"Sick" doesn't mean "cool"

Trying to find information about China's health care system (without a VPN, at least), is confirmation of how much media the Communists control over here.  I had several issues accessing a South China Morning Post article online entitled "Patient ratio too high, say doctors".  After five tries, all I'd managed to see was that Hong Kong has one of the highest doctor-patient ratios in the developed world.  Then the site would boot me off.

I did find a website (www.gulfmed.com) that stated these doctor-patient ratios:

1: 950                    China

1: 390                    U.S.

1: 170                    Cuba

Yes, Cuba--that home of the Bay of Pigs and Castro--has the lowest doctor-patient ratio in the world, according to socialmedicine.org and bigthink.org.

If you've seen Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko", you already know about Cuba, so I won't go into details.

And according to asianresearch.org and the World Health Organization (WHO), China ranks lower than Iraq for medical care.

I had a small class of four students the other day, one of whom is a doctor.  When the doctor said he sees 200 patients a day, I guffawed.  Surely he was joking.  But his normally jolly face was serious, and the other three students confirmed it.  There are a handful of articles online that confirm 100-200 patients per day being the norm in China.  When I told my mother this, she did some quick calculations.  "That's like 2 or 3 minutes per patient."  And we complain in the U.S. if we see the doc for 15!  Of course, I still think 15 isn't enough time, especially if you have some serious issue(s) to discuss, but after speaking to my students, 15 minutes seems positively luxurious.

A friend of mine who recently had knee surgery here confirmed this also.  Her first diagnosis came from a harried Chinese doctor who told her in under five minutes that she would need surgery--with just a glance at her x-ray and a tap or two of her knee.  When friends urged her to get a second opinion, she did--at the expensive foreigner hospital, paying triple the price.  Interestingly, the diagnosis was the same:  "You need surgery"--but the doctor--a Chinese woman--took about 10 minutes with a model knee to show my friend exactly what the issue was.  Eight extra minutes for peace of mind, but you must pay triple for those 8 minutes.  That's how serious--and expensive--the situation is here.  My friend teaches at an international school, and had purchased her own private medical insurance to cover the surgery.

Next month our healthcare over here is changing.  Rather than one option, EF English First (the company I work for) is now offering three:  a low-priced, a mid-priced, and a premium.  One of my co-workers, an American with stomach issues, has already chosen the premium.  With the regular low-priced insurance, it had taken him weeks to straighten out a claim the last time he went to a doctor--sometimes relying on our Chinese co-workers in the office to interpret over the phone.  Because his stomach problems are chronic, this man isn't taking any chances.

I'm debating:  it's a draw between the mid-priced and the premium for me.  On the one hand, I've only been to the doctor once in the 18 months I've been here, at the expensive foreigner hospital.  Then, when I had the flu last winter, my boss at the time generously allowed me to stay home and rest until I was well.  My current boss has different policies.  That is to say, he has no bedside manner and no sympathy.  A co-worker, recently diagnosed with Celiac disease, was told by our current boss that she had to stay at work when she was painfully ill.  When he wasn't looking, another co-worker sent her home and took over her class.

The Celiac co-worker has a friend who was recently involved in an accident.  She was sandwiched between a taxi and a scooter.  Foreign employees of EF currently have emergency insurance for just this kind of thing. 

Due to the Chinese system, however, this poor woman was required to straighten everything out with the police and the insurance companies BEFORE she received surgery to fix her broken arm--two and a half weeks later.  AND no pain meds, either.  Knowing China, and knowing my tolerance for crap like this, my response would've been "Who do I have to bribe around here to get some morphine?  Huh?"  In China, bribery often works.  No matter how often people say it's against the law, the majority of people do it, and few people get caught.  I could see myself saying, "Come on, I'll give you 100 RMB for a Tylenol, just give me something!"  Now that I'm counting down the last six months of my contract, I could just see myself having some kind of accident if I choose the low-price insurance.

My friend with the knee surgery and the young woman who'd been in the accident are both foreigners, with medical insurance.  I'm not sure what the insurance situation is for Joe Q. Shanghai Resident, but I'm guessing it's worse--a lot worse.  Without the status of being a foreigner, and without the money that often comes with it, the average Chinese person probably waits hours to see a doctor, who makes a one-minute diagnosis before sending him or her on their way.

I know the healthcare scenario in my own country is kind of a mess these days, but it seems like heaven in comparison.

The Grinch

This post is rather religious.  I've tried not to be preachy, but if you'd like to avoid this topic, I'll understand.

"We have Christmas in China now," one of my students said several months ago, tossing her long, silky black hair over a shoulder.

"Do you believe in Christ?"  I asked, curious.

Silence.  She looked caught off guard, uncomfortable.  Then:  "Well...no..."  She trailed off.

Then, just a week ago, my students were working on their "bucket lists".  When I told them to imagine they had a month to live (and would die December 14th), one of my older students exclaimed, "But that's right before Christmas!"

I remember laughing.  "But you're Chinese!"  I said.  "Why do you care?"

He looked crushed.

I felt like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings--Christmas is mine!  My own!  My prrrecioussss!  It wasn't the Christmas spirit at all, but I couldn't help it:  It seemed to me as if my students were acting excited about Christmas because Westerns were doing it--plain and simple.  Like wearing Levis or drinking Starbucks.  But there didn't seem to be an understanding that the very word referred to Christ, to Christianity.

When my family lived in China in the late 80s, there was no church for us to attend.  Qinghai Province was a hardscrabble place, where survival was good enough.  Any Muslim or Buddhist pilgrims bowing their way across the desert were kind of laughed at out there. 

There are Catholics in Shanghai, believe it or not, openly worshipping the Virgin Mary and saying the "Our Father".  But China’s government is officially atheist—Communist Party members are forbidden from belonging to a religion.  So of course, Catholic priests must be approved by the government in Beijing (Wikipedia, that source of all knowledge, says:  “All worship must legally be conducted through state-approved churches belonging to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which does not accept the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.”).  In the past, those who disagreed “were subject to oppression, including long imprisonments as in the case of Cardinal Kung, and torture and martyrdom as in the case of Fr. Beda Chang, S.J." (again, Wikipedia).  According to the Pew Research Center, only about 5% of Chinese people declare themselves Christian.  China never ceases to amaze me with its ability to say one thing and do another:  A non-Christian country that has imprisoned Christians for spreading the Word now has citizens that want to celebrate Christmas! 

Just because they put up some decor doesn't mean anything, I've grumbled inwardly, more than once.  But isn't that what happens in America?  Can you honestly tell me that ALL of those light-hanging American present-slingers think about WHY?

"There's wealth associated with Christmas," one of my ex-pat friends said. 

She had a point.  Thanksgiving weekend sees a whopping $50 billion in retail sales, according to the National Retail Federation--that's 20% of total annual sales—possibly more. 

"It's a sign of status to spend and to do what foreigners do," my friend continued.  She'd lived in Shanghai a bit longer than I had, so her information was usually good.  "That's what they care about.  It has nothing to do with beliefs."  I agreed that she was probably right, but I still felt like a child unwilling to share her favorite toy.  Here in Shanghai, I find myself ungenerous with my own religion. 

I also find myself unable to attend church most of the time.  Teaching working adults means that I work Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings.  My days off are Monday and Tuesday, and most of the time I am running errands--or hiding in my apartment, away from 23 million people, watching Netflix.  I don't make the effort to ride two subways over an hour away to go to a quiet weekday mass.  I've probably attended church three times here since I arrived in July of 2013.

My unintentional Scrooginess with my students has forced me to take a good hard look at myself and my beliefs.  Whether Chinese people believe in Christ or not is not really for me to judge, is it?  Will Christmas lose its meaning for me just because millions of people blindly celebrate Christmas?  Sometimes I'm afraid it will.  Then...the problem here is with my own faith--not with what other people do.

It would be so much easier to stay angry at my students, and to even blame them somehow, no matter how irrational that sounds.

However, rather than making an opportunity to invite Chinese people to discuss Christmas, to learn about what it means, I've been shutting them down.  I've been shutting the door.

Is that what a good Christian does?

I keep coming back to Matthew 7:5.  I'm worrying about the behavior of others--judging it--when I should deal with my own shortcomings.

Americans consider blowing half a year's savings on Christmas a sign of status, too.  We want that perfect Disney-Hallmark-Christian Christmas, when everyone in the family gets along, the meal is perfect, and the gifts are unforgettable.  We make ourselves crazy trying to make this happen.  "Keep the Christ in Christmas" seems like clichéd advice from a bingo-playing granny, but Granny has a point.  What's more important to me, to us:  missing family to work overtime so we can buy the latest gadgets and the hottest fashions?  Or having a smaller, less expensive holiday, but one in which we can actually spend time with loved ones?

The meaningful thing, the good thing, is usually not the flashiest.  A good Christmas is usually not the one we see on TV--we see the extravagant Christmas, the perfect Christmas.  And we all want that.  But is it real?

But some of my best Christmas thoughts aren't about gifts at all. 

When I was a child, my mom used to put a little nightlight in the bathroom for us at Christmas time, or in our bedrooms when we were sick.  The nightlight was a little ceramic house, maybe five inches square, painted like brown brick, its roof draped with snow the way a gingerbread house is coated with frosting.  A single small light bulb glowed from the house's tiny windows, shining through the holes ("ornaments") on the little tree outside the house.  So warm and so cozy!  How many nights did I fall asleep looking at it?

I also used to love to watch the tree.  My dad put the lights on a timer, and sometimes if I couldn't sleep I'd sneak out to the couch and stare at the tree while the lights were still on--the bubble lights gurgling, the silver horses dangling on their red cords, Mom's reindeer hanging from the prickly pine branches.  The little portraits my sister and I had made in preschool hanging near the top of the tree.  I have felt more peace looking at a Christmas tree--alone in the cozy darkness of my house--than I have almost anywhere else.

It occurs to me that both of these thoughts are about light, and how Christians are supposed to be the light of the world.

I am human and I have messed up.  I've been stingy when perhaps I can find a way to share.

I will try my best to change that this Christmas.

Postscript:  During a Current Events class about the American tradition of Thanksgiving, one of my students wanted to know the difference between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I had to smile, because her confusion was understandable:  due to marketing and the media, everything between Halloween and Valentine's Day probably seems one big candy and gift fest.

Carefully, I told them that Christians believe Christmas is the day Christ was born.  Most of them nodded.  They've heard of Christ, and they seem to know the basics.  Some of them did seem to know that decoration and presents are just for show a lot of the time--no matter the holiday, no matter the country.

I'll admit when I saw IHOP's holiday pancakes commercial (online) right after Halloween, I felt a wave of nostalgia and homesickness.  People in the marketing business know exactly what they're doing, and we fall for it every time. 

Without trying to sound preachy, I told my students that the commercialism bothers me.  It does hurt me sometimes--here and at home--when people put up a tree or buy presents without thinking about why.  It's exactly like having a birthday party and not even speaking to the guest of honor--we wouldn't do that to a human person--why are we doing it to Jesus?

Christmas is in the heart, not in the other stuff.

A question of physics: How a city moves

It ain't rocket science; rather, simple physics:  two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  Physicists would agree--check out Einstein or Pauli. 

But the laws of physics do not apply in Shanghai, arguably the largest city in the world.  Countless experiences with subways and elevators have taught me (and many other ex-pats) that Shanghainese do not believe in physics.

Let me elucidate.  Imagine it's the tail end of the morning rush, and you are on subway line 10, heading south to East Nanjing Road.  As the subway pulls in, you see people in single file lines, five deep, on either side of the sliding doors.  Ah, queues!  To most Westerners, an orderly line is probably one of the highest benchmarks of what we consider developed civilization.  And for two seconds after the doors open, the illusion holds.  Your right foot crosses the gap between subway car and station platform, but before it makes contact, you are suddenly pummeled backward, carried by the oncoming rush of 5'2" Asians, their families, their suitcases, backpacks, and trolleys.  But...but...what happened to the queues?  you wonder, fighting (as politely as you can at first) to get out at your stop.  The queues had scattered into chaos, like a platoon in the face of an enemy grenade.  Because, you see, this is China.  People don't do lines here.  When the train arrives, it's every person for themselves.

This is understandable if you look at the history of this nation.  Not even 50 years ago people queued up for rice, or whatever was on their ration ticket, or queued up for the train.  But tickets guaranteed you nothing, and neither did waiting in line.  It was always first come, first served.  You wanna eat today?  Push to the front.

I saw the train phenomena for myself in late 1980s Qinghai.  As foreigners, my family paid double or triple what a local would pay and secured a soft sleeper cabin--four bunks for the four of us.  We were lucky.  Our expensive tickets and foreigness seemed to let us escape some of the pandemonium.  For the Chinese, a ticket with a seat didn't mean the 30 people cutting in front of you respected that at all.  People pushed each other in through open windows, forgoing the line at the door once 50 bodies mashed together trying to get in.

To be fair, my mom lived in Florence, Italy for a year in the late 60s and said the Italians were just as bad.  So I'm not saying the aversion to lining up is strictly a Chinese thing.  But it does happen to be true for the 23 million Chinese people I move with every day.

The same anti-physics illogic applies to elevators and escalators as well.  With escalators, I'd always taken it for granted that people walk on the left, ride on the right.  And there are a few places where people follow this seemingly obvious logic.  But mostly people rush and shove to get on the escalator, and then they all stand there sedately until it reaches the top.  What was all the rushing for?  I always wonder, if you're just going to stand there?  The Chinese logic appears to be this:  Why take one minute going a flight of stairs when you can wait five minutes for the elevator to descend from the 26th floor to the first and then take it one floor up?  Why wait for people to exit, kindly leaving you ample space, when you can elbow, squeeze, shuffle, or cigarette burn your way in NOW? 

Well, I can't beat 23 million people!  So I've joined them, to some extent.  I'm not afraid to shove past an elderly couple (I jostle, I don't plow!) in order to exit the subway at my stop, and I've gotten over my friendly "I'm just a foreigner" ways when some granny tries to cut in line at the grocery store.  As a second in line, I've actually put out an arm past the person in front of me to the counter and said "No way!"  I don't care if they don't understand English.  My glittering eyes and body language say it all.  The longer I wait in line, the more protective I am of my place in it.

People in China are extremely kind if they know you.  If they don't, you're just the 20 millionth piece of meat they've pushed past today to get home.

Go go umbrella!

I support Hong Kong.  That’s probably not surprising coming from an American—our love of freedom and all.

 

For those of you not in the know, students and others in HK have been protesting the government on the mainland since late September.  The BBC has been blocked off and on for months.  Chow Yun Fat’s movies have been banned because he supports Hong Kong, too.  Even Kenny G has had to backtrack on his pro-HK stance, in order to keep his mainland fans happy.  Of course, YouTube, Google, and many other websites have been blocked for the entirety of my residency here in Shanghai.  Heck, I need a VPN just to post on this blog!

 

In 1997, when HK was handed back to the Chinese by the Brits, Beijing politicians agreed to a “one country, two systems” idea of government.  This means that HK has a different political system than the mainland does, even though they’re now considered the same country.  Actually, Hong Kong (“Fragrant Harbor”) is now known as “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples’ Republic of China”.  You have to admire the specificity of Communism, you really do.

 

In spite of the fact that HK has been reintegrated for 17 years now, the former British colony still enjoys many privileges that the mainland doesn’t.  For example, internet censorship regulations are different.

 

But after 99 years under the Brits, this isn’t good enough for many in HK.  When the announcement was made that candidates for the 2017 HK Chief Executive election must be screened and approved by Beijing first, all hell broke loose.

 

There has never been a crackdown on people wearing the British or U.S. flag here, though.  While many of my students and most coworkers say wearing the Chinese flag on clothing is illegal, I’ve been unable to see it specifically stated.  (Check out flagspot.net or search “Chinese flag law".)  It’s quite common to see the Union Jack decorating motor bikes, and the Stars and Stripes decorating chests, shoes, and even the seats of one’s trousers.  

  

                                                                                             

 I see Chinese people, possibly hot-blooded Communists loyal to the PRC, people against the right to choose their own leader, proudly draping themselves with that symbol of freedom, Old Glory.  I don’t get it, and I find it kind of disrespectful, actually.

 

But back to my point.

 

I am proud of HK.  I am proud of the U.N. and Amnesty International for supporting them.  I am proud of the protestors:  wearing Guy Fawkes masks, calling the movement Occupy Central With Peace and Love.  They carry umbrellas to defend themselves against tear-gas-toting police and triads (yes, even the Chinese mafia have been called in as enforcers)—hence “The Umbrella Movement”.