i've been listening to tom waits’ newest album. My is very like. seems appropriate for chongqing fall weather, sitting in my poorly-lit apartment, looking out on a wet city, feeling slightly unsettled, writing about stuff that doesn’t matter, except for the sake of posterity.
And the growly man sings.
My next hospital anecdote is written in present tense, but I actually wrote this a few weeks ago, when I was sick—which is not to say I’m not still producing some juicy coughs (I am…). I don’t think the exact day of any of this matters so much. The “when” of hospital anecdotes set in china is never important, I don’t think.
Home sick, sipping on some ‘tussin. Yes, they have robitussin in china. And god bless it. My body feels simultaneously light and heavy. I might levitate. Or gravitate…towards a recap of today’s hospital fun.
I’ve been feeling like shit since the end of September. First it was allergies, then it morphed into cold and never left. the lingering chongqing cough I’ve heard so much about. I believe jules decided last year that her indian name was “lingering cough.” I understand that now. I want a cool indian name, or at least an applicable one.
I’ve been to the hospital in china (of my own accord) twice in 4 years. I went today, hoping for confirmation that something was wrong with me, besides stress, exhaustion and classes of 3-4 year olds. When you think about it, that could be a very real source of some bona fide illness. I’ve seen some crazy fluids come out of my students. Yikes.
I spent most of last night awake, coughing up phlegm, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go to the hospital. Except that going to the hospital is a nightmare that I’m sure many foreigners ‘round these parts—with their snobby requisites of hot water and hand soap—can attest to. Here’s how my routine visit went when I, a foreigner in china who is not well-versed in medical vocabulary, required the aid of a Chinese member of staff.
Said staff member and I walked to the hospital in the rain. The last time I was sick—sometime in the summer…migraine—I walked home from school. i am convinced that I actually hallucinated during this rather unpleasant uphill walk. I remember that I tried to go to the hospital, but there was no one around to take me, unless I waited at the children’s school in which I work for an hour and a half. Migraine + sea of screaming children = shitty.
There’s just not the sense of urgency or helpfulness that would accompany a doctor visit back home, probably because health care is so easy to come by here. very very strange. It definitely has trade-offs, but Chinese people go get an iv drip for every sort of ailment. Going to see a doctor is so routine for people, so they get really confused by how resistant foreigners are to go to the hospital when they’ve got the smallest problem.
I think I had insurance back home for about 2 years of my adult life, when I lived in texas and had a “real” job, so it’s so novel to me to imagine getting a uti here or a really bad cold and how easy it is to just go get helped, for 20 rmb or so, as opposed to the upwards of $100 that it was the last time I had any issues back home and was uninsured.
Yes, so today I walked in the rain to the hospital. The jiangbei hospital of traditional Chinese medicine. Great. there’s a former doctor from Australia who works in my school. every time I mention anything about Chinese medicine he just gets this knowing smile on his face, as if to say “that’s total bullshit.” I take comfort in semi-confirmed suspicions.
Anyhoo, once there, I was ushered to a window to pay for a ticket to see the doctor. Just like at a carnival! Yay! So she and the local member of staff talked about me being a foreigner and how novel that was (yes, we alien beings get sick, too). She looked at my throat, checked my heart rate, checked the antibiotics that the pharmacist had given me earlier—over the counter! Nice perk there, aside from it all being prescribed through a translator on my phone. But she said it was fine, and I trusted her, given her position as a doctor at a Chinese medical facility.
At this point I was marveling at how fast this was all going. Next stop: blood draw. This was where I had that “oh yeah, china can be fucking gross” moment. My first Chinese hospital experience, however many years ago, was pretty sobering, because it really was like being in a train station. I’ve gotten used to that a bit more—as far as general cleanliness of facilities—but I still struggle to come to grips with body fluids and things I don’t think I should come into contact with. Case in point: the blood draw window. It really is just like a ticket window or something at the bank with a sneeze shield. You stick your arm under and a doctor on the other side draws your blood. I can appreciate a sneeze shield, provided there’s not blood coagulated on it and the surface on which I rest my arm. But there was. So all this efficiency comes at a price.
But the results are fast. I walked to the hospital, got a blood test and a prescription, took a taxi home and it took less than an hour. That’s crazy. And because I’d purchased some strong medicine before the hospital visit, the only prescription was “drink more water and take vitamin c.” I laughed. If I’d been told to drink green tea I think I might have punched someone…
In other news…I saw a guy washing his dentures in the public water fountain outside the luxury shopping mall in which my school resides. He was a worker type, an older guy wearing a uniform. As I got closer to him, I could see him hunched over the fountain, and I thought I saw teeth, then I thought that was highly unlikely. But as I passed, sure enough, he was rinsing his teeth—the lower set of bright pink gums and shiny white teeth air drying as he washed the uppers. To be fair, I’ve never seen anyone actually drink from those fountains, pristine and shiny as they may be. I think as a general rule of thumb, if you can avoid sharing public facilities with the public in china, do it. hard to do, I know, in my city of upwards of 30 million peeps, but worth the effort.
Busy days at school these past few weeks. We had the grand opening of school 3 here in the chonx. Which meant lots of potential new students, a chef station (chocolate chip cookies with 8 year olds. Fun times…), and general chaos. But it was good. It’ll be interesting to watch a new school grow over a year, from 0 students to whatever the target is. it’s cool, too, because it’s so big. To see a whole hallway of classrooms that have yet to be tainted by the students who will eventually occupy them.
There was also Halloween (at least at school), which came together very hastily, but there were so many kids in the school making masks or skeletons out of q-tips. Let’s just say that a lot of q-tips and paper were/was sacrificed for the sake of our Halloween merriment. Pretty cute to see a room of 3-4 year olds with costumes on, including one tiny little guy with a groucho marx glasses set.
By the end of Saturday I desperately needed an adult beverage. You can only teach kids “zombie” and mime eating brains so many times in one day. I learned that over the weekend.
There was a costume party at the only bar I ever actually go to, so I had the brilliant idea of being “america’s next top modal.” I thought it was funny, but I think everyone else just thought I’d misspelled model. I wore slutty shoes, a shitload of makeup, very short shorts (actually, a “romper”. Yup, romper), stickers with modal verbs all over them and a sash. I thoroughly entertained myself, and looked like a whore while doing it, so that’s always a plus. All the while confusing everyone else. Jules and rory were the white stripes. She wore a tiny hat. He wore suspenders. They looked r-ad.
I’m drying approximately 30 roses in my apartment. Yes, 30. This is not a statement I would have thought I’d ever write. I can count the number of times I’ve received flowers in my life on one hand. I think at least one of those times the provider of said flowers was coerced into buying them.
There are several street food stands out in front of my apartment complex. They get pretty rowdy after 10 at night. me and the peeps went there a while ago. Sesame garlic cucumbers, garlic beans, peanuts and cheap beer. when it’s not raining, this is perfect weather for outdoor beer sipping and snack consumption. This was one of the good nights.
So we sat around for a while, drinking and people watching. A large group of moderately to very drunk folks came to sit down at a table near us. We quickly became their foreign friends and were invited to drink with them. At least one of them was some chief of police type and was very very drunk. I think he ended up kissing pictures of julie’s students on her camera. He also had very bad breath. No matter. We did a lot of drinking with them, out of bowls. It was quite ceremonious. This other particularly drunk fellow had taken a liking to me, I guess, and kept telling me “I love you” or “I like you.” His wife thought it was hilarious.
There are people who come along, selling individual flowers to whichever folks are drunk and gullible. My admirer happened to be very very both. So that’s how I ended up with the flower vendor’s entire bouquet.
So I have them bunched together, drying. What else do you do with flowers that are going to die? My wok is full of rogue petals until I figure out what to do with those. But I found a pretty simple rose perfume recipe online. So maybe I’ll be making rose perfume. That seems like a pretty strange statement coming from me…
Just spent 4 days in chengdu doing some training for school. it was my first experience with any sort of training in my new managerial position. I’ve done plenty of workshops, or attended workshops given by jules and rory, but nothing with higher ups. Let’s just say it was…interesting. I think as DoSes, we worry constantly about the quality control of teachers, and it’s always a battle—motivation to come to china is certainly different for everyone, compounded by the quality of (or lack of) work ethic. It was kind of sobering to see that quality control is also a pretty big headache for the shanghai folks as well. the input was good, and useful and showed that some people actually do know what they’re talking about, even if other people involved seem like tools and/or douchebags. So yes, content was good, if not daunting (implementation! My favorite word! ). I could go into full on judgmental mode here, but for once I’m going to edit myself. And say that I’m so lucky to be doing this work with jules and rory. I’m not saying this in a gushy, sentimental way, but we know what the fuck we’re doing in our schools, and we’re passionate about what we do. Others don’t and aren’t. I’m glad I’m not working with the others.
Besides the training, went to hooters and to a bar/restaurant called the lazy pug. Go there! Very very nice environment, nice people, and it doesn’t feel Chinese. You need that sometimes. And by “you” I mean “i.” but probably you too, whoever you are. Last morning of training was rough, though. whiskey and vodka and beer and hooters, oh my.
Doing something pretty similar (the training, no the booze parade and hooters) in December, but this time in shanghai. I know there will still be douchebags, because they’re everywhere, but I hope to meet some more tuned in people than chengdu provided. We shall see…
