The Chinese love “physical checks.”  Chris and I were required to have all sorts of medical tests done back in December in order to get our invitation letters from Tsinghua. These tests included EKGs, HIV tests, and lung x-rays, and our doctors had to verify that we weren’t suffering from such ailments as leprosy, black plague, or yellow fever.  A few days after our arrival, we were notified that we would need to have our physical checks verified by the Chinese government, so we were loaded into a van and carted across the city to a place where we were told we’d have to have new physical checks done.  Who knows why, but the good news is that we’re still HIV and plague-free.

In trying to get P into Tsinghua’s kindergarten, I made a trip to visit the kindergarten’s director.  At one point, the director spoke for several minutes without pause.  After this very long monologue, my interpreter turned to me and said one short sentence, “She said your daughter will need a physical check.”  Great.

The next day, P and I found ourselves in a taxi with yet another interpreter on our way to a hospital in downtown Beijing. Of all the culture shock situations I’ve encountered in my life, experiencing a Chinese hospital was by far the most shocking. First, there was the dirt. Although I don’t normally like the antiseptic smell of American hospitals, I found myself longing for it that day. The cracked and peeling walls, which had been painted pink at some point in time, were now a dingy shade of pinkish gray. I know the place is at least occasionally cleaned, as I spotted two black mops hanging in a corner of the waiting room. Here’s the sink I saw doctors and nurses using to wash their hands:

No hot water. I checked.

In addition to the dirt, there were the massive crowds of people. People were standing in the waiting room shoulder-to-shoulder.

Miraculously, the wait was shorter than in a typical American hospital. P first visited with two women, who weighed and measured her and then looked in her ears and mouth. Notice the lack of gloves:

We then had to wait in another massive line for the “venous blood extraction.” Again, people were shoulder-to-shoulder. P, who had up until this point been very well-behaved, flipped out. She simply couldn’t handle the crowd and stood in the middle of a large floor tile, screaming at each person who walked by, “This is my square. Get off my square right now!” She quickly grew more and more frustrated, as scores of people continued to walk on her square. Here’s a shot of her in the midst of her frustration:

I wish I could say things got better once we made it to the front of the venous blood extraction line. They didn’t. Luckily, P has forgiven me for the experience. A little chocolate for the cab ride home helped, but as you can see, she remained a bit resentful for a while:

The good news is that P is extraordinarily happy with her new school, so the hospital trip was worth the effort and pain. Call me a xenophobe, but the experience taught me to avoid Chinese hospitals at all costs. If any of us require medical attention while we’re here, we’ll head directly to an international facility. As for P, in the past week, she has altered her sense of personal space a bit and hasn’t lately claimed any squares to be for her use alone. This is a good thing, I think.

In close, although I’ll spare you the lame jokes about China’s crack problems, I can’t help but post this photo of a little boy in split pants I spotted in the waiting room.

Tags: Christie's Posts

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