Comrade Pharmacist, welcome to China Medical City

For those pharmacy friends out there, hold onto your hats.

Welcome to China Medical City!

I mentioned in my previous blog that a bunch of us foreign workers were taken on an all expenses paid tour of some of Jiangsu province's up-and-coming purpose-built cities, and this is the one of the ones we made a stop in.

Probably the highlight of this place is the entire convention centre thats dedicated to the pharmacy profession, but I'll get to that part later. First though, a bit about the city.

 More accurately, China Medical City (or CMC) is a 30 sq km technology park located within the city of Taizhou. When fully developed, China Medical City will most likely be one of the biggest pharmaceutical and biomedical industry hubs around. Companies and organizations will span the breadth of research and development, manufacturing, trade and exhibition, regulatory bodies, and academia, all complete with Chinese government backing. One would never believe that just 4 years ago this place was just farmland, but as is the standard pace of development in China, entire cities tend to crop up overnight.

Currently a number of pharmaceutical firms have already set up shop here, both local and foreign, and Astra Zenica is currently constructing their facilities here too. They've also got these purpose built R&D plants that companies can rent out if they don't wish to fork out the money to build their own. The pharmaceutical school of one university has already located here, and theres also plans to build a 700 bed hospital where all the clincal trials will be conducted. Ironically though I didn't see a single Terry White Chemist around, let alone a community pharmacy.

Cruising around the town in our tour bus, I felt like a stray dog that had found it's way home. I felt like standing up in the middle of the tourguide's dictation and saying ''lady, you're on my turf now'' and casually grabbing the mic from her to continue the tour. But the juices really got flowing when we reached the exhibition and convention centre. Welcome to the ''Shrine of Pharmacy''.

Before this the only exhibition (more like museum) that I'd seen dedicated to pharmacy in all my travels was in some small dingy basement in Germany as part of a secondary attraction to an old castle. Sort of like some supporting act.  And i never expected to come accross any such exhibition dedicated to pharmacy, because let's face it, pharmacy is not the most sexiest profession around. The day they make something like 'Grey's anatomy' with pharmacist protagonists is the day hell freezes over.

So imagine an entire convention centre, with a permanent exhibition solely dedicated to the pharmacuetical industry! OMG! Never in my wildest dreams had I ever expected to find something like this. I must say as our tour group walked around the exhibits I walked a little taller with chest puffed out. ''yep baby, real life pharmacist, in the flesh, right here with yous. I'm happy to field any questions you might have. You see that exhibit of a guy standing behind the counter holding and pointing to a box in his hand? That's me.''

I was like a kid in a candy store. Scurrying around to all the exhibits and taking as many photos as I could. And suprisingly they did manage to make an exhibit out of it. Though i suspect most of the other people on the tour were bored shitless, my eyes lit up when i saw a drug name, term or drug box that looked familiar. heh, it was like seeing a bunch of old friends that I hadn't seen in a long time. Familiarity is a funny thing.

In truth though, there wasn't much mention of the community and hospital pharmacy professions, and no displays dedicated to their 'art'. Most of it centred around the drugs themselves and the evolution of drug discovery. There was a life-size model display though of a chinese chemist/herbalist shop, so i claimed that as my own. There was also quite a bit of information about chinese medicine, and the pioneers of the profession. People like Li Shi Zhen 李时珍 are apparently the fathers of Chinese Medicine, who wrote the Compendium of Materia Medica, or more simply, the Chinese version of Martindale. There was a display of the materia medica, but unfortunately i didn't see the Martindale, AMH or APF.

It got me thinking though, that us pharmacists don't have any single hero or 'father of pharmacy' we look up to. When i think of role models I just think of dear lecturers from my uni days like Ted Triggs, may his soul rest in peace. While walking around the displays I quietly thought to myself that it would be fitting to have a statue of Ted in this hall, sitting on a bench smoking away like he used to on campus.

Apart from the information boards and lifesize displays theres also some tasteful lightshows, yet another model city, and a riveting video on drug production. On my way out the PR officials wanted someone to sign the guestbook, and since nobody else was forthcoming I was happy to step up to the plate. Guess it was fitting that I do it for the group. But doing so led to a conversation with one of the local officials, who was quite interested when I told her I was a pharmacist. Before I boarded the bus she offered to take me on a personal tour of the city if i ever decided to come back. So for all the pharmacy friends out there who are looking for industy employment opportunities or just wanting to check this place out, the local officials are always happy to receive you!

Shaking hands with white people is good for investment

So a few weeks back I had the opportunity to join a free weekend trip to some cities in JiangSu province, completely paid by the JiangSu government. It had been provided to some of the foreign experts working in the province, and our school had been one of the schools to be invited. This being China, we were expecting some pleasant (and unpleasant) surprises, but hey since everything was paid for, who could refuse?

The first thing we noticed was that everywhere we went we had a media crew following us around. The whole trip seemed carefully choreographed and every passing shot and handshake filmed. Some of us (including me), were even interviewed by the local tv news station in one city, asking us what we thought about the tourist site we had just come out of. Since the city was a small one, i think very few of the viewers would've understood our ramblings in English, trying to put a positive spin on a somewhat run-down and underkept lake. ''oh yeah it's so picturesque, and so green, and and, I love how everything here is so new!''

Actually i had been warned by one of the other teachers about the film crews before the trip. The footage of foreign (esp white) people visiting a city and shaking hands with a few Chinese people in suits makes for great P.R. and promotion for investors.You see, all of the cities we visited weren't exactly your typical tourist destinations. Rather they were all newly or recently built cities in dire need of an injection of foreign investment. And the destinations we were taken to were also a bit odd. One day we were taken to a shipping port, just to get out, be filmed, hear some 5 minute speech (that we couldn't even hear for the gusty winds), and then whisked away to another location. You could say we more felt like the investors ourselves, being taken on a tour of the facilities. Everywhere our buses went there was a police escort with us, clearing the traffic in front of us, and electronic signboards always reading ''warmly welcomes foreign experts to xxxxx''

And then there was the exhibition centres and their models. Every city we went to the first thing we did was pay a visit into the exhibition centre.  There we were met with miniature models of the city(or proposed plan) complete with light features, displays about the local products, and speeches and videos about the city. Let me tell you, the mini-model makers are kept busy in China. All of us westerners felt an urge to jump up onto the model cities and play godzilla/kingkong with a few of the buildings. I don't know why, must be the destructive natures in us! Though we didn't end up doing this, my collegue and I did end up pinching a souveneir plastic tree each from one of the model cities. It won't take the shine off the model i'm sure :)

All of the cities also had their own 'europe town' shopping area, complete with clock tower, and every one of them looked exactly the same. seems theres a template  'europe town' in every chinese city. We were also given information booklets about each city before we arrived, detailing all the info and statistics about the city. The chinese love quoting figures, numbers, and rankings. 'the product output last year increased by 16%, making xxxx the 13th fastest growing city in China of 2011', you get the idea.

Actually there was one touristy thing we did, and that was to visit an elk reserve. Pretty interesting, though we didn't have the chance to get up close to the elks.There were some entertaining Chinglish signs though :)

The other place worth a mention was 'Taizhou - medical city'. The whole place was built up from scratch about 5 years ago, and is being touted as a centre for the medical industry. At the moment, most of the companies there are pharmaceutical companies, both foreign and local, along with a few medical device companies. One of the pharmacy schools has even moved it's campus there. But perhaps the city will remain focused on pharamaceuticals, since the exhibition centre is all about the pharmacy industy. I'll write more about that in the next blog, because it deserves a whole entry!






Although the choice of most of the destinations were a bit dubvious and uniteresting, we couldn't complain about the accomadation and meals. Every lunch was a gorgeous buffet, each dinner a Chinese banquet with booze and a few toasts and speeches from local government reps, and each hotel at least 4 stars. Even if you found no interest in any of the sites, this alone was worth the trip!