Golfing Through China: Chengdu and a Chinese Hospital

I got into Chengdu in the early evening and headed out to dinner, going to a typical Sichuanese restaurant (really spicy food). I tried to explain to the waitress that I didn't eat meat so that she could help me find dishes I could eat, and she said "OK, so no meat, but then chicken is fine, right?" (many Chinese people don't consider chicken meat). So I told her I couldn't eat chicken, which made her very confused, and then she recommended seafood, which I told her I also couldn't eat. I finally ordered some fish, which came in a bowl surrounded by a bright red sauce and maybe 100 pepper slices. I tried my best to take out all of the peppers with my chopsticks, but my mouth was still numb for about a half an hour after eating that fish.

The next morning I started out at Wenshu Temple, Chengdu's largest Buddhist temple, which also has a monastery attached to it. The temple was really nice, with lots of walkways, artificial lakes, Monks walking around and even teahouses, which are a Chengdu institution. I then walked down to Tianfu Square, a big people-gathering spot which marks the center of Chengdu. From there I walked to Renmin Park, yet another big people-gathering spot, where families and children spend the afternoons walking around, exercising and drinking tea and the teahouses. I read about an alleyway in Chengdu which is filled with Tibetan stores, so I walked there, and there were probably about 50 stores in a row that all sold the typical Tibetan crafts - brass goods, prayer flags, rugs, paintings, beads and traditional clothes. I've really wanted a Tibetan lampshade, ever since I stayed at a Tibetan hostel last year on my trip that had them all over the place, and only one store sold them. I went in and the lady started at 240 kuai, which is pretty expensive for China, and I got her down to 190, but beyond that she wouldn't budge. I stood there for a while and none of the Chinese tourists were aggressively bargaining, and pretty much paying retail, so I left to go to dinner. After dinner, I walked back to the store and started talking to the owner again. She went down to 185 but wouldn't go lower, so I told her I thought she was giving me an artificially high price since I am a Westerner, and that if I were Chinese I would get a lower price. This seemed to work, and I was able to buy the lamp for 170. This extended bargaining only saved me about $3, but it was a big moral victory.

The next morning I woke up at around 7:00 AM to go to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. Pandas are extremely lazy and the only way you can see them awake is if you arrive at around 9:00 AM during feeding (pandas are either eating or sleeping). It was pouring rain, and even though the pandas were supposed to be relatively active they were still mostly asleep. At the base there is a 15-minute movie about Pandas and breeding, which I thought was pretty funny. The movie showed a first-time mother giving birth, and the baby literally flew out of her like a rocket, the mother was so confused and had no clue what this screaming thing was rolling around by her. So the mother started clawing at it and throwing it across the room, until a worker intervened and snatched the baby out of the room. Another really funny thing is that pandas are so fat they can rarely tell if a female panda is pregnant, and sometimes they only know when a baby pops out. Lastly, pandas are so lazy that they will only mate once a year if at all, which is why a lot of the time they have to be artificially inseminated.

Starting that morning, however, my health took a turn for the worse. I started feeling really nauseous and dehydrated and had a huge headache. I returned to my hotel room and felt even worse, as my legs were cramping really badly and I ran up a fever of over 100 degrees. I called International SOS, who referred me to a hospital in Chengdu where they said the doctors spoke English. I went to the emergency room and nobody in the hospital spoke English. I had to continually call SOS to have them act as translators between me and the doctors. There were no private rooms in the ER, just three huge rooms each with maybe about 30 patients. It was not a pretty site, as I had to watch the doctors try to resuscitate a man unsuccessfully, and people get wheeled in with fractured skulls. I tried to just keep my head down and put my hands around my hat so that I had no peripheral vision but when I had to walk someplace else I had to see all of this. Basically the procedure at this hospital was a doctor asks you what's wrong, recommends tests, and then you go to the cashier, pay for all the tests and are given a roll of stickers. You then have to somehow find where you can have each of these tests done, give a sticker to them, then cart your blood or anything else to somewhere else, give them a sticker, then wait for results. Finally, you give a sticker to get your results back and walk your results to any doctor. None of this was explained to me, so I just tried to figure it out as I went along. Whenever I had test results back, I just cornered a doctor, got SOS on the phone and had them explain what it meant to me. It was a pretty chaotic process. My bloodwork was fine, so they thought I got a bacterial infection or food poisoning, so I got some antibiotics, but then a doctor came up to me and said, "I think we will inject you with some medicines." I said, "well, do you know exactly what's wrong with me?" The doctor replied, "no, but injecting the medicines will help." I refused to inject any of these medicines and insisted on returning back to my hotel. Thank God there was nothing more serious wrong with me, otherwise I would have had to fly to Beijing, since there is no way I would have agreed to receive any serious treatment here in Chengdu. I'm also really lucky to have had the International SOS, otherwise there would have been no way to understand anything the doctors were saying to me. This was the first time I have ever gotten this sick abroad, and hopefully it will be my last because getting treated in a hospital like this was not pleasant.