I am rarely ill. As a child, I was constantly plagued by strep throat, falling victim at least four times a year. In a testament to the Western can-do attitude, my doctors ripped my tonsils out and pronounced me cured. Regardless, once a year (usually around Thanksgiving), some illness will inevitably lay me out for a week or two. When I lived in China, this was an especially harrowing event, far removed from the sterility and dependability of American medical care.
In early November, after only a few months living in Hangzhou, I developed crippling pains in my abdomen. I put on my brave face, and headed to the West Lake to do tourist things with Deb, a friend in town visiting for the week. It was the first time since arriving in China that I’d felt sick. Gifted with a cast iron stomach at birth, I’ve never encountered a food that made me ill. No matter how foreign, spicy, or downright rancid, my body continues on along its merry way. This illness tearing its way through my body was new. I’ve always been surprised about how casually the Chinese will chat about gastrointestinal disorders and have absolutely no qualms about discussing someone’s la duzi (diarrhea). As I popped handfuls of Pepto and Immodium, Deb casually mentioned she’d once heard that American digestive medicines were useless in China because of the different bacteria. I groaned. “Thanks Deb, now I’m going to have to rely on Chinese medicine.”
I’ve never trusted Eastern medicine. When I am feeling poorly, my automatic reaction is to reach for the exhaustively researched pharmaceuticals stocking my medicine cabinet. I find comfort and predictability in the extensive list of possible side effects. Nausea? I can take a pill to counteract that. Auditory hallucinations? I don’t mind hearing new things. Explosive gas? I’m always the first to laugh when someone farts in a library. There is no predictability in Eastern medicine. I have never cracked open the musty wooden drawers of an herb chest to brew a thick, black tea. Herbs are meant for the kitchen, to add flavor and kick to your dishes, not to cleanse your system of toxins and disease. My opinion, however, is not always popular.
In class one day, the teacher brought up the debate of Chinese versus Western medicine for the class to kick around. With the exception of Tom (my roommate) and me, the class voiced the opinion that Chinese medicine was far superior to Western medicine, as it had a history of thousands of years and was completely natural. I made the mistake of labeling myself as “a product of the modern world,” more likely to trust science and research than a glass of tea brewed from powdered monkey droppings and dried bee husks. Tom likened Chinese medicine to magic and shamanism, it was all placebo effect: you feel better because you want to; it has nothing to do with efficacy. Jaws dropped. How could we take a stand against Chinese medicine? The Korean girls, who normally tittered demurely at my every joke, sat in stupefied silence.
I have sound reason to distrust Chinese medical care; medical care in China had proven to be spotty. At the beginning of October, when a group of us went bowling, Tom injured his hand and had since been in pain, unable to use chopsticks or hold a pencil. Only after weeks of watching him wince could I convince Tom to go to a hospital and get it checked out. Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, the only medical facility with an English-speaking staff in Hangzhou, prided itself on having above-average medical care and catered to foreigners. When we first arrived, Chinese swarmed the reception area, all clutching their various ailments and clamoring for medical attention. Tom, with his kickboxing glove wrapped tightly around his hand as it had been for the past month, had only to approach reception for them to quickly guide us to the VVIP room. I have yet to figure out what the additional “V” stands for. Presumably, based solely on his natural “white-ness”, Tom immediately saw a doctor, jumped to the front of the X-ray line, and altogether we spent about an hour in the hospital. The diagnosis was unclear and no prescription was given for the pain, but at the very least he found out it wasn’t a fracture. I wonder what the Chinese medical approach would have been. Seriously. Maybe they could have at least brewed a yak butter tea to numb the pain.
When I announced our plans to backpack across Tibet, I received a flurry of anxious emails from family members concerned about altitude sickness on the trip. Tom and I tried to hunt down the medicine suggested by my Aunt Nanny. We had the name of a prescription drug, but no clue as how to describe altitude sickness or any such complicated concept in Chinese. For some reason, important stuff like this is never covered in your Intro Chinese courses (la duzi, oddly enough, appears to be required learning). But we decided we both knew enough to get the pharmacist to understand what we needed. We were sadly mistaken.
After numerous failed attempts to communicate with the pharmacist, we began to get desperate. Using the words for “altitude” and “sickness” together did not seem to be registering with them, nor did our description of what can happen when someone is unprepared and enters an environment of very thin air (this one had a lot of pantomiming, not unlike the apes who learn sign language). Finally, in a desperate yet fantastically misguided attempt, Tom said (and this is the best translation I can give): “My big mountain is sick and needs help.” Wide-eyed, the cashier pointed us out of the shop. Apparently Watson’s didn’t sell sick mountain medicine.
She was actually pointing us towards another pharmacy in the same building, where we once again went through the same routine. Opting to avoid the “Big Sick Mountain” debacle, we started describing our travel plans. This must have greatly confused the pharmacist. “Great, a couple of lao wai are going to Tibet. Who cares?” Something eventually clicked in her mind and beaming, she led us to the front of the shop, pulled a box from behind the counter, and proudly handed it over. We could only read about half of the characters on the box and that always makes me nervous. However, based on the words “Tibet” and “high altitude” we decided that this was better than nothing. But not before Tom asked, “Is this magic?”
Something gnawed at my mind: surely the medication to combat altitude sickness wouldn’t be an over-the-counter pill? When I got home, I took a few moments see if I could get a better sense of what it was. After conquering the over-zealous packaging, a slip of paper written in Tibetan, Chinese, and English wafted to the floor. We had bought Tibetan ginseng grown at high-altitudes. Regardless, we both faithfully popped the pills the entire trip. Maybe it was in fact a placebo effect, or maybe it genuinely worked, but the entire time we were in Tibet neither one of us collapsed gasping for breath and clutching our chest.
With Deb telling me that Western medicine was useless against Chinese food poisoning, I began to grow restless. Would I have to eat crow, both literally and figuratively? Would I have to swallow my pride and walk into a Chinese pharmacy and ask for something to soothe my incredibly painful stomach? But something else gnawed at my mind. Food poisoning was not the only suspect in this crime; there was something darker and far more sinister. And I don’t think Chinese medicine was in any position to help me defeat that foe.
As part of my Halloween costume, I‘d found an old windbreaker that complimented some salvaged 80s aerobics instructor gear perfectly. Owing to its defective main zipper, I managed to haggle the shopkeeper down to $2 for my jacket. I should have asked for far less. When I left the house, both of the pocket zippers were working, safely guarding my valuables. As Halloween night wore on, both zippers lodged firmly shut and denied me access to my wallet and camera. I tried ripping, tried pulling, tried getting two people to work on it at the same time, all to no avail. Finally, in panicked desperation, I caved and began trying to pull the zipper free by only the power of my teeth. The zipper came apart in my mouth and I ended up swallowing no small amount of metal. The next day the abdominal pains began. In my mind it was terribly clear: I was either suffering from food poisoning or the after-effects of cheap metal tearing its way through my gastro-intestinal tract. I could only imagine dragging myself to Sir Run Run Shaw, being whisked into the VVIP room and asked, “Alright, tell me the last thing you ate.”
“Well, noodles … and a zipper.”
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