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My Turn
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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #8 (February 19, 2008), page 6.
One man’s medicine is the same man’s embarrassment
I came back from a business trip in Beijing and all I got was a lousy t-shirt.
Actually, I didn’t bring back any t-shirts. Instead, I came back with a sense of amazement.
Sky-high skyscrapers. Locals dressed in the latest couture. Mercedes-Benz cars parked next to trendy microbreweries.
Even factory workers would drink Starbucks during their coffee breaks.
Okay, a little creative license there, but you see where I’m going with this.
This wasn’t the Beijing I remembered. The last time I visited Beijing, it was 1980. Beijing was so much different. But then again, so was I.
In the summer of 1980 I was 16 years old, and I joined a group of students from all over the country to attend a Chinese language program at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University.
My parents thought this trip would be a good opportunity for me to learn about my roots. They thought this trip would give me a chance to expand my Chinese language skills. They thought I would come back with a greater appreciation of my heritage and the richness of my culture.
I thought it would be a good chance to meet girls. After all, I and every other student who attended the program was fully aware that this program was informally known as "The Love Boat."
Unfortunately, I didn’t really hook up with any girls during the trip. But as a consolation, I did manage to pick up a severe case of food poisoning.
I shared a dorm room with two of my cousins. Seeing as they were both younger than me and had even less experience with the fairer sex, this was not the best environment I could have hoped for. The room had a concrete floor, and each bed was covered completely with mosquito netting. I quickly discovered that the mosquitoes were in abundance, and unless you wanted to donate a pint of blood each night via a hundred mosquito bites, you stayed under the netting.
However, this being the summer, it was also hot and muggy, with nary an air conditioner in sight. Coupled with the fact that the mosquito netting effectively blocked out any breeze from the windows, you soon came to realize that you had inadvertently duplicated the conditions of a Thanksgiving turkey basting in the oven.
Under these sweltering conditions, a cool, tall glass of water would have really hit the spot. Unfortunately, the best we could do was a bracing cup of hot tea, or boiled hot water kept in a large thermos, which contained so much excess grit and minerals that it felt like you were drinking a cup of watery sand.
Toward the end of my journey in China, I came down with food poisoning. High temperature, extreme queasiness, a genuine feeling of hopelessness. No, that’s not what the food poisoning did to me — that’s how I felt when a number of friends helped me make my way to the university’s medical clinic and I looked inside.
I felt like I was on the set of "M*A*S*H."
Still, how bad could it be? I immediately felt more at ease when the doctor told me I just needed some penicillin. However, I soon realized that what might be good for my health might not be so good for my image.
In front of all my friends, including a few girls I was trying to impress, I nonchalantly asked the doctor where I could pick up the penicillin pills.
The doctor replied, "We don’t have penicillin pills."
Figuring he meant a penicillin shot, I bravely rolled up my sleeve and said, "Okay, no problem. I have had lots of shots before."
The doctor, seeming a little perplexed, looked at me and quietly said, "Umm … we don’t give you the shot in your arm."
After a few moments, I grasped the situation and asked, "You don’t mean to tell me you’re going to give me a shot in my …"
When it comes right down to it, buying flowers, writing a romantic poem, seeing a romantic movie … there are a lot of things a young man can do to win a young woman’s heart. Bending over and pulling his pants down in front of his friends for a penicillin shot is not one of them.
Then again, the experience certainly wasn’t a complete loss. I did manage to learn the Chinese words to ask, "Could somebody please cover me up with a blanket?"