At the Hospital

I've been going to the hospital nearly every day for over a week. As I recently discovered that my student, Isabelle's, dad is a chiropractor, I decided to take him up on his offer for some neck treatments. I usually have a pretty stiff neck and sometimes the pain will become very acute on one side so that turning my head becomes a problem. Usually after a week or two the problem just goes away on its own. 

This time I decided to take the matter to Isabelle's dad. During the first examination they took an x-ray that showed some flattened spinal disks. To correct this, I was put into a straight-backed chair, had a noose-like contraption strapped around my head, and then my head was lifted by some mechanical attachment. Those who saw me said my head was visibly crooked. I, for one, had entered into a mediation of sorts and couldn't maneuver myself into coherence anyway. After twenty minutes of head pulling, I got a massage. 

After three days of massages my muscles felt loose and relaxed, but my neck pain had gotten decidedly worse. Isabelle's mom said its because my disks are being reshaped and aren't used to the position. That very well could be, I think, but I'd just like to be able to sleep at night again. 

 

So began the electrical massages and the injections. Although an electric pulse has a surprisingly life-like touch, I continue to feel terribly stiff afterwards. I can't tell if the hormone injections are supposed to work immediately or what. As far as I can tell, an IV hookup is a last resort, but also practically inevitable in Chinese hospitals. There goes three hours every day. 

 

The thing they try that I receive the most relief from is ba gua, the fire cups. This is where they take a bulbous glass, stick a burning cotton ball in it for a second, and then suck it onto your skin, thereby creating a big circular hickie. The darker the color when they pop it off, the more toxins were being released from that area. I leave the hospital peppered with black dots for a few days, but it does release a lot of the built up tension from my neck and shoulders. 

Finally, the last few days it has gotten to the point where we've had to do acupuncture. Since its my nerves I'm pretty sure that are the problem, the threadlike needles really make an impact. I can sense the needle's presence on a very deep level. My shoulder socket, especially, cringes even before they start the antibacterial swab. After the needles go in, they hook up an electrical current and proceed to send charged particles down the needle sticks into those molecules of mine running adjacent to them. To complete the effect, they set a heating lamp over the process. Day after day of this, I sit there and can only hope that somewhere in some deep tissue one little molecule has had enough. I hope he stands up before his compatriots and begins the struggle to straighten things out, put things back where they belong, and get back to living. Please, little Molecule. Your motherland is waiting.

What Goes Around

A rundown of just the last two days.

As previously mentioned, I led a large group of Chinese university students in dancing the Electric Slide and the Funky Chicken. This was all part of a large dance party put on by the International Students' Association. Chinese university dance parties are more similar to a middle school dance in the States than anything put on by, let's say, ASU, except they are even more formal. There were MC's. They had a planned set list of dances to do. Lastly, and certainly the most disconcerting, even the tall, good-looking basketball players everyone oohed and awwed over couldn't do one single dance correctly. I believe that since Chinese students spend their teenage years in a constant panic over their "gao kao" (college entrance exams), they don't get a lot of chances to just let loose. Actually, I don't know if letting loose is something one must learn--seems contradictory--but, at least in the U.S., even a planned activity has an air of spontaneity. Compare, for example, the way a set of moves is learned at a typical school dance in the States. Someone saw it on TV, learned it from someone else, or came up with it on the spot. As they dance, others watch and follow. They then begin to react to one another. I don't know how many times I explained that the Electric Slide is a line dance. It's the same set of actions over and over. "Just watch and learn," I said. "But how do you do it?" they continued to ask, the looks on their faces exuding something akin to panic. In the end, however, it was them who had the last laugh. As I danced the Electric Slide, I observed everyone behind me stumbling over each other, more interested in watching that getting the moves down. #Disappointed. But afterwards, they told me the dances made everyone very "high." So I guess that means success in China.

I hit a Chinese man. In public. To be fair, the young twenty-something nearly knocked me out of my seat. He was drunk. His friend was drunker and sitting behind me. "Come on, let's go!" he shouted, along with another friend. He began to pull the man out of his chair. One strong tug and the chair behind me slammed into mine, pushing me forward onto the table. Without saying a word, I gasped and slapped the drunk man's back. As if not realizing anyone was there, he looked down only to find me giving him the stink eye. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he said in impertinent English. I looked away. After getting his friend up, they walked past me towards the door. With one more look back, the man said, "This is China!"

Today, while walking to a foreign goods grocery store, I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to reply to a text. I don't know why I did this, as it is a pet peeve of mine, and something I constantly complain about in China. Actually, I wasn't right in the middle. I was next to the curb, giving those on my left plenty of room to pass. At one point, an elderly woman walks suspiciously close to my left elbow. I then feel something short on my right. Looking down, I realize the grandma is trying to catch her granddaughter's hand. The pig-tailed girl pauses in her walk, looks up at me (with the same look I gave the young man, I might add), and forcefully nudges me off the curb she's been trying to balance on. She and her grandma pass. I watch the girl get back on her curb, her hand back in grandma's. I guess what goes around comes around.