This is the sound a tibia makes

The expatriate community around the south of China is largely comprised of Britainers, Aussies, Irish and the like.  Rugby is therefore, a big deal.  A really big deal.  We ventured out to Hong Kong last week for the Sevens Tournament, and saw celebrations on a scale I never really thought possible.  Every city has at least one rugby squad, comprised entirely of expats and sponsored by at least one Irish pub in their city.  

We were recently invited to travel up to Guanzhou with the Shekou Dragons (The Shenzhen expat rugby team of which Tom is a part of) to watch them take on their Guanzhou counterparts.  We had a hotel set up and one of the Guanzhou players owned an Irish pub directly next to this hotel, which made everything easy.   Everything was going well, and the game was 5 minutes from stoppage time when a thunderous, ungodly, unforgettable crack rang out from the pitch.  A few screams followed, and everyone went silent.  The largest guy on the Shenzhen team had decided rather than take a hit and go down, to run through two rather beastly Guanzhou boys (as he had been doing quite consistently all afternoon).  Luck had apparently turned her back on this maneuver however, and both his tibia and fibia decided staying whole was no longer an option.   

There are some places I would not mind breaking a large bone, downtown Boston perhaps, and there are places I wouldn't dream of it, maybe rural Africa or China. Guanzhou is really not very high on the list either.  This sentiment was apparently shared by the other members of both squads who flew through their contact lists and phoned up Hong Kong.  In an amazing display of comraderie, the other players organized to have him sent to Hong Kong and have his leg set by a sports injury specialist out there.  It was an impressive display and highlights perfectly the way people are taken care of by their peers in those type of situations.  

For Reference:  Guanzhou is located about an hour by train from Shenzhen, and was rated one of the mot polluted cities in China recently.  It seems that around here the sun only comes out on special occasions, and the combination of pollution and humidity make for an interesting fog/smog situation that keeps the days pretty grey out here for much of the time.  I am told that the rainy season, which will be beginning very soon, should help to reduce some of this, but it is really odd experiencing this level of pollution.