Chinese stories

I got mono the second year I was in China, and it really sucked. I had fatigue, a high fever every day, a huge sore in the back of my throat that made it very painful to eat, and swollen lymph nodes. At first I went to the university hospital and saw several doctors. Nobody knew what was wrong with me, and the medicine they prescribed wasn’t working. They did blood tests by pricking my ring finger and running it through their little machine (which I found out later was miscalibrated and gave out false readings). The university I was teaching at was very understanding and took me to what is supposedly one of the best hospitals in Beijing – 北京大学附属医院第三医院 (usually called 北医三院, or the Peking University Hospital). This was in 2004, one year after SARS, so all the hospitals had a special reception area for people with high temperatures. This hospital had a separate building set up, and it was the only place I was allowed to go. Everyone had to see the one doctor in the building, and there were different doctors each time I went back, meaning I had to explain myself to the new one each time. They said it was an infection and put me on an IV of some antibiotics (抗生素). Needless to say, it didn’t work. As you may know mononucleosis (传染性单核细胞增多症) takes 4-6 weeks to go away, and your body has to do it on its own – no medicine can cure it. So they put me on the IVs for several weeks. I must have been on 5 or 6 different antibiotics (probably pretty strong ones). There were so many holes on both of my hands it became hard for the nurses to find a place to put the needles. One day I asked the doctor if it could possibly be mono – “no” was the answer. In retrospect I probably should have insisted on a blood test, but at the time I was too tired to argue with the young doctor who was so sure of herself. I barely had the energy to make it to the IV room each day and back. I ended up flying back home, making it past the SARS fever monitors at the airport, and trying not to cough on the plane. The day after I got home we went to the doctors and it took them all of 10 minutes to figure out it was mono.

Since then I’ve found that if you go into a hospital or clinic in China and they don’t know what is wrong with you, they’ll say “输点儿液就好” (We’ll just put you on an IV and it will all be fine). Once I went to a small clinic to check on something, and the doctor gave me that line. We left. We went to see a specialist (which requires waking up early to get a number and waiting all morning), who said I was fine. Who knows how many antibiotics are needlessly pumped into people’s veins by idiot doctors who are trying to make a quick buck?

I couldn’t have made it through that time on my own, and I feel bad that I ended up giving the disease to the person who was by my side helping my every day. sorry! :*

I also know that a lot of the doctors and nurses sacrificed a lot during SARS, and were really heroes for what they did. I remember once leaving the doctors office at the university clinic at a time when a lot of building was going on on campus. As I left I passed a migrant worker holding his bloody, mangled hand that was twisted up in a piece of metal. I’m positive the doctor worked on him right away without asking for anything in exchange. So not all the doctors here are bad, but the bad ones are really bad.   

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I’ve actually been to Erlianhaote 二连浩特 in Inner Mongolia, and was surprised to see it in the news today. It all started one National Day (October 1st in China) back in 2002 when two friends and I decided to take a road trip on the spur of the moment. We ended up in Changping by the Ming Tombs trying to find a bus to Inner Mongolia. An old lady selling water helped us, and we called a bus that was going our way and that would pass by soon. We took it to Jining city 集宁 in Inner Mongolia, then got on a train to Erlian, as they call it, for a short night trip through the desert to the border of Mongolia. There’s really nothing to see there, and I don’t know why we went, but it was still fun. One cool thing about the place is that a lot of the store signs are in Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian. It seemed to be a border town where Russians and Mongolians could stop to buy Chinese things, and where Chinese would come to do business with them. It’s surrounded by desert, and I remember the desert being full of trash for some reason. We took a pedal cab to the border with Mongolia where some guy offered to take us across the border for a quick trip for a price, but we didn’t feel like getting stuck in Mongolia or limbo or worse, so we just hung around until the border guards told us we’d seen enough.

The only train back to Beijing left that night at 1 am, so we had no choice but to get a ticket. It turned out all right, because the whole town can be seen in about a day. The train was interesting, because it was on the trans-siberian route, and our car was stuck on the end. I remember a traveller jumping off the train when it pulled into the station, half asleep, yelling ‘bathroom, bathroom!’ and we just stood there and pointed where to go. Our cabin mates were Chinese who had come to get their trainload of lumber at the Mongolian border.

 (Sogou map)

The reason the city was in the news (NYT, National Geographic, and Nature) is that a giant bird-like dinosaur was excavated from the area back in 2005, and a study of it was just published in Nature. I thought it particularly interesting that its official classification includes the name of Erlian city: Gigantoraptor erlianensis (二连巨盗龙)! Literally it is ‘Erlian giant thief dragon’ in Chinese. I can see where the Giganto, raptor, and erlian come from, but am puzzled about the ensis. In other classifications ensis is the word for ‘razor clam’ (dicitonary),  which doesn’t make much sense, and a latin dictionary entry says ensis means sword, which doesn’t make much sense either.

I don’t know where Sohu got their picture of the bird:  The Nature version looks much more menacing:

Here is a translation of Sohu’s version of the story:

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Here is where the old man sings cryptic songs and kicks the bucket. From 禮記 檀弓上第三.

孔子蚤作，負手曳杖，消搖於門，歌曰：“泰山其頺乎！梁木其壞乎！哲人其萎乎！”既歌而入，當戶而坐。子貢聞之，曰：“泰山其頺，則吾將安仰？梁木其壞，哲人其萎，則吾將安放？夫子殆將病也。”遂趨而入。夫子曰：“賜！爾來何遲也？夏后氏殯於東階之上，則猶在阼也。殷人殯於兩楹之間，則與賓主夾之也。周人殯於西階之上，則猶賓之也。而丘也，殷人也。予疇昔之夜，夢坐奠於兩楹之間。夫明王不興，而天下其孰能宗予？予殆將死也。”蓋寢疾七日而沒。

Confucius rose early one day. With his hands behind him, trailing a cane, he strolled aimlessly outside, singing, “Mount Tai will crumble! The rafters will fail! The philosophers are withering away!” He finished singing, went back inside, and sat facing the door. Zigong had heard all this, and said, “If Mount Tai crumbles, what will be left worth gazing at? If the rafters fail, where can I place the roof? If the philosophers wither away, who will be my role model? The Master must surely fall ill soon.” He quickly went inside. Confucius said, “Zigong! Why are you so late? During the Xia Dynasty coffins were placed in the hall facing the east stairs, which is the place of the host. The people of Yin placed coffins in the hall between two pillars, which is between the places of the host and guest. The people of Zhou put coffins in the hall facing the west stairs, which is the place of the guest. Now, I, Confucius, am a man of Yin. Last night I dreamed I was sitting between two pillars. There are no longer any wise kings in power these days. Who on Earth will treat me with respect, and let me sit in the honored seat between the two pillars? It seems that I will die soon.” He lay gravely ill for about seven days, then died.

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