Bring on the Night

15th July 2007 Yilan

Felt better than yesterday, which may have something to do with my hangover the day before. We went to C’s parents to eat some breakfast and afterwards were on our way to a nun monastery. A cool spot right here in Yilan. As usually the houses and the area surrounding them were beautiful, and I did my best to fill my cameras memory.

It was time for lunch, so we went back to the center of Yilan, where C brother-in-law insisted that he bought us lunch. Great food as always even though I can’t eat much.

It was time to get a taxi and head off to a village 1½ hour away from Yilan. C had the day before prepped me that she and her family would go to some village doctor’s clinic to get their health checked out by this famous doctor guy. Cool enough with me. I told C that I wouldn’t mind going, but if there wasn’t room in the car, I would be just as happy to stay home with the computer. Turns out the taxi could manage all of us. Well, it couldn’t but I was still told it would be no problem. Me being the fattest biggest, I was placed next to the always talking and smoking chauffeur on the only good seat. The rest of C’s family was crammed together in the back. C’s brother-in-law even had to sit on a tiny foldaway chair on the floor. Nothing that can give you a bad conscious like this shit. I’m always getting the best of everything, while the rest of the family has to endure sucky seats and you name it.

I almost had to wrestle the driver to use the safety belt. He insisted that I didn’t need to use it. I, on the other hand, insisted that I wanted to use it. I won, but he sure shook his head a lot and laughed at me afterwards. Stupid laowai. What could go wrong driving a crappy overcrowded mini-van? As usually I don’t care about being laughed at here, as long as I get my way about these things. China is a multitude of traffic accidents waiting to happen. The Chinese do nothing to protect themselves and issuing drivers licenses here is like giving guns to children. The traffic is horrendous. If there is a law, it’s bent to fit the individual, not the public. Safety always comes last and it is like the Chinese drivers have no idea how dangerous a mere 30km/h collision is. I had my share of run-ins with near death moments here. I’m sure Chinese experiensing the same situations doesn’t think they had any. When I finally leave China, I will be happy to know that both I and C is safer trafficwise back in Denmark.

On our way we saw a dove siting in the middle of the road. The driver had plenty of time to avoid it and even make a soft brake for it. There were no other cars in sight, but he decided to keep pace and direction the same. *Clonk* and it was a twitching ball of feathers in the rear mirror. Right after finishing off the peace loving bird, the driver turned to me and said 2 words I for once could make out: “Bu fei – bu fei!” (doesn’t fly – doesn’t fly!). So it was the birds fault entirely. In a bizzare way it was I guess.

I have to admit it: I have started to miss Denmark a bit. Not as a whole, but smaller things like traffic, garbage handling, snorting, spitting, shouting, general noise, doing things slow and backwards, raising children strangely and then of course the classic: a chance for some privacy. For now I’m holding together, but I fear I may have a bigger outbreak in near future than just whining to C all the time.

We drove out of Yilan. The landscape was extremely beautiful and I enjoyed watching it. As usual people stare back at me like I’m from another planet. Maybe I am. Probably I was the first weiguren to be spotted on the tiny dusty roads we drove on. We were no where near anything looking like a city. Lots of corn fields and plenty of farmers watched as we past them. The roads got worse and worse. At first there was paved road, but then we took a left turn and found ourselves on a gravel road. The gravel road was in miserable condition and after a while it got so bumpy, that the driver had to go slower than the speedometer could measure. What had to happen happened. One tire ended up flat and we had to wait while the driver changed it. Crazy situation, but then I tried that too.

Finally we arrived at the village. Business as usual I had to wait at the car with the driver and C’s brother-in-law. Soon C’s father arrived again. He didn’t want to go in the first place, but was talked into going by C and her sisters. He’s s stubborn man, but maybe also a wise one. According to C he has some back issues after an accident where he fell from a chair. He never complains and don’t want to spend money on getting checked out in a hospital. Going to this “Dr. Livingstone character” apparently wasn’t right either, so he turned around when he saw the “clinic”.

We waited at the car a long time. People in the village gathered to see me. Of course they all had excuses about sitting in the shadow, but there was no doubt that they really wanted to do some laowai staring. It wasn’t uncomfortable at all though. I’m getting used to this situation when I stay too long at the same spot. After a while they wanted to ask questions, but I couldn’t help them. C wasn’t there, and all they could learn, was what my brother-in-law and what the annoyingly chatty driver had found out on the road there.

After 1 hour or so, C reappeared down the road and waved me towards her. I walked to her and was asked if I wanted to see the doctor. My curiosity overshadowed my sensibility, so I accepted. We arrived at the “clinic”, which basically was an old house looking like the rest of the ones in the village. There were some motorcycles parked outside the house which indicated that C was right about this guy being famous here. There was a lot of “patients”. The front yard looked more like a scrap yard and at the porch a box with trash was left. Old bottles and medicine containers was thrown in there. This looked nowhere like a professional doctors house.

Inside the waiting room and doctor’s office were one and the same. There were plenty of people hanging around and the watched in awe as the laowai was dragged ahead of them and placed in the chair in front of the doctor. The doc took my hand and started measuring my pulse (or whatever he think he did) with his fingers. He then placed a blood pressure instrument on my arm and started pumping away. First of all, I was pretty shocked at his clinics condition, but also I had a huge audience watching. I hate doctors. Not as persons, but I always get a bit nervous around them at consultation time. What will they discover? This is why I normally had my blood pressure taken both at the doctors but also at home in Denmark, where I feel more relaxed. Every time I’m at the doc, my blood pressure is a bit too high. Not in need of medicine, but I’m kept on the watch list. Then I borrow some home test equipment and check it out at home following a detailed manual, and then the numbers are just fine and very normal.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that my blood pressure level would be high. 10 people staring at me like I’m from another planet. The heat was killing me and some toothless doc from a village in China had to do the tests. He told me my number was 180 over 100-something. Thats pretty high if you don’t know it.

I’ve had a stressful year after C came to Denmark. No need to go into details, but let’s just say that integrating a foreigner is a huge task and puts a lot of strain on worrying types like yours truly. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

This is why I had some dizzy periods during the last year. Actually I felt better and better lately, but still, cautious as I am, I contacted my doctor for a complete check-up before going to China. My blood pressure was better than ever and I was told that I should consider myself healthy. So I did. This also means that the many tests I’ve had is almost making me a freaking pro at measuring it myself. I’ve done it on and off for 1 year so I know how to position the arm and so on. This guy wasn’t. I could easily see that.

First of all, my arm was held way too slant and way below my heart’s height. I was talking during the test. He didn’t warn me when he started and the other “patients” were asking about stuff that I had to tell C to translate “I can’t talk now” before they finally shut up. Didn’t bother the doc though. The blow-up thingy that was positioned on my arm was put over part of my shirt and then there’s all the I-hate-doctoring part. It had to go wrong. I know how it feels to have too high blood pressure. I feel dizzy and my head is pounding. It didn’t at the time. I also know that a blood pressure at 180 would put me in the category on feeling extremely uncomfortable. It didn’t.

The doc took a listen to my heart and told me that I needed medicine. Ok, I was game as long as it was nature medicine. But just because I was curious.

First of all, I was not prepared to take real medicine here in China unless I knew I had too. My trust in the Chinese hospitals and doctors could be placed on a tiny spot. Also I knew that popping some pills here that I couldn’t explain to my own doctor back in Denmark, would be playing hazard with my health. “Oh, yeah, I took some Chinese medicine called long-fong-chung-xi-liang to get my blood pressure down, do you know it?”. Not gonna happen, when I think this doc it a fluke in the first place. How do you take medical advice from a guy who doesn’t even know how to brush his own teeth enough to keep them? The clinic was dirty and the box of injection containers and tools in the front yard didn’t make me feel comfortable with his skills either. Bottom-line I refused to take any medicine that was not “herbish” looking. C tried her best at telling me that it would be half normal medicine and half nature medicine, but I wouldn’t be fooled. She was of course worried about my well-being and did her best to convince me.

The doc couldn’t come up with nature alternatives, so there I was: The cranky weiguren who didn’t believe in Heilongjiang’s finest doctor. I should have refused the visit, but that’s easy to see in hindsight. On the other hand I wanted to please C and I was curious as hell to how such a village doctor practiced medicine.

C walked away from “the clinic” with 400rmb worth of remedy powedered herbs for her lacking energy. At least it was nature medicine (thats what I thought at the time). I hope it helps.

I should say that I’m not narrow-minded about taking medicine to keep healthy and completely open to nature medicine too. There’s just too many of these people back in Denmark and certainly here too, who have no idea what they are doing. They preach different cures and different illnesses. It makes me sceptical at least. They are just riding the new-wave trend. So I’m suspicious and not easily convinced like some other people. Had it been nature medicine, I would have tried it just for the heck of it.

C argues that since many people used him, he has to be good. I argue that many people go to him, because they believe he is good and the alternatives are scarce. People should believe in whatever they want. I, on the other hand, believe in the basic right to have faith in what I want to have faith in. In the end believing in this guy is a matter trust. Either you trust him, or you don’t. Faith can move mountains, but faith can also be your doom. Faith and trust can’t be obtained in 10 minutes and I won’t allow myself to play hazard with my health to please C or her family. Much as I want to. It was a deadlock and if you don’t respect each others opinions it can leave a mess. Fortunately C softened as we drove back home. I guess she could finally see my point, like I could see hers. If I didn’t allow her to have faith, then I wouldn’t have accepted the ridiculous amount of 400rmb for a bag of herbs, would I?

We drove home. The trip seemed longer than when we got there, but at least we didn’t run flat.

We ate at C’s parents and afterwards went to the computer school to call my parents using Skype. It was getting late and it was 9.00pm. We still needed to go to our new public bath and get cleaned up, and head back to catch some sleep. The next day we would be heading to Harbin by bus. At freaking 3.00am! Somehow I was stupid enough to agree to this departure when C proposed it.

At 10.00pm it was finally shut-eye.

Check out a few more pics from this trip here.

Tags: car, china vs denmark, doctor, medicine