First, don’t assume that having an appointment system endows a Chinese hospital with a degree of efficiency. On the contrary, it is designed to empower hospital administration staff with the right to turn you away if you don’t have one. I’m fairly confident in my assessment here because every one of the hundreds of foreign visa hopefuls had been given the same appointment time – 8am.

The smart and the temporally challenged turn up at 6am. Those not blessed with such foresight, be it through naivety or lack of savvy, face the following pantomime:

7:50 Arrive at the hospital and ask reception on which floor we might find the immigration examination department. “Eighth floor”, we’re told.

8:00 Decide to take the stairs to the eighth floor to avoid getting squished in the elevator. With no clear indication that we are in the right place we ask a nurse where we should report to first. “Sixth floor”, she replies. Of course. Naturally. Goes without saying.

8:10 Walk down two flights of stairs and approach a window promisingly signed immigration medical examination. We are curtly told to get ourselves a number. This involves a ‘checking in’ procedure to make sure we have an appointment. It’s difficult to see the desk beyond the wall of people in front of it. There’s some semblance of a line, so we stand in it.

8:50 We get to the front of the queue only to be told that we need to pay our medical examination fees before we can register. And where do we pay? “Fifth floor”, came the impatient response. Obviously. Where else? Wife is henceforth dispatched to track down a cashier while I valiantly try to hold a place in the line.

9:15 Wife returns with the necessary proof of payment and we duly get our ticket. There are about a dozen numbers between us and the relevant counter. We drink water to prepare for the urinalysis.

9:50 Our number’s up and we hand our completed medical forms over for inspection. Deep consternation on the other side of the counter as they try to figure out why a foreign man would need a Chinese check-up to go to a foreign land. They either think I’m a spy or an inspector working for the Aussie government.

10:00 Having scrambled over the first couple of hurdles we’re summoned to enter the examination area where we are handed a couple of flimsy green gowns and a key to a locker in which we should place everything else. Emerging from the changing room was a bit too public for this laowai. In the service of a better tomorrow, I remind myself, and bravely stride forward to take possession of a small plastic cup and a test tube before heading for the men’s room.

10:15 looking as nonchalant as a lone foreigner holding a urine sample possibly can, I hand my test tube to a disinterested nurse who sends us on our way to the next stage of the medical process – the ominous sounding room 4.

10:20 There’s a slight tailback outside room 4 but they’ve got a pretty efficient production line going. Once inside we’re soon undergoing heart rate, blood pressure, weight, height, and eyesight tests. Blood pressure first – 133 over 75. Obviously I need a bit more stress in my life.  Next I’m on the scales, which read 61Kg. Dispelling the notion that gender stereotyping can’t be fun, the nurse scolds my wife for not providing me with sufficient nourishment. They don’t bother with a height measurement, instead asking my wife for a ballpark figure. Eye test instructions were a little lost in translation, but I scrape by. So far, so good; now told to get our asses over to room 5.

10:55 Room 5 is the domain of a doctor who looks old enough to be Mao’s father. He seems to be responsible for testing the range of movement in joints and limbs, as well as noting down any distinguishing features. As instructed, I wiggle my hands and feet for the old fella before impressing him with a yoga-like stretch to the ceiling. Then he asks me to bend over. Say what? I hesitate for a second before reminding myself that he’s about 90 and my wife is in the room. He makes a few notes and we exit the room, relieved.

11:05 The worst is over for me, although my wife still has to go to room 6. It’s strictly girls only in there and I have no news about what went on in that hallowed sanctum. Meanwhile, I’m in a scrum that passes for a line of people waiting to see a man with a stethoscope. Fortunately – there’s at least two dozen onlookers – he doesn’t want to listen to any parts that don’t occasionally get exposed to sunlight. He likes what he hears and sends us next door for a chest x-ray.

11:30 The chest x-ray doctor is in a bad mood but lightens up at the prospect of zapping a laowai with a dose of radiation. Either that or he was laughing at my legs.

11:45 Before midday – and sooner than expected – the whole ordeal is over. We head back to the changing rooms and a nurse informs us that that our urinalyses were in order; so we are free to go and replenish our self-deprived sugar and caffeine levels.

All in all, not my worst China hospital experience.

Those that know the story already will have to forgive the repetition, as I have not been lucky enough to break any bones recently.

In November 2006 I broke my arm while playing table tennis. I decided to undergo the required surgery in Luoyang rather than go home for a less interesting experience. This is my account of the first of four days incarceration in a Chinese hospital.

Day 1

Not unexpectedly, the novelty of foreign flesh to carve up on the operating table and the connections of the Dean pushed my name further up the hospital waiting list than my injuries warranted. There’s absolutely nothing I could do about this other than to refuse treatment altogether; or perhaps that’s just the rationale of a guilty conscience. Either way, they found me a bed almost as quickly as they began charging. Be advised, exchanging informal greetings with a doctor in a Chinese hospital comes with a consultation fee. Even the simplest requests find their way onto the bill, a fact that would have bothered me more if these expenses had not been met by the medical terms of my contract. For the vast majority of people in this country it’s a ‘pay or die’ health care system, and most of them can’t raise the extortionate cost of treatment when ailments are life-threatening. Hospitals are strictly profit making organisations.

My ‘ward’ turned out to be a two-bed holding room for emergency cases that was situated next door to the nurse station. The other occupant, Mr Du, appeared to be in more pieces than a jigsaw. ‘No can du’ would have seemed more appropriate, somehow. During the first two days, before his transfer to another ward, Mr Du was a picture of suffering, especially when his wife was giving him his daily scolding. She would saunter in at about lunchtime and begin a hands-on inspection of her husband’s injuries. Mr Du was audibly distressed but in no condition to demand that his wife give him his trousers back. Thankfully for the unfortunate Du, his nephew was an always present and helpful companion.

Xu Shao Lin, a thoroughly delectable nurse with zero English (or zero inclination to practise), was the first of several to take my blood pressure and temperature, after which she performed a gentle massage above and below the limits of my plaster cast – a sort of rub down from a woman in uniform without the sleaze factor. A promising start, I hear you say. The dream was soon shattered, as I knew it would be, when I made my first visit to the tenth-floor facilities. I held on to the vision of Xu Shao Lin for as long as possible, but we all have to go in the end.

Emptying the bladder was possible with extreme focus and determination. However, if you are anything like me, the prospect of taking a very open dump in cold, damp, unsanitary conditions surrounded by curious onlookers is enough to close the door of even the most relaxed orifice. Inadequate numbers of urinals and only a couple of holes in the floor drove patients and visitors (not that they need much encouragement) to do whatever, wherever. Every receptacle was overflowing with the sludge of a thousand mixed samples. Cleaners periodically soaked up the excess with their mops before using the collected moisture to wipe footprints from the corridor, a most effective way of killing two birds – and possibly a few patients – with one stone.

Thankfully, fortune occasionally favours the desperate. Opposite the hospital was a small hotel that I felt sure could solve my bathroom requirements. With Monica’s help and my insistence, a deal was reached for the use of a room for three hours per day (no visit, no fee) for the duration of my residence in the hospital. The hotel was seedy at best, but room 308 seemed like a vision of paradise compared to the hospital facilities. With the exception of the day I chose to shave, I’d emerge from the room with a satisfied glow in less than one hour, an expression that I’m sure was misinterpreted by the numerous maids eager to see what state I’d left the room in.

The first night was an ordeal of boredom rather than discomfort. Family Du favoured lights-out before nine o’clock and snoring until dawn. He was in bad shape, so I wasn’t about to compromise his need for rest with my need for entertainment. Consequently, I took to wandering the other hospital floors and departments, finding amusement in the faces of the countless patients in the bed-lined corridors. I think I frightened a few of those for whom the existence of foreigners was confirmed for the first time.

Update

Great post from David over at Silk Road International about the China hospital experience.