One in 1.4 billion-experiencing the Chinese section of a Chinese hospital

One of my favourite parts about living in Chinaland is the frequency of the ‘really? Did that really just happen?’ moments. Two of the most memorable of these CHINA (!!) moments showed me the contrasts of China first hand, as I had experience of the western style of medical treatment versus that at the Chinese hospital.

When you first move to China, they want to be sure that you are not bringing with you any unwanted diseases, particularly such delights as HIV, TB etc. In a country so populous (and around five per cent of Chinese people have hepatitis B, which is, well, a pretty damn large amount of people), this is very logical and is appreciated quite substantially by me and my none-diseased bodily unit. Clean blood, clean mind, clean soul or something to that effect. Within the first week of residing in the country, all foreigners must take a thorough medical examination, which involves blood tests, a chest x-ray, internal organ scan (seems the liver survived the Praha years after all), eye test and some test that checks your heart rate and blood pressure but appeared to be more like an electrocution device and was applied with no explanation.

The system implemented to carry out this full body MOT was shockingly efficient. After paying and receiving our barcodes, we were ushered into a changing room and told to strip off and gown up. We were then ordered to one room after another, where, with extreme speed, they checked us over with various equipment and a typically Chinese bedside manner. My personal favourites were the eye test: Me: I’m not wearing my glasses, I can’t see that line. Eye man: Read what it says. Me: I can’t see it. E.M: (impatient tone, slight rising intonation) Just read it. Me: but I CAN’T! The chest x-ray was also especially delightful. I still had my necklace on and so the woman told me to put it in my mouth. There I stood- a thin gown the only thing protecting my modesty, chest shoved out against a metal plate with my necklace in my mouth. China has made me classier than ever before. There were four of us going through the process together and so we kept bumping into each other in the corridor for just enough time to exchange our wide eyed, ‘really?’ before moving to the next numbered room.

The whole process took no more than twenty five minutes; after we had been poked and prodded, had strange metal cuffs strapped to both wrists and ankles and a significant quantity of blood extracted from our veins, (while we were in the same room as each other as a kind of group activity), these three basic strangers seemed much more like friends. Afterwards all I could say was, ‘that was absolutely amazing!’ 

In contrast to this clean, efficient, slightly imposing experience, my second hospital visit seemed even more shocking. I had been experiencing stomach cramps for a few days and so my LLD sent me with the health insurance woman to Number one people’s hospital of Shanghai. I don’t actually have my insurance card yet, and so the reimbursement would take a while and I didn’t have enough money to pay for a Western doctor up front. Cue 9am Saturday morning in the Chinese part of the Chinese hospital; insert several hundred infirmed people forming a human conveyor belt of chaotic madness. Scribble into the picture a series of dirty waiting rooms, an ayi half-heartedly sweeping up cigarette butts and Pepsi cans from the floor (absence of antiseptic cleaning fluid duly noted) and one slightly overwhelmed British girl who had never been more of a minority in her life. Now, what I am about to impart regarding my full Chinese assimilation should be preceded with the following information: it took less than two hours to do what would take two weeks on the NHS and the whole treatment (seeing the doctor twice, scan, blood test and four different  types of medication) cost 300RMB, which equates to exactly £30. Additionally, the hospital use a very effective method of keeping track of who of the hundreds of faces owes what-each person is issued an electronic card, which is swiped by every doctor and specialist you see, this not only contains the amount that is owed but also all details regarding your condition. Compared to the 1930s throwback system in place in Prague, this was really quite pleasing.

Our first mission was to see a doctor and so we joined a que of people for one of the numbered doors on the fourth floor. I was absolutely the only white person in the whole building and so was the subject of much curiosity. However, hospitals have a way of humbling and the stares were not quite of the same intensity as those on the metro. Because of the Chinese people’s impartiality to the custom of queing, a level of polite aggression was necessary. We had to be ready to move seats down towards the doctor’s office the minute the person next to us moved up the line, in case someone planted themselves in our rightful place, which almost happened several times. This had the effect of everyone kind of hovering over the chairs with an expression of slight paranoia. Once I finally got to the see the doctor, I was one of five in the room with four other doctors, the doctor spoke absolutely no English, kept coughing into her unprotected hand and examined me on a table in the middle of this room in full view of all of the other patients. CHINA!!!

Next it was down to floor one and a swift walk through a room full of patients of all ages. There were old people in wheelchairs holding a catheter bag in one hand and a bag of saline solution in the other. Several people lay bleeding on wheely beds or gazing forlornly out from behind half drawn curtains. Of course there was also the token smoker, casually puffing away as if he was waiting for a pint at the bar. ‘I’m in a germ vortex. If this doesn’t kill me, my mum will when she reads my blog,’ I thought. I was hurried to a small booth type thing in the middle of this room; the minute I sat down the woman behind the desk grabbed my arm, tied an elastic band around my upper arm, took a needle out of a sterile packet and with very little warning, shoved the needle into my arm. Once she had finished she threw the bloody needle and tube into a lidless, plastic box to my immediate left where it joined many others of its kind.

My experience of a Chinese hospital doesn’t beat that of a Sri Lankan private hospital where the operating theatre consisted of labelled cardboard boxes: circumcision, endoscopy etc. and where there was blood all over the floor from some poor fellow who’d come before. Or the state hospital where the entire Nuwara Eliya police department had their injections done with recycled needles in a waiting room whose walls sported centimetre thick grime. However, it was an incredibly interesting experience. In a country where people are numbered and the collective, not the individual, is the main consideration, it can be seen that efficiency is the most vital element to medication. They may not be clean but they are thorough and the Chinese have a pretty sturdy constitution, judging from what they’re willing to put in their mouths. When you are but one in 1.4 billion, it becomes easier to understand why politely waiting in line, or having privacy to see the doctor, don’t seem to be factors of much importance. Oh China, you crazy, quirky, potential death trap-happy National day!!

Nostalgia

‘Men grow old, the end draws near, each moment becomes more and more valuable, and there is not time to waste over recollections. It is important to understand the mathematical paradox in nostalgia: that it is most powerful in early youth, when the volume of the life gone by is quite small.

’~ Milan Kundera ~ ‘Ignorance’

Relationships with places can be a bit like those with people. You form attachments, memories, connections and what often ensues is a sense of love, hate or forced indifference.  This is particularly pertinent with your first love or the first place you form a home away from home. Pulling yourself away from place or person is often painful and this can manifest in different ways. It sometimes hits all at once with an almost desperate sense of longing; the unknown holds further significance when held in constant comparison to the comforts of the known. Other times, and for me this is usually the case, it comes in waves. A smell, a series of colours or the crispness of the air, early in the morning, can send a flash of memory that tugs somewhere deep inside the gut, similar to the shocking realisation that you may have lost something really important. This is nostalgia; one of man’s most poignant and yet, in my opinion, utterly fruitless emotions. The word comes from the Greek nostos meaning ‘return’ and algos meaning ‘suffering’: Nostalgia is therefore the suffering caused by the longing to return.

I have been thinking upon this subject since I left Prague at the beginning of July. Since then I have been nostalgic about a myriad of things. Some are obvious and slightly cliché: I miss walking along the Vltava at sunset or sitting under a bridge with Ezo-T, watching the sun rise over the castle; I miss my wonderful friends and the pub below my apartment. I REALLY miss the big bed of dreams and morning burka times with my flat mate Ale-J. But most of what I miss can’t be specified; it has much more to do with a series of emotions and a personal captivation with the true essence, not just of Prague but of the whole of the Czech Republic: the people, the culture, the stunning scenery and UNESCO protected buildings. However, the more I think about these flirtations with the past (I guess they can be linked to a sense of longing), the more unnecessary, and even ridiculous they appear to be.

When I was living in Prague I felt that there was something more that I needed to be doing and by the time I left I couldn’t have been anymore sure of the validity of my decision. I took countless walks leading nowhere, purposely got completely lost in areas that I had been many times before. I saw every roof top with new eyes and was constantly stopping my friends to gasp at the beauty of the castle (it is utterly breath taking, every time, without fail), the gardens and the cobbled streets. This is what I imagine true love is like: beautiful, every time. And yet in my heart I felt that Prague wasn’t the one for me, that she wasn’t always good for me and so that is why I left. This is why I find my subsequent nostalgic flirtations so ridiculous; my decision to leave will never take away from the amazing experiences that I had in Prague. Nothing is lost, everything is gained.

With a place, the best part is, it will always be there, you can always go back. You can create new situations, build new memories. And anyway, everything that we do is informed by the experiences that we have had and so they are always there, if you allow them to be. I am a person who craves adventure, which for me is often found in the unknown. I once saw an advert for a Czech bank that read, ‘I love change, I sail all of the seas.’ With this desire comes sacrifice and countless ‘goodbyes’; maybe one day I’ll find my anchor, but more now than ever, I feel almost addicted to the excitement of change.

At the moment I am excited, really excited, because I now live in a City where my walk to work is filled with an assault of unidentifiable smells and street vendors selling something that may or may not kill upon digestion. One day last week, on the way to our local noodle bar (my house mate Thomas’ mecca), I walked into a giant pair of pants drying on a clothes line in the middle of the street-I got full-frontal, British lingo pant faced in broad daylight- and minutes later was sitting watching a man, who probably hadn’t washed his hands, expertly pulling noodles and then flinging them into a boiling pan of…urm…something liquid-ified. That is normal. That is all. In the supermarket near my apartment, Thomas saw a child urinating on a washing machine, when his mother noticed what he was doing she simply turned him around to face the aisle…it’s safer that way, less chance of electrocution! A similar story involves an older child in Wal-Mart, except that this time it was concerning poo, but at least his parents had the forethought to lay down paper on the aisle first. Yesterday I’m pretty sure a man on a scooter actively tried to run me over. I think this because I was crossing the road (at a green man) when he came across the zebra crossing and onto the wrong side of the road, hurtled straight towards me and missed me by a few millimetres.

 Life is exciting in the most mundane situations: going to the supermarket is an adventure, crossing the road at a green man or eating something delicious can be dangerous. I got taught (in my first lesson) the Chinese word for fart and yet I’m so terrible with the tones that I am probably saying something quite ordinary such as ‘television’. Today I got paid to be a frog, a cat, a dog and to jump, meow and woof my way around a classroom with an entourage of fifteen four year olds who, as it turns out, I am on a very similar scale of humourosity with.

I guess what I mean, in a convoluted way, is that every day I feel nostalgic for something and yet every day a new and exciting experience or challenge is presenting itself. So does nostalgia hold substance in life or is it a distraction from the present? Now I’m trying to appreciate everything as I see it, that way when the inevitable tinge of nostalgia presents itself, I will know that the experience was the best that it could be (even when it was the worst) because I truly saw it as and when it was happening and because I was grateful. For me, it’s about experiences, fucking up. It’s about loving with no reason; walking the edge and trying not to fall off (too many times). It’s rumpaaachumping to your own beat and smiling, even when there doesn’t seem all that much to smile about. ‘My thought is me. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking’ ~Jean-Paul Sartre~.

Blue, square shaped victories

Life in China is full of victories of all colours and shapes (I get paid to sing songs about yellow triangles and blue squares). These are not just the simple kind of victories that I’m used to, like drinking only once in the week or waking up early to go to the gym. These are a kind of me against the grain victories, the kind that deserve, nay, require a particularly enthusiastic, all limbs flailing ‘victory dance’. Sometimes this has to be done in public, but such is such.

Last week my biggest victory had several layers. After getting my flat mates to draw me a very comprehensive map, and still managing to get lost in the back streets of Hong Kou for about an hour, (Thomas: ‘Sophie, it’s just up our street, first right, first left and you’re there), I finally found the local police station. In China one must register their residence within 24 hours of plotting anywhere, whether it is in a hotel, hostel or a particularly swanky pants apartment. My passport (I now have my own China style little red book of residency-yep yep another victory!!) had been at the visa office since I had moved to Hong Kou and so I was over two weeks late registering with the police. My Spanish housemate, David had had the same problem and had been kept at the police station for over two hours with no explanation, only to be let go without so much as a fine. The Chinese police can be unpredictable and also, kind of scary. However, I sailed through my residency registration with absolutely no problems and was out within ten minutes. England-1, Spain-0, a quick celebratory finger dance and I was back on my merry way to school. Usually I try to avoid the public toilets on the road side at all costs, especially the ones in my neighbourhood, but after the previous mission and subsequent Chinese police related nerves, I really had no choice. The final layer of Saturday morning’s victory ensues…

In China the concept of queuing is really not much of a concept at all. Far from the British style of wait and wait, grumble and wait, it appears to be customary in China to move yourself to the front of the queue and avoid waiting at all. As I was in the queue for the toilets, an experience which is made more uncomfortable by the inescapable smell, a woman practically pushed me out of the way and stood in front of me. In just one month I have learnt how to deal with such situations, and so I tapped her on the shoulder, shook my head in a stern, yet not too rude, NO! and re-inserted/asserted myself in my rightful place in the queue with a nifty little hip barge. She looked at me with disgust, decided that she would rather hold than wait another two minutes behind me, turned and walked away. She looked back a few times and shook her head as if she truly could not believe that such an unfair situation had been stowed upon her. I smiled politely: yet another small victory. In front of me were two women who began arguing in raised tones, which appeared to be regarding who was next in line. As the woman in the cubicle opened the door, both women barged into the cubicle so that all three of them were crammed together in a small, smelly, squatter toilet, squabbling and flapping in an absolutely hilarious fashion. They remained crammed in there together, pinning the poor woman who had rightfully earned her toilet time for about a minute before one of them was forced to back down from the fight and out of the cubicle.  What a surreal, yet in no way surprising, China experience to begin my 13 hour working Saturday.

While I am on the subject of toilets I have another interesting observation to impart, although I’m still not sure exactly what the routes of it are. If someone hands you a small child in China, beware of how close you place it to your clothes. Nappies are not readily used and most small children have big holes in the crotch of their trousers or baby grows. As far as I'm aware, this is so that they can go about their business whenever they are, whether it's on the side of the road or wherever, and I believe it is also to aid toilet training. However, this means that while you are mushing over the beautiful baby in your arms (and Chinese babies are in my opinion the cutest in the world), said beautiful baby may be laying waste to your daily attire. The Chinese civilisation is one of the oldest in the world and this fact leads me to think that there must be some logical reason why they choose the 'let lose’ method over the conventional method of ‘catch that shit before it ruins someone’s day’. Aside from nappies being expensive, bad for the environment and a bit of a pain to change, I haven’t yet discovered the reasoning behind these crotch-less garments, although my mission is not over yet. What I will say, though, is be careful with how you deal with your shock the first time you witness this phenomenon. Take the example of Papa-T today at Tiger hill in Suzhou. Me: Dad, look, there’s a kid with those crotch-less trousers I was telling you about. Dad: Oh my god, I need to get a picture of this. Me: Dad, it’s still not ok to take pictures of small children’s nether regions. Dad: If only the world recognised the difference between anthropological interest and paedophilia…If only indeed, Pops!

I travel to work by train and Rickshaw- Shanghai: a city of contrasts

When I take the time to actually see when I look around me (it’s amazing how many people never do), I am continually awed by the many contrasts that I am able to observe, sometimes in the most unusual places. These observations are what get me excited; they fuel my writing by waltzing with my imagination. Stories are people and people are everywhere. Luckily, it seems that I have unwittingly moved to the right city: the more time I spend here, the more I am growing to really love it.  

Shanghai is a city of extreme contrasts. The futuristic skyline is impressive, slightly surreal and displays a captivating array of bright lights that scream consumerism and debauchery. Bring the eye level lower however, and you will see glimpses of the 'real' china. Old houses,  stacked on and around each other, lines of laundry flirting with brief, teasing bursts of breeze; make shift hole in the wall restaurants and shops; bbqs displaying an array of meat, fish and vegetables and a small portable stand where they cook it up with incredible speed and rather too much oil; plastic chairs set up at the side of the road where whole families gather in the evening. Real China is dirty, smells pretty terrible (Lisa: ‘It smells like poo. Holy shit, is that HUMAN poo?) and the culture is very far from what I am used to in Europe. This means that not only will a man not hold the door open for you, but he will in fact close it on you. Waiting for people to exit the train before you barge on is also a thing of the past, as is being able to put your bag on the floor without it getting covered in phlegm. However, there is an energy in Shanghai that is hard to capture in words or on film. It is perhaps the product of these extreme contrasts. It is the after math of an implosion-explosion caused by the collision of traditional Chinese customs, the Western elegance of once colonised districts such as the French Concession and the bustle of a city populated by 23 million. It is life lived under the ever changing colours that dance down the sides and across the roofs of almost every modern building; life looking at a sky line that is always changing. It is enigmatic, electric and exciting. Some days my means of transportation are a train and…a rickshaw. From my balcony you can see the dilapidated, busy neighbourhoods that look like Lego in contrast to Pu Dong- the pearl tower, the bottle opener building, Shanghai’s twin towers.  

Next to my apartment, which is incredibly swanky pants and even has an oven (!!), there is a farmer’s market where you can find moving bags packed full of bull frogs, ducks that are kept half dead and therefore docile, cages rammed with chickens, buckets with eels which are escaping onto the street. One minute I am in the tranquil marble veneered sanctuary that is our apartment building, or I am looking at the lily pads in the ponds in the gardens that separate the two towers of our complex. The next minute I step out and BOOM…CHINA!! It’s quite incredible and I feel very lucky that I have the privilege to go from seeing Pražský hrad every day, to this. It may not be aesthetically beautiful, but it has a beautiful spirit and its spirit is everywhere. I’ve heard that Shanghai isn’t ‘real China’, it the whore of the East, the pearl of the orient and has apparently lost a lot of its culture, a lot of its China-isms. I feel that parts of Shanghai, where I live for example, are ‘real China.’ None the less, I am really excited about travelling to the other parts of China, to experience ever more contrasts. The next exciting adventure to come is a trip to Outer Mongolia with my flat mates!

I will leave you with a particularly hamusing encounter. Earlier today Laura and I decided to go to a noodle bar to try and rid ourselves of a hangover caused by lady’s night at I love Shanghai. Note to self: free gin and tonic is not anywhere near as good an idea as it may seem at the time. Eurgh! As we were leaving the place an old man came up to us and asked us if we speak French. We said we speak a bit and he asked us what the French for umbrella is. We didn’t know so he told us. Apparently it’s la parapluie. Interesting stuff, right? He then went on to explain, using an unnecessary level of gesticulation, that la parapluie translates into Chinese as ‘penis inserts in vagina.’ The whole time Laura and I were standing there, nodding politely at this little old Chinese man with no teeth, ‘o how very interesting.’ It was only as we walked away that we looked at each other with a thudding realisation, ‘what the HELL just happened there?’ As Matt would say, I am a magnet for ridiculous situations.

Logic and perception- an authentic experience

On traffic: During the university years, my good friend Jazzy fizz got run over by a push bike twice in as many weeks. I don't believe I have to explain why this is utterly hilarious. Four years later I still feel the familiar rumbles of a gimpish giggle arise within me at the memory of her second frantic phone call, which essentially blamed the crack heads of Hull for her idiotic inability to look before she crosses the road...we've all seen the hedgehog advert, we all know the process, we all, by the age of 21, are able to apply said process to our general lives. Anyway, since moving to the Orient, a whole new meaning has been applied to 'stop, look and listen' and I can say with a pretty insistent certainty that lovely Yaz should NEVER venture to the East. On the way from the airport I was in a minor car accident when a man decided that he didn't quite fancy stopping at that inconvenient moment and would instead stop slightly wedged into the boot of the car that I was in. I sat there for an hour watching police, random men, my driver, their driver, the driver's great aunt Mildred and the shopkeeper around the corner come and fight to inspect the damage. Oh, and to inspect me of course. As my curious sleep deprived face met theirs through the window, I thought, 'wow, so this is China.' Strangely, unexpectedly even, it made me feel incredibly happy.
The traffic in China is mental. You can buy licenses on the black market and red lights, like security checks at the metro stations, appear to be 'only a suggestion.' It's not uncommon to see whole families going on a lovely jaunt all on one moped and there's no telling whether that moped will stay on the road or whether they'll want to jazz things up a bit by cruising along on the pavement. On my first day of work I decided to take the more Chinese route to the centre. My school’s location is much more Chinese that the majority of Shanghai. This is, in my opinion, amazing because after all, I didn't travel half way around the world to live in a European-esq China. As I was walking through the small roads lined with make-shift shops and hole in the wall food places, a mix match of chairs and tables lining the pavements, I had to dodge bikes left right and centre. It took me almost twenty minutes to cross the road and at one point I looked up to see about thirty bikes hurtling towards me, all of this down some small back streets. This evening I was on this same road, eating dinner on the pavement outside one of the makeshift places where you pick your veg and meat and they cook up a delicious feast in front of you. My friend Kat and I were discussing the intrinsic value of edeamame beans when two women drove their bikes full on into each other, their responses being a mere death stare, quick brush down and back on their individually treacherous ways. Kat looked at me, shrugged and said, 'It's China.'

Of faking it- The Chinese are well known for their incredible ability to make a counterfeit for just about everything. They even have fake eggs, a concept which is incredibly complexing to meine thoughtuals. My favourite example of faking it came when we went on a dragon boat race outing to Shanghai's sculpture park. As we approached China's largest man-made lake complete with fake beach, Laura proclaimed, 'what the hell is that? Are those children NAKED??' As we got closer we realised that those naked children were in fact naked statues of children...urrrm (???!!!)...these statues of frolicking infants were accompanied by several other, pretty damn life-like statues doing all kinds of fun, beach-related activities. There was Justin and Debbie chilling with a book. Gloria applying sun tan lotion to Pete and the Chinese sugar babes splashing in 'the waves'. The BEST part was that in the brochure this whole interesting display was explained as being: 'To simulate an authentic beach experience.' God I love China!

Sh**t Sophie says

Three weeks into my Chinaland adventure and already some pretty incredible things have happened, many of which have been generated by self imposed ridiculousness. For the first time, I've decided to share my experiences with the internet world. While I'm pretty sure that the sometimes insane ramblings of my brainal unit will not make for the most inspiring reading, I like to think that there might be a little grain of something worth something, nuzzling up against the membrane.

After my friend Matt proposed stealing the idea of Justin Halpern and writing a facebook feed entitled, 'shit Sophie says,'  I decided to start this blog. If you're interested in reading it, in finding out about the Chinese culture (at least that of it seen through the eyes of me) and the adventures I feel sure with ensue, then great! But mainly this is a way for me to keep a tab on the biggest challenge of my time living abroad (as I go into my third year outside of the homeland)...Chinese assimilation. I have also found it increasingly interesting to observe the similarities between the Czech and Chinese cultures and am determined to put these to paper.
I love our crazy world and the different cultures that make it colourful. Having said that, there are certain things that drive me to the point of applying Disney point to temple with one hand, grabbing my red sparkling shoes with the other: a quick click of the heels and 'please send me back to God's land!' ;-) Nonetheless, culture shock comes in many shapes and forms and for me, living abroad is the most refreshing, exciting and compelling way to rumpaachump through life. In fact, the culture shock that I felt when returning to England after spending time alone in the mountains of Sri Lanka was far more pertinent than anything I had experienced while abroad. Sometimes you see your country more fairly when you have spent some time away from it...
I will attempt to update this blog with the things I see and do and hear, or when there's no one around to humour me and I just fancy a bit of word scrabble. I hope there's something worth taking from it (and that at least one person takes the time to read it)!!

Well, that's all from me for today but let me finish by saying what I say at the beginning of every new class that I teach...I can't spell for shit. It's like some kind of genuine brainal disfunction bestowed upon me from a pre-ripe age. No judgements... imperfections are the herbs and spices that make the dish.

YAWN!!