended that if alternatives exist – that even practitioners recommend you use them in preference to die-da.

And that’s it – our tour of Traditional Chinese Medicine is now complete, and you should be fully armed with the facts whether or not this changes your preferences for any or all of it. I’ve got a little bit more to say on the subject tomorrow when I’ll answer a question someone asked early on in the series but that will be the last word on the subject for a while.

Qigong, is a complementary therapy based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. It’s an exercise system which involves “aligning breath, movement and awareness”. It depends heavily on meditation techniques for healing.

Whether it actually works or not Qigong has many followers - here are some hanging out in Manhattan of a morning.

Obviously the name Qigong, comes from Qi and the practice is supposed to be about harmonizing Qi in the body. It has roots in martial arts practices and in both Confucianism and Taoism, and while there are many supposed methods for the techniques to be passed on involving master and pupil relationships, the Chinese government spent some time integrating the practice into a single discipline during the 1940s and 1950s.

Methodologies of Qigong

Dynamic Training – If you’re familiar with Tai Chi – then you’ve already seen in this in action. It involves slow graceful movements that mimic motions of the five animals and the Wild Goose and White Crane.

Static Training – As it sounds this involves staying still in a single posture for an extended period of time, it’s a little similar to Yoga.

Meditation – the usual mix of breath control, mantra and visualisation but in Qigong the visualisation element is all about focusing on the qi, rather than enlightenment (Confucianism), or peace of mind (Buddhism).

External Agents – massage and herbal remedies play a part, as do some transfers of Qi between practitioners (similar to Reiki).

Claimed Health Benefits

These guys aren't in China either - they're in Brazil!

It is claimed that Qigong helps with stretching and strengthening the body, and improves balance and fluid movement.

As with much of Traditional Chinese Medicine, there’s a lack of any valid scientific research to back up these claims – however anything is possible.

Arguments Against the Powers of Qigong

• Qi – cannot be demonstrated to exist in any meaningful way.
• The supposed focus of Qi used in martial arts to break objects – can be explained through physics.
• The manifestation of supernatural powers in gurus also appear to be sleight of hand rather than any real powers.

Essentially Qigong is probably OK for you, meditation is relaxing and being relaxed is good for you, it’s also a mild form of exercise and that’s good for you too – though not as good for you as more intense work out regimes. But as a form of medicine it seems unlikely that users would gain any benefits over and above placebo effect, but no firm evidence exists one way or another at this moment.

Acupuncture is different though – right? The World Health organization offers a list of treatments that acupuncture may offer relief for in preference to traditional medicine, and the National Health Service in the UK offers acupuncture which is government funded – so there’s got to be a scientific basis for acupuncture – doesn’t there?

My first experience of TCM via the medium of acupuncture would come in this exact Yorkshire village, I lived a little further up the street - directly opposite the church. Somedays I really miss the place it was just lovely.

I want to start with a story of my own experience with acupuncture – in the UK. A few years ago, I was living in a little Yorkshire village with my then girlfriend, and a lovely place it was – we shared a beautiful converted 17^th century weaver’s cottage, which looked out over a cobbled street on to a churchyard of the most striking kind. We were on first name terms with almost all our neighbors and much of the rest of the village as well. In short, life was bliss.

And then one morning I awoke in agony, somehow in my sleep I’d injured my neck and I could barely move my head without screaming. So as you do, I trotted off to the local doctor’s surgery to get some help and there they decided that acupuncture would be the best therapy for my problem. I’m not fussed about needles (anymore – I was a complete wuss about them until I got my first tattoo, now it’s not such a big deal) so I agreed to give it a go.

Acupuncture as I now know is the idea that by jabbing needles into someone you can re-align the qi on their meridians to make everything hunky dory again. Back then I didn’t know this, all I knew is that I’d read in the paper that it was scientifically proven to work – and that was good enough for me.

My first session was OK – the very nice lady giving the therapy jabbed a few needles into my neck muscles and my shoulder muscles too for good effect. It wasn’t particularly uncomfortable and they had an almost massage like effect while they stuck out of me for 10 minutes or so before they were removed. I can report that my neck was marginally better after this.

This is obviously not me - her neck's nicer than mine, and my hair's longer than hers. But this is acupuncture at work on neck pain.

The second session was meh – no pain, but no massage sensation either and no effect whatsoever on the pain. The third session hurt – really hurt, I have no idea what had changed but I left feeling worse than ever. The fourth was worse, and at this point the “therapist” told me she’d never seen this before and I should perhaps consider other treatment, she said sometimes people found pain on the first session but if they started OK it was always fine from then on in.

I couldn’t get any other treatment until after another 3 weeks with virtually no sleep (lying down was like having a spike driven through the side of my neck) I went and cried in the doctor’s surgery for something to help me sleep. They gave me valium which amongst other things knocks you out like running head first into a wall at the speed of a cheetah. Once my body relaxed at night, it began to heal and three days later I was fine. (I’ll never take valium again – but that’s another story).

So what? You’re probably thinking – one exception to a scientifically proven treatment doesn’t prove that it doesn’t work. And I’d agree with you except for the fact that this year, a bunch of acupuncture proponents decided to do a study to prove how good it is.

The Acupuncture Group recieve treatment from acupuncture in the first 26 weeks, the control group get theirs in the second 26 weeks. (Not much difference to be seen is there?)

The paper itself, was studying the effect of acupuncture on a range of patients who visited their doctor on a regular basis with unexplained symptoms. It was published in the British Journal of Medical Practice, a respected scientific journal. And concluded happily that acupuncture was indeed effective – so all good news right?

No, not really. The authors are proponents of acupuncture, so of course they wanted a happy ending. In fact their data (shown here) shows that not only was acupuncture not particularly effective, it didn’t even have a perceivable placebo effect. So the actual conclusion that you could draw from the paper was – acupuncture isn’t working, it’s not even as good as Mr. Chen’s harmonized sugar pills.

I know two other people who have used acupuncture, an ex-girlfriend who used it for stress and to be nicer – she swore by it, but I’ll be honest I didn’t see any improvements from it and I lived with her. And my mum, who is a full on believer in alternative therapies and she saw no benefit from the treatment either.

So once again, I’ll close the book on acupuncture by urging you to turn to Mr. Chen instead, sugar is much nicer than needles – and apparently it’s more effective. Tomorrow we’ll continue our tour of TCM therapies.

Animals

I like Tigers and it seems a ridiculous thing for them to die out in the name of Traditional Chinese Medicine - particularly when it doesn't work. (Source: Wiki)

“Natural” has such a nice ring to it that many Westerners have decided to whole-heartedly embrace the concept of all things “natural” in medicine. This is because they have conveniently forgotten that all diseases are natural, and I don’t see a queue round the block for rabies, malaria, diphtheria or any of those other natural “miracles” we’d prefer not to catch.

In the case of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the damage to nature can often outweigh any of the perceived benefits. The Tiger is now an endangered species in much of Asia, and that’s because its penis is sought after as a supposed cure for impotence – it doesn’t actually have any medicinal properties and it’s much more expensive than Viagra, but that doesn’t stop people chasing after it.

Similarly TCM is responsible for the deaths of other endangered species, and in the case of the Asian Rhino population possibly for driving it into extinction (Rhino horn – see the phallic theme? Is in massive demand too). Seahorses and turtles are also having a particularly hard time thanks to this “natural” approach.

And here he is, the Asiatic Black Bear - can you believe he'd want to commit suicide? Give him a year on a TCM bile farm...

One of the saddest stories though is of the Asiatic black bear – this poor creature isn’t wanted for anything more than its bile. Thousands of bears are kept in unimaginably cruel conditions to be milked for their bile. If this wasn’t sad enough, these bears are actually driven to suicide by this procedure! That’s right this “natural” remedy drives animals to top themselves, something unheard of in the rest of nature. (And if you’re thinking “what about lemmings?” then think again – lemmings don’t kill themselves, no matter what you’ve heard.)

Humans

Leaving aside the fact that medicine prepared from human feces is probably not going to be all that good for you. And as in China there’s a huge proportion of endemic hepatitis many of the other “human based remedies” may not be all that good for you either.

What I’d like to look at is a lady in England, who has paid a very steep price for her faith in “natural” herbal medicine, prescribed by a “fully qualified” TCM practitioner. Patricia Booth is a 58 year old civil servant, who visited a Ying “Susan” Wu in Chelmsford, for some help in clearing up her skin. Susan gave her some herbal pills, which she assured Patricia were 100% safe for her to use.

In some respects this was a good thing for Patricia – her skin cleared up a treat. Sadly in exchange for this – she suffered from kidney failure and then had to have her kidneys removed, then she contracted cancer of the urinary tract and finally she had a heart attack. This was all due to the actions of these “natural” herbs on her body.

There's no suggestion that Susan Wu (pictured here) wanted to hurt her patient - it's simply that she had no idea what she was really doing. (Source: BBC)

Susan Wu received a two year suspended sentence for her part in this, as the magistrate ruled that because TCM is an unregulated industry in the UK (and most of the world) it was unlikely that Susan could have known about the terrible damage her “treatment” could cause someone.

So there you have it, so little is known about the effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine by anybody including those claiming to be “qualified” – that it can be fatal.

So I’m going to hazard a guess here – some tiny component of TCM may actually have medical benefits (and this will be discovered by pharmaceutical companies in the future), a large chunk will have only the benefits of the placebo effect (just like Mr. Chen’s sugar – though most of it won’t taste anywhere near as nice) and some of it will be downright dangerous as poor Patricia Booth discovered to her cost.

Given all of this and the unnecessary suffering caused to so many creatures in pursuit of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I’m going to urge you to buy Mr. Chen’s harmonized sugar – or at the very least pursue an equally safe placebo instead (homeopathy should do just fine – it’s basically a sugar pill too – honestly read up on it, and don’t use a homeopath for source material) rather than take the risk of ending up like Ms. Booth.

Tomorrow we’ll continue our guided tour of TCM with a look at acupuncture, and a personal experience.

There are three basic components of a natural cure in TCM; animal parts, human parts, and herbal parts.

Animal Parts

This is a sheep's gallbladder (sorry I know it's a bit grim to look at) and TCM says that it's supposed to be good for you, I'm yet to work out how this is the case...

You may have heard the term; “snake oil salesman” as used in the “Wild West” in America. It’s used to describe a shady practitioner selling a cure for everything that in fact does nothing of the kind. Well it comes from Traditional Chinese Medicine, and it was widely adopted in the US for a while back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and despite this there’s not much evidence that snake oil is effective for treating anything.

TCM is happy to draw on pretty much any animal and any body part for cures, in particular animal penises are supposed to have many mystical powers to cure the sick.

Human Body Parts

The original practice of TCM classically also involves 35 bits of people and their waste; this includes dandruff, ear wax, finger nails, hair, bones, sweat, urine, organs, feces and bits of filth from teeth.  Western practitioners will tell you that most of these are no longer in use, but I suspect that’s because they haven’t spent much time in rural China…

Herbal Medicine

There are thousands of herbs and plants that have been absorbed into Traditional Chinese Medicine; one of the main problems with this approach is that pretty much none of them have been evaluated in any scientific manner for health benefits, or safety.

So far – so yummy – right?

Categorization of Components of TCM

Four Natures (si qi) – That’s hot and cold or warm and cool depending on how you want to look at it. You use the opposite component to treat a problem, so hot or warm herbs treat cold or cool disease and vice-versa.

Five Flavors (wu wei) – this is also known as the “five tastes: which are sweet, sour, salty, bitter and acrid. It’s also possible that a substance has no flavor and is “bland”. The five flavors are supposed to relate to the zang organs, and each flavor has certain therapeutic actions. So for example; saltiness is considered to drain things downwards, while softening hard masses and then sweetness is supposed to supplement, harmonize and moisten.

By meridian – it is possible to classify some components by their meridian and the zang organ affected by the problem.

By specific function – there are plenty of categories to choose from here. Some of them are exterior-releasing, heat-clearing, interior-warming, worm-expelling, blood-quickening, phlegm-transforming, spirit-quieting and so the beat goes on…

Clinical Trials?

Imagine if McDonald's started to do Traditional Chinese Medicine. "Would you like fries with your ear wax sir?"

TCM is pretty much untested for clinical efficiency, there have been pseudo-scientific trials in the West of some herbal components but these are of a very low standard and don’t meet the requirements placed on pharmaceutical drugs. For this reason the EU has placed a ban on the imports of Chinese medicines which have not been tested to a scientific standard – China is not very happy about this because it sold billions of Euro’s worth of Traditional Chinese Medicine to Europe.

That’s it for today, tomorrow I’m going to start exploring some of the problems with Natural/Herbal medicine in TCM and why you might be better of sticking with Mr. Chen’s uniquely harmonized sugar ™ instead.

In an effort to make this appear a little more science-y you can find a number of attractive charts like this relating to Tradtional Chinese Medicine. This shows meridians in the arm and thumb.

While eight may be a lucky number in Chinese culture, these are a not so lucky expression of the figure and as with all things TCM they come in pairs based around the fundamental aspects of a disease: in particular heat/cold, ying/yang, repletion/vacuity and exterior/interior. With the most “clinically important” being heat/cold and repletion/vacuity. Yin/yang is considered to be the least fundamental aspect as it offers vague conclusions based on the other qualities discovered during diagnosis.

The Eight Principles of Pattern Discrimination in TCM

Exterior (biao) as you might expect this refers to physical expression of symptoms on the outside of the body – hair, skin and meridians. Thankfully your tongue is left alone as part of this diagnosis and it is supposed to represent an avoidance of cold, muscular pains, headaches, light fever and a “floating pulse”.

Interior (li) in this case the symptoms are expressed in the “zang fu” or basically anywhere that isn’t on the outside. The expressions don’t have a generalisation and are determined by the indiviudal zang or fu body that is affected.

Cold (han) once again avoidance of the cold comes up, and is coupled with “an absence of thirst” – both things that seem pretty normal to me, but wait a minute what’s up with your tongue? If it’s covered in white fur – you’ve collected the set.

Heat (re) not avoiding cold is the kick off, a sore “red” throat, rapid and floating pulse, and dry fur on your tongue.

Vacuity (xu) – vacuity can also be called a “deficiency” and this applies to either (or combinations of) qi, yin, yang or xue and the usual symptoms that go alongside these things. Deficiency in yin is known as vacuity-cold and for yang it’s vacuity-hot.

Repletion (shi) which is the opposite of vacuity and hence an “excess”. So it’s here you’ll find the six excesses and/or a pattern of stagnation in the xue, qi, yin or yang.

Yin and yang don’t really have symptoms of their own, and these are generally expressed by pairs of principles from the other six instead.

Once the patterns and principles have been identified the practitioner then usually classified the disease in more specific terms by one (or more) of the following:

• The Meridians (jing luo bian zheng)
• Qi (qi xue bian zheng)
• Xue (qu xue bian zheng) – In case you hadn’t noticed that’s the same as the one for qi
• Body Fluids (jin ye bian zheng)
• Zang fu (zang fu bian zheng) or occasionally in terms of the five elements (wu xing biang zheng)

And if it doesn’t fit there there’s also three others for infectious and febrile diseases:

• Six Channel System (liu jing bian zheng)
• Four Division Pattern (wei qi ying zue bian zheng)
• Three Burners Pattern (sanjiao bian zheng)

Causes of disease

Peculiarly for a system of medicine, TCM doesn’t really draw much of a line between cause and effect and often the pattern discrimination is considered to provide the information about the cause. However there are officially three categories of cause in TCM

Some more TCM Meridians this time for the whole body, looks convincing doesn't it? (Source: Wikipedia)

External – Including “Pestilential Qi” and the Six Excesses

Internal – The Seven Emotions/Affects (qi qing) – anger, sorrow, grief, fear, brooding, fright and err… joy. These are believed to mess with your zang fu and in particular the LIVER.

Everything Else – dietary problems (eating too much cold, spicy, sweet, fatty or raw food – or too much booze), sexual problems, trauma, parasites (chong) and fatigue.

So there we have it, you now have enough knowledge to diagnose conditions in terms of TCM – though we really don’t recommend you practice this at home. At least not until you’ve read the next part of the series regarding Traditional Chinese Medicine treatments and you draw your own conclusion on the efficacy of the options available to you. We’ll start tomorrow with Chinese Herbal Medicine.

It's been an amazing start to February and it's all down to you!

The post Valentine’s day blog figures are looking good, on the 14^th of this month – Shards of China overhauled its total hits for January, had its first 500 visitor day and passed the 2,000 follower mark on Twitter!

So far this month I’ve launched a new theme, on Traditional Chinese Medicine, talked about a night time break in, my lovely wife and wrapped up the first theme Sex in China. The original Out of China material is now exhausted and I will be completing this series in the fullness of time as soon as I can get around to completing the material.

I’ve got to be honest, though there’s always going to be at least one post a day – it’s going to be challenging to put up much more, I’ve won a number of new customers over this month for my writing and I’ve been averaging 8,000 words a day in the last week (and some days it’s been more). Which is fantastic! I’d like to thank you – my readers for a lot of that as this blog is a portfolio piece and your interaction and support makes for a great reference.

My schedule’s not quite full though so if you know anyone looking to hire a writer let me know – here.

I’ve also launched my blogroll today to try and give great writers and photographers their due, I will be expanding this over the coming weeks so please don’t despair if you’re not on the list just yet.

There will almost certainly be a new theme coming before the end of the month, as I think there’s possibly another week’s worth of TCM to come and I’ll let you know, as soon as I know, what that’s going to be.

Have a great month folks, and thank you again for your continued support and readership.

New readers – if you like what you find on this blog, please take a moment to follow it by using the option on the left hand side and follow me on Twitter – @ShardsofChina.