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June 18, 2005
Doctors, doctors everywhere!
In America, Saturday is a day for fun. You get up, do a few chorse to get the house cleaned up, then spend the rest of the day playing catch or fishing or tinkering with the car.
Not in China.
Despite plans to be up on time, we both woke late (and Emma had to be got up herself). Since we were all still ill, I was the only one up for breakfast. Leaving Lara to wash and dress the child, I grabbed my breakfast ticket and nearly sprinted for the elevator -- I had twenty minutes to eat and meet Lara and Emma in the first-floor lobby.
Arriving on the first, floor, I took a better look around than I had the night before. The three-story lobby was dominated by a koi pool with a towering waterfall (which, as I would later discover, you could walk behind...very pretty). The koi -- all one hundred or so of them -- darted to and fro in the huge pond, flashing like citrine and polished amber in the water as they chased after any strolling patron who might offer food. I crossed a small footbridge into the coffee shop, and was seated at a small table looking out onto the Pearl River.
The morning was misty, and the mist condensed on the huge plate glass windows of the hotel, rolling down to clear swaths of glass large enough to allow me to observe the activity on the river. Small blue wooden boats topped with white cabins drifted on the current. On each, one or two men used dip nets to clean flotsam from the water. One larger boat made its way upstream, its elegant white superstructure making it look like a crane among kingfishers.
I hit the buffet, not failing to notice the presence (yet again) of baked beans. I still can't think why anyone would want poot-fruits for breakfast...but what do I know? French toast and fresh fruit found their way onto my plate, and as I returned to the table, a waitress arrived with a blessed cup of hot, slightly bitter coffee. I sweetened it and, health implications be damned, creamered it within an inch of its life. It went down like liquid heaven.
I've never craved coffee before like I do on this trip. Weird.
I ate in silence, thinking mostly about how we were going to get well and what had to be done over the next few days. Clearing my plate and draining my cup, I headed to the hotel shops to arrange a small birthday surprise for Lara. Afterward, I headed to the lobby. There, I met Lara and Emma, and along with the rest of the group, we ventured outside.
That mist I mentioned earlier? Strike that out and think of it more as "steam." At 9am, the air was already heavy, wet and warm, a condition that would remain constant through the day, and abate only slightly at night. We crossed the street to the "photo shop" (which is to say a tourist trap featuring two guys with a passport photo camera), and Lara went poking while I waited in line to get Emma's visa photo. I had high hopes of coaxing a smile out of her, but she was as stressed as the rest of us. I got a pleasantly neutral expression and settled for that -- by comparison to her peers, that was positively wonderful.
Lara returned to the front of the store where I waited. The store next door was -- in yet another example of the Western influence -- a 7-11. I haven't seen a 7-11 in my own country in years, but here, 8000 miles away, was that singular 24-hour establishment, doing a booming business in cigarettes, Pringle's potato chips and...whoah! Lime Fanta!
This deserves an explanation. Some years ago during a trip to Cyprus, Lara and I rediscovered Fanta. There, it's not what it is here. In America, fruit sodas are syrupy-sweet and have a chemical taste. In Europe, lemon Fanta is crisp, clean and truly refreshing. We were hooked. So addicted are we to the taste of this stuff that we have actually paid friends vacationing in England to ship cases of the stuff back to us via slow boat. Yum!
China sported no lemon flavored Fanta, but the lime was a close second in taste, and we indulged ourselves with abandon over the next few days, even managing to take a bottle or two on the plane when we left. Packing our cold lime treats, we walked to the entire other end of the island for Emma's physical.
The medical clinic was swarming with doctors, nurses and patients of every age. Rose and Connie (our local guide) hustled us through to the very back, where we crowded into a room walled in pale ceramic tile and lined with stainless steel benches. Two Haier floor units blasted cold air from the corners.
Rose explained slowly and with infiinite patience what we needed to do. First, get the babies weighed and measured. From there, go to either the general medical exam, or to the ENT "specialist." Bouncing Emma to keep her distracted, we lined up.
Roughly 29.5 inches, and 16.4 pounds. At 14 months, if you can believe. This kid was beyond "petite." The nurses were efficient and friendly, and we quickly opted for the short line to the GP next.
The GP was a stern-looking woman, probably in her late forties. In heavily-accented English, she informed us that Emma was sick. Quoting my lovely wife: "Thank you, amazing Kreskin." We had debated earlier about whether to mention Emma's coughing, after learning that any kind of cough stood a chance of delaying our exit from the country.
Emma solved that problem by coughing liberally in the doctor's face. Her daddy's child, I swear.
The doctor quizzed us about the cough. Had it gone on long? No, only a day or so. Had we seen a doctor? Yes, the pediatrician had felt that it wasn't worth worrying about. Well, this doctor felt differently, and admonished us to get an antibiotic, per the prescription she handed us. Leaving the exam room, we exchange glances, knowing that no such overtreatment of a cold, for heaven's sake, was in our child's future.
Waiting in line behind the O'Rourkes at the ENT's room, we cracked jokes and simply enjoyed the cool air. Once Emma was in the examining chair, she was subjected to an eye and ear inspection that could only be described as "cursory," and we were given clearance to leave. Which we did. With all speed.
On the way back to the hotel, we took a slightly different route. The street arrangement of Shamian Island is quite simple, and getting lost is next to impossible. Strolling down a long cross street, we people-watched and took in the sights. Stores and offices are everywhere...nearly every street-level entry is open for business. Another thing that's everywhere is statuary. Statues of kids walking, statues of old men sitting, statutes of women sewing. Every minute aspect of every day life seemed to have been cast in bronze and given a place on Shamians rough, blocky sidewalks.
Something caught Lara's eye. "Sherry's Place! They have free strollers!" Tired of shifting Emma side-to-side, we scurried across the street and into the compact courtyard beyond the sign. A few stalls offered assorted tourist goods and granite engravings. A pleasant young man emerged from under a red awning and asked if he could help us. We told him that we'd like a stroller, please.
He disappeared into the back, and we looked around. Squeaky shoes! We dithered. Black? Yellow? Blue? Strappy or not? By the time the clerk returned, we had settled on three pairs -- fuschia flowers and red mouse-faces for Emma, and a pair of pink-flowered ones for Kyra. A young lady encouraged us to shop for other items, but we declined, opting instead to get Emma transferred to the welcome embrace of the cloth seat and safety belt.
As we headed toward the door, the clerk stopped us. Would I be kind enough, he wondered, to translate something for him? Uuh, sure, but I don't speak Chinese. Oh, wait...he meant look over something in English and see how it sounded. I agreed, and he presented me with the material.
It was a long paragraph touting an establishment at which the reader could make their own granite engravings. The proprietor promised to teach the craft in mere minutes, after which the customer could chisel out their own special masterpiece. At least, that was the gist of it. It was, in fact, full of nearly every "Engrish" stereotype you can imagine...a veritable masterpiece of mangled syntax and mistranslation.
My inner editor cringed, and I got out the pen. I consulted with Lara. I asked the clerk about what the real idea of this phrase was, or what that word was meant to be getting at -- not an easy procedure, since his English was less-than-stellar. Strike this, add that, and retranslate the other. Ten minutes later, standing sweating in the courtyard, we handed the paper back to the clerk, feeling we had done our bit to improve the standing of his merchant friend and her offering. We exchanged thanks once again, and departed for the hotel and yet another doctor.
The hotel clinic was down a back hallway on the second floor. We knocked, and were admitted by a smiling nurse who asked us ot have a seat. In the examination room, Michael O'Rourke sat attached to a mist-inhaling machine that he proclaimed his "new best friend." Mike had acquired a raging sinus infection, and had spent the last two days in Nanchang in abject misery, so his infatuation with the machine was surely excusable.
The doctor saw me first, and took about three minutes to diagnose sinusitis and bronchitis. I got prescriptions, which the nurse filled at the desk while the doctor examined Lara. He stuck the tongue depressor in her mouth as she "Aaahhed!" at him. "Ugh!" he exclaimed, which told Lara and I both pretty much all we needed to know.
Two American tourists came in to be examined, and spent their waiting time cooing over Emma. Lara and I, meanwhile, got our antibiotics, nasal spray and cough syrup. Our medical errands complete, we returned to room 1128 to medicate ourselves.
On arrival, we deposited Emma on the bed to amuse herself. As I had requested, Lara's roses were waiting on the side table, and were surprise enough to earn me one of those nice "thank you" kisses that I've come to enjoy so much in our years of marriage. After that, though, it was back to medical concerns.
The antibiotics were simple enough -- standard American pills from makers whose names you'd recognize. The other two meds were another story. The "rhinitis spray" reminded me of Flonase, which is to say it burned like acid going up, but cleared us both up a little. The cough syrup is more difficult to peg. Try this. First, wash your dirty underwear in the sink. Put six cups of the resulting water into a pan. Add two cups of Karo syrup, sprinkle liberally with caraway seed an anise, then simmer, reducing to 1/2 cup of thick liquid. Now take it twice a day.
Yech. The Chinese have no illusions about the need to mask the taste of their medicines. In fact, Rose told me (not in so many words, of course) that nastier-tasting medicines were often presumed to be more effective. There's a certain perverse logic there that I sort of admire.
Whether it worked or not, I can't say. The nasal spray cleared us up a lot and reduced the postnasal drip that was causing the cough, so the efficacy of the syrup is unknown. But we both consumed the nasty concotion dutifully, and then ordered from Danny's Bagel for lunch.
Danny's promises American-style food. Comfort food, more or less. Lara ordered chicken fingers and fries, and I ordered mac & cheese and fries. The chicken was serviceable, and the mac & cheese, though made with white cheese, was tasty. The fries were so plentiful (as was the macaroni), that we were required to store the leftovers. Our stores of fries were put in serious jeopardy by Emma, who evidently regarded fried potatoes as manna, and consumed an amount that, for a child of normal weight and size, would be considered unhealthy. We were just happy she was eating well.
We napped -- all three of us -- and at 3pm went down to the second-floor lobby to meet Connie for a trip to the pearl market. We piled into three small cabs, which sped off the island and into the crowded streets of Guanzhou. The streets were a mix of small steel-doored stalls and more traditional retail establishments, the sidewalks universally bustling and the traffic pattern what we had come to think of as China standard. Arriving at the pedestrian mall less than a mile away, we piled out and paid the driver.
The pedestrian mall was a towering mass of lights, signs and logos. Among the more recognizable were the three ubiquitous ambassadors of American commerce and cuisine: McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut. As everywhere, the crowds were thick and constantly in motion. The buildings were a rainbow, most in the three or four story range. We walked quickly through the packed mall, and I am convinced I broke my "don't look like a tourist" rule more thoroughly than ever.
We arrived at the Pearl Market. Connie took us quickly to the center, gave us a brief overview, and set a time to return. She then pointed us at two particular stores, then turned us loose (we later learned that she gets a sales kickback from those stores). Taking a breather, we stopped to look around.
From the center of the mall floor rose a silver, Cubist-style hand cradling a faux pearl as tall as I am. The mall towered around us...six stories of jewelry heaven, or hell, depending on your perspective. The floors seemed to be separated roughly by quality and cost of merchandise, with the first floor featuring the smallest stores and cheapest goods, while upper-floor stores sprawled out over four or five slots and charged prices commensurate with their rent.
At a mid-size store, we picked out a pretty pearl for Lara, and had it put on a modernist silver pendant. I kissed her and wished her a happy birthday, not for the last time that day. We then went browsing. The selection was, in a word, overwhelming. Freshwater pearls, saltwater pearls, geodes as tall as Emma (some as tall as Lara). Carvings, corals and cut gems. Looking around, Lara commented "My grandmother would be in heaven here." I couldn't help but agree.
I dallied at a shop specializing in carved amber, my eye drawn by the solid amber spheres in the window. We had passed the shop twice, and each time I found myself looking at those honey-colored globes. I went inside and asked to see a couple. They were clear and bright, warm in the hand and beautiful.
And not cheap. I negotiated hard, but could not get the clerk down to a price I felt comfortable with. Lara had encouraged me to buy one, but I reluctantly returned the beautiful piece to the clerk and left. It was the only thing so far that I had wanted badly but could not buy.
We returned to the center pavilion and waited to see who else would come by.
And we waited.
And we waited. I was pacing nervously by this point. I had seen Connie going the other way as we walked to the meeting point. Surely she hadn't left us.
I paced a bit more. For the first time since we left home, my nerves were jangling like loose coins in the dryer. My first real trial as a father, I thought, was going to be getting my family out of a place I didn't know, into a street I couldn't name, to hail a taxi to whose driver I couldn't speak, and get us back to a hotel I couldn't point out on a map. Lovely.
I think I actually broke a sweat.
After a time that must surely have been shorter than it seemed, Connie walked up to the center pavilion, all smiles. Apparently, finding cabs was taking longer than expected, and the last group out before us had been large-ish. We smiled, gathered our things gratefully, and followed her into the street. Thankfully, the ride back to the hotel was uneventful, and both Lara and I were too tired to pay much attention to the goings-on outside.
Back at the White Swan, we spent the rest of the evening in our room. We finished our lunch for dinner, sharing again with Emma, and watched the Discovery Channel. By 9pm, Emma was down with a bottle to finish her off, Lara was asleep shortly after and, after a brief session of Lumines on the PSP, I followed.
Posted by brlittle at June 18, 2005 11:09 PM