Weekender -- Hospital Visit

My first experience of Chinese healthcare, then.

This was some time back, in April 2000, or so. I had been in Shanghai a few years by that time, and I had been loving it – expect for the couple of months leading up to that April. Most every day at that time was misery and stress. 

Not, I should say, my sensitive soul lamenting at the plight of the Chinese people. No.

Hemorrhoids. 

Piles. 

By god they hurt. I’d had the odd bit of arse agony back in the UK, but nothing like this. I guess it was the change in diet.

I remember the day I was in the Watsons’ drug store, by the Portman, and I saw there on a shelf – glowing like a grail, a carton of H, Preparation H. What bliss! It was that moment in Handel’s Messiah,  when the band sing “And god said, ‘Let there be light' and there was........."  and then the pause, followed by "....Light!” A fine, wonderful bit of music and quite what I felt when I saw the H. 

And – a slight aside – wonderful though ‘The Messiah’ is – glorious, expansive, moving music – it has fallen foul of the Commies. The Academy of Ancient Music, a fine UK based ensemble, was due to give a public performance of this at the Beijing Music Festival. But then the scumbag Chinese government decided to insist it had to be an ‘invitation only’ gig – which meant the general public could not attend. Likewise, a performance of Mozart’s Requiem, intended to raise money for the Sichuan quake victims, was cancelled. The reason for this being that the thugs and goons who run China did not want this ‘christian’ music played, for fear it might turn more Chinese people into believers. Now, sure, in the 21st century, like also the 20th C, to genuinely believe god exists is either a sign of moral cowardice or mental illness. But to ban some of the greatest music humanity has produced is simply risible, absurd. And to ban it even when it is intended to help people who are suffering in China! These guys are the leaders of 20% of the human race, and they are clods and cretins. 

Anyhow. 

So I grabbed the H, paid my 49.50 yuan, and scarpered to the lav. I’d never used Prep H before (but every schoolboy knows what it is) and when I slapped it on – oh, the bliss, the cessation of pain. I could feel ‘em shrinking, tingling, retracting. What joy!

And what a contrast to my prior attempt at medicating my poor arse. At that time I could speak no Chinese, and so I had to make do as best I could. I went into one small pharmacy and inspected what they had for sale. Most of it, being written in Chinese, meant nothing to me. But I did see one product that sounded familiar – Tiger Balm. Balm! Balm sounded good to me. My arse needed some balm. Balm was what I wanted. 

I should, of course, have focused on ‘Tiger,’ not ‘Balm.’ I did not. I brought it, took it home, and applied it.

Only the once. Just the once.

Anyhow, fast forward to the blissful days of Preparation H. That was good. I remember its greasy, aromatic, fish-oil smell with pleasure.

But this was when I got an early lesson in how to live in China. And that is – if you see something on the shelves you really like or need, buy as much of it as there is, or as you can afford. Because sure as shit it’s like to be gone the next time you look for it. So it was when I went back to the Watsons, the shelf empty, a promised land no longer. Worse, far worse than being stood up on a hot date. More annoying even than arranging a hot date and finding (this has happened) I have actually invited a bloke, not a woman – and what a boring type he was. That’s a tale for another time.

Faced with the empty shelf – double, tripled checked and other areas of the store searched – I asked an assistant for help. I’m not really the type to be embarrassed by this sort of stuff (I think I already told the tale of taking Mona on a shopping expedition for extra-big condoms – to use with a new Western lover of hers, after our relationship had become just platonic), but the assistant was somewhat ill at ease, uncomfortable, red-faced as he told me “We will have more in soon.”

That was bullshit, of course. I went back several times over the next couple of weeks. Never any H. Always the empty shelf… always the embarrassed assistant. 

A week or two more of the pain, and sitting on my chair wriggling my butt cheeks as tight together as possible, thus to squeeze the throbbing pile back inwards, was enough; I headed to a hospital, the one just near Huaihai Lu and Shaanxi Nan Lu. And since I spoke no Chinese at that time I had to rely on my then-girlfriend to come with me to assist me in finding the right doctor.

We did this easy enough and the doc took a look at my arse, sucked in his breath, shook his head, tutted, the medical equivalent of kicking my tires, and suggested I book an operation. ‘You’ll need a few days off afterwards’ he said, which, with the May holiday week upcoming, was easy enough to arrange. Then he wrote out a prescription for a several-day course of laxatives. Gotta clear out the arse, see.

Only, it did not work – first dose – no effect. Second, third – not a thing. I drank down the whole prescription. Zip. Went back to the pharmacy, got more. Perfectly useless. 

Operation day comes round. I go back to the same area I’d met the arse doctor before. He greets me, and gives me a gown to put on. I do so, and look about me for the way to the operating room.

No operating room. The doc indicates a raised, tiled slab, right there in the public area, surrounded by a low wall. I lie on it while he injects my arse with anesthetic. Gives it a few moments to work, then dives right in. Gets his assistant – a young woman – to hold open my arse while he, with a scalpel, cuts out a bunch of the piles therein. It is a pretty uncomfortable operation, and gets more uncomfortable as it goes on – and it seems a lengthy process, 10 or 15 minutes. I feel a rising sense of sickness and weakness, and put it down to all the blood I feel I must be losing out of my arse, though I doubt it was really that much.

And all this while my girlfriend is standing there watching, and random patients walking by take a peek, me on my side, my arsehole wide open to the world. And I can feel that damn scalpel scratching around inside me. As this is going on I think of my brother.

See, piles runs in the ChinaBounder family. The ol’ man, the brother. Brother had his fixed a year or two prior, and for his operation they just stuck some sorta’ probe up his arse which put elastic bands round the piles – they then shrivel and fall off over a few weeks. Quick, easy, painless. So I gotta say I did rather curse ‘Bloody second rate Chinese hospitals with their old fashioned outdated equipment.’ But that was unfair, as the doc was doing his best.

The doc announces he is done. Gives my arse a clean up and prepares to swathe it in lint. But not so fast doc – for now, after a week of laxatives, now I need to take a shit. I get to my feet, find myself weak, and have to rely on my girlfriend (how remarkably patient she was with me!) to escort me to the toilet – which is, of course, the typical Chinese squat toilet. But I barely have time to think off a curse before I crouch and let fly a simply phenomenal amount of turd. It feels pretty good, I gotta say.

Of course this being a Chinese toilet, no matter in a hospital, there is no paper. So I have to stagger back to the poor ol’ doc, all besmeared in shit, and collapse back onto the table, where he tuts and gets going with the swab. 

And then he writes out one more prescription, gives it to my girl, and, while she goes off to the pharmacy to get it, I sit wan and weak in a chair – sit carefully – and think myself moderately heroic. Thence to a taxi and home. Arse seems good. I sleep.

I wake. Arse on fire. Arse agony. Oh to bring back the piles, trade them for this pain. True, the body has no memory of pain, and I do not now remember the pain itself – rather just the awareness of it. Remember from time to time pounding my fist on the mattress for the pain – and one time thumping my girlfriend really hard, waking to pain out of a doze and not knowing she was lying beside me. She was cool about it. Shame I ended up really hurting her a year or so later.

That final prescription the doc gave her was for arse healing medicine – traditional Chinese arse healing medicine. It was a bunch of bits of bark and twig which I was meant to steep in hot water, let cool, and dip my arse in for half an hour a day. I did so. Zero effect, as far as I can tell. The pain subsided in three or four days, and I’m pretty certain it would have done so with or without the TCM. But that is the grand con of TCM – it is ‘slow acting’ – which is another way of saying ‘makes no difference to the normal healing process, but if you believe in it, it’ll make you feel better.’

The first post-op dump was sheer agony, of course, even coming several days after the scalpelling (soup diet only up til then) – but things healed up pretty good after that, and soon it was a bliss to be able to walk the streets normally, not waddle like a duck, butt cheeks clenched together. 

So all in all I was pretty pleased with my first experience of Chinese healthcare. And the bill for it – around 2000 yuan – seemed a fair price too. They did try on a little con, wanting me to pay 6000 – cos I was a foreigner, you see – but my girl would have none of that and let them know it.

Easy enough.

But without that money, even if I had been really ill, had been dying, I’d have been on my own. There’d have been no healthcare for me. If you’ve got plenty money life in China is pretty good. If you only got a little – or indeed only have the average wage for which so many tens of millions toil – then life is brutish.

Reason Number 48 - Red Medicine

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 93

“China announced the results of its first national survey of mental illness in 2007. This survey found the country had nearly eight million people suffering from schizophrenia, and that 30% of them do not take drugs for the problem, either because it is ‘too troublesome’ or they fear side-effects. Doctors said the number of patients with mental health problems was on the rise.

Additionally, China has at least 26 million sufferers from depression, with many more undiagnosed. Ten percent to 15% of those attempting suicide, and 50% to 70% of all people who commit or attempt suicide, suffer from depression. But 90% of sufferers get no treatment, and most clinically depressed people fear being stigmatized for their illness, because, say doctors, Chinese society simply does not understand depression and tends to blame the individual.

Poverty, not depression, drove a couple in central Hunan Province to suicide in 2007. The husband, 38-year-old Chen Zhengxian, suffered from hepatitis-B and kidney stones, among other ailments, but could not afford medical care. Chen and his wife tied themselves together with a rope and leapt into the River Yangtze, leaving behind a 12-year-old son and Chen’s mother. They had spent their life savings in 2005 on medical treatment for the son, and still owed more than 8,000 yuan from that time. They could not even afford to pay the 60 yuan fee for the family of four that would have given them basic medical insurance.”

I’ve always found Chinese hospitals pretty efficient. They’re not quite as spick and span as a Western hospital – or even a Thai hospital – and their equipment is a bit beat-up and out of date. But of course China is a developing nation and so I do not expect to see parity with Western hospitals. 

I’ve also always found Chinese doctors to be efficient and polite and knowledgeable. And I’ve never had to wait more than a few minutes – half an hour at most – for treatment.

But then, I can pay for it. I have the money, and a few hundred yuan to me is nothing much. Also - I am white, and as I have said many times before, white skin is a badge of privilege in China. Add to that the fact that the doctors are nearly all highly educated and enjoy the chance to practice their English, and there are seldom any problems for me in getting treatment. Plus of course I know a bunch of doctors from my teaching work, so from tooth pain to heart trouble I can pretty much call up a specialist. 

If I was Chinese, of course, and in particular one of the millions of poor in China, it would be a totally different story. I would be one of the hundreds of timid, lost and harassed folk I see wandering about the place every hospital I go to.

But any readers wandering by know that, and I know that, so no tub-thumping. Instead I shall tell you about my first trip to a Chinese hospital – tomorrow.

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 94

“Other dangers abound. In 2004, State media announced that 390,000 people had died prematurely from unsafe injections, without giving a time-frame. Three hundred and ninety thousand people. 

Thirty percent of immune injections and 50% of therapeutic injections were unsafe, said the report, adding that in China’s poor western rural areas, more than 70% of ‘disposable’ syringes intended for single use were in fact reused without effective disinfection measures. 

Though disposable syringes cost just 1 US cent more than a reusable needle, they are seldom used. While China has the manufacturing capacity to make 1.7 billion disposable needles a year, sales are stuck at only 100 million a year.

Another 200,000 people die a year just using drugs improperly.” 

Reason Number 47 - Micro-Faults

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 91

“More than any other country, China seems to be able to produce dozens of problems, unnecessarily created by inattention, greed and a lack of care, problems that perhaps would overwhelm other smaller countries. In this chapter we look at just ten such problems.

Official Fortune 

In 2007, nearly 60 years after ‘New China’ was founded, theoretically ending feudalism and superstition, more than half of government officials still believed in ‘reading faces and stars, predicting dreams and ‘qiu qian’ – casting lots at a temple to tell their fortune.’

Superstition may be more understandable among less well-educated communities. Many rural farmers, for example, are often reluctant to pay into heath care plans because they believe that since they have to be sick to see any benefit from their investment, they are inviting bad luck.

When leaders are guided by superstition – such as the official who moved his ancestral family tombs thousands of miles to the foot of the famed and spiritually positive Tianshan Mountain in northwestern Xinjiang Province to boost his career prospects – then China’s prospects of becoming a well-run and developed country may be questioned.”

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 92

“The Lovers of Rumor

In a nation like China where the news is directly controlled by the government, people have learned not to place much trust in the media. They rely on word of mouth and gossip, and due to the prevalence of mobile phones with text messaging and the internet with email sometimes a groundswell of dubious or fallacious information is created.

One such rumor that did the rounds in 2007 was ‘SARS in bananas.’ In early 2007 a mobile-phone SMS message spread across China saying that bananas in the nation’s southern island of Hainan had been found to contain a virus similar to SARS. Zhang Xingwang, deputy director of China’s Ministry of Agriculture’s market department, said ‘It is utterly a rumor. There has not been a case in the world in which humans have contracted a plant virus, and there is not any scientific evidence.’

But this had no effect. Prices for the fruit immediately plunged as credulous customers shunned it. Chinese media described a Hainan farmer, a woman surnamed Zhang, as saying that in 2006 she got two yuan (25 US cents) per kilogram for her bananas. But after the SARS rumor, the price plunged to 0.2 yuan per kilo. 

In a country where few people believe the official news, such rumors become part of life. But the ‘SARS in bananas’ rumor was particularly effective since the government had created a climate of fear surrounding the disease by covering it up in 2003.”

Reason Number 46 - Meet the New ‘Ugly American’

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 89

“China implicitly links its history with that of Africa, suggesting the two countries share a common experience. According to Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, China ‘stood firmly with the African people and provided them with moral support and material assistance in their strenuous struggle to overthrow colonial rule and gain national liberation.’

In explaining China’s policies towards Africa, the state-controlled Xinhua news agency said that ‘Sharing similar historical experience, China and Africa have all along sympathized with and supported each other in the struggle for national liberation and forged a profound friendship.’

It is our view that the above comments are profound nonsense. The experience of China, for fewer than one hundred years subjugated to the economic whims of Western and Eastern colonial powers, simply cannot be compared to the centuries that Africa, as an entire continent, suffered of slavery, one of the gravest sins committed in world history, exploitation by white colonialists, and the continuation today of a lack of positive investment from developed countries. China’s suggestion that its own history mirrors that of Africa is every bit as offensive as its claim that the Nanjing Massacre was equivalent to the Holocaust.”

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you

Till China and Africa meet

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street

But what would Wystie have said if he saw what really happened when China and Africa met?

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 90

“The truth of the matter is that China’s behavior in Africa is greedy, rapacious and cruel. Under a mantle of ‘mutual benefit’ China is exploiting Africa at a colossal rate, buying up vast amounts of mineral resources from the continent and offering little but window-dressing such as stadiums, bridges and other infrastructure in return.

Far from wanting to help Africa, the record shows that China has explicitly hurt the continent, by using its membership of the UN Security Council to veto action aimed at stopping genocide in Sudan. Though in 2007, under international pressure and the threat of an Olympic boycott, China began to make limited moves to allow international action in the country, it is clear that China is perfectly willing to tolerate any level of abuse in its quest for resources. And not only did China veto UN action in Sudan – it also sold the Sudanese government weapons with which it committed crimes against humanity. 

China is very quick to downplay suffering in other countries, claiming the death toll in Sudan (around 200,000) was greatly exaggerated. Yet when anyone has the temerity to suggest that the China’s figure of 300,000 victims in the Nanjing massacre is exaggerated (for example pointing out that many estimates place the death toll between 150,000 and 300,000) Beijing reacts with apoplectic fury.

For China, Africa is just a continent to be exploited – a source of raw materials and a destination for goods produced so cheaply that they drive African firms out of business. While China is happy to build extensive infrastructure which will let it more efficiently plunder the continent, purely altruistic investment, such as in schools and hospitals, is almost unheard of.”

Reason Number 45 - The Generals Theory

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 87

“The governments of developed nations have a clear divide between military and political power. Military control most usually remains beholden to leaders directly chosen by the people. This is not the case in China, where a number of senior military leaders are members of the government. 

Generals are asked by non-military CPC leaders to demonstrate the PLA’s loyalty to the Party at every opportunity. Giving a speech to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the PLA, President Hu Jintao said ‘To follow the CPC’s command is the overriding political requirement that the Party and Chinese people have placed on the PLA and is the unshakable and fundamental principle for the PLA.’

The Party’s increased stress on the loyalty of the PLA rose to a noticeable crescendo in 2007. Why? Perhaps it is because the Party feels losing its grip on the PLA would lessen its ability to control the people.”

It’s certainly true that the PLA is a threat to China. If the CPC is seen to lose the confidence of the people, then the army will simply take over. China will turn into a military dictatorship overnight.

But the PLA is a tool of brute might, not of sophistication. Indeed, China’s armed forces are often rather clumsy and inept.

Now a few of my Chinese readers might recall a little before the Olympics that there was a big ‘terrorist’ incident in Kashgar. This was a most convenient event for Beijing, for they took it as legitimacy to justify their ongoing crackdown on the Uighurs. Naturally, its very convenience raised suspicions in those with some experience of China – or, indeed, thug governments throughout recent history; say for example Gliwice, Poland, in August 1939 – or, better still, the Mukden Incident.  

The New York Times is reporting the testimony of tourists in Kashgar who were eyewitnesses to this event. Xinhua and the slavish Chinese press all reported that ‘terrorists’ had attacked an army base, detonated a bomb, killed many brave and true and blah blah blah Chinese heroes.

Not so, say these tourists; they say they saw a group of Chinese paramilitaries and a group of uniformed Chinese men attacking each other, and that there was no explosion. You can read it here, though you'll need to sign up for a login to do so. 

Sure, the Western press does get it wrong from time to time – as, for example, in certain aspects of their coverage of the pre-Olympic rioting in Tibet. But when they were shown to be wrong, they apologized. I don’t recall Xinhua ever doing that. So before the few people still bothering to read this blog have a pop at the New York Times, I would ask them to consider how many times and to what level of seriousness the NYT has been caught lying – and then compare that with the record of the CPC.

I have no problem in believing the NYT. It makes perfect sense to me that the CPC would make good use of a lesson from the Japanese Imperial Armies of the Second World War – the CPC has, after all, always been a good student of the Japanese invaders, using their cruelty to harm China even more than the Japanese themselves.

But underneath the minatory thuggishness of China’s leaders, glad to seize a chance to play on race hate and make the Han fear the Uighur even more, lies a simple fact – China’s armed forces are often ill-behaved and amateurish. 

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 88

“The Party’s traditional use of the army to maintain its lock on power has resulted in high-ranking generals now permeating every sector of Chinese political life. In previous outbreaks of social unrest in China – most notably the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 – the Party was able to rely on the loyalty of the PLA to comply in murdering the innocent citizens of China. A military takeover at that time was simply unthinkable. But today things are very different. Today’s political leaders have only managed to acquire the passive and acquiescent support of the people, not the active worship that Deng and Mao enjoyed – however dogmatic that worship was. China’s current leaders inspire no affection and no loyalty, either among the soldiers of the PLA or the ordinary people of China.

Should China experience profound social turmoil in the coming years – unavoidable in the opinion of the authors – then something very different will happen. There will be bland, anodyne press announcements that the current crop of political leaders is stepping down or has been removed from power. Those leaders without military connections will disappear, silently, quickly, to be replaced by a military junta.

The Party knows this and fears this, hence all the demanding rhetoric about PLA loyalty. This, in the end, will count for nothing against the personal charisma of one single man, regardless of the vaunted Chinese theory of rule by consensus. This man, this Chinese Napoleon, is today just one more PLA general. But a time is coming when not just China, but the whole world, will know his name.

There are 167 generals in the PLA today. Choose one.”