Good Night, Sweet...

So, a few weeks back, when I had only been in China for about a week, I was scheduled for a medical exam. This is required by the Chinese government ostensibly to ensure that I don’t bring any harmful diseases into China. I’m not really sure why they schedule this exam so long after my arrival in the country, since I (or anyone else traveling to China) could have breathed on as many Chinese people as I wanted to in a week, though I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re more likely to give me a disease than I am to transmit something to them. Anyway, this exam was scheduled for the morning of my day off. The only stipulations concerning the exam were that I be present at the school in time to catch a ride to the hospital and that I not eat anything before the exam.

My days off happen to coincide with the days off of one of the other teachers here. Leo is one of the British teachers who works for English First and probably knows the most Chinese of all of them, even though he hasn’t been here nearly as long as some of the other teachers. I’d been hanging out with him and one of the other American teachers quite a bit, so he knew I might be up for a drink or two the night before my day off. Of course, Leo talked me into going out for a couple of drinks by assuring me that we’d be back at the apartments in an hour or two. Like the big idiot I am, I believed him. This was my first mistake.

So we went to one of the bars that all the English teachers in the city seem to frequent. It’s an Aussie bar that’s actually not too far from the school. Leo and I showed up, and it just so happened that a bunch of his friends from one of the other English companies in Wuxi were there. What a coincidence! It also just happened that two of the other teachers were leaving the next day to go back to the US, but not until later in the afternoon, freeing them up to drink the night before. More than a few pints later, we actually did head back to the apartments. However, Leo insisted that we go out for a few more drinks with the other teachers. Foolishly, I figured that I could always take a taxi back to the apartment whenever I wanted. This was my second mistake.

We met the other teachers at another bar that many of the English First teachers go to often. This bar stays open as long as there are customers there, a feature that can be convenient for customers and quite lucrative for the establishment I would think. Chinese bars definitely have that over most American bars. We ended up playing quarters and a variety of other games. I soon reached that point in the night when you think that if you go back home and try to sleep before you need to be up and ready to go, there’s absolutely no way you’ll actually be up and ready to go. So the only logical thing seemed to be to just go ahead and stay up all night. This was my third mistake.

It would seem that this was not the first night they’ve all done this, as they knew of a breakfast buffet that the Sheraton hotel has at about six in the morning. We headed for that on foot and arrived shortly. I have no idea why they admitted our little pack of loud, drunken foreigners, but they did. I think they have to work under the assumption that we’re guests at the hotel, which would explain why they asked us what room we were staying in. We told them some nonsense and went back to annoying the other guests. I got to watch as everyone shoveled massive amounts of food into their faces. However, because I had been told that I couldn’t eat before my medical exam, I stuck with some yogurt and coffee. I’m not sure why I thought yogurt wouldn’t count as food, but it seemed logical at the time. It was funny to watch the staff seat everyone that came in for breakfast on the other side of the restaurant until they had no choice but to start putting people near us. There were a good ten or eleven of us, so we were putting up quite a racket. The other teachers were doing their best to get me to eat and I was trying to resist. I think the worst thing I heard was, “Dude, it’s a Chinese medical exam. When I took my exam, I just switched my urine test with someone else’s when I was in the bathroom.” I’m not sure they took the exam as seriously as I did.

Eventually, the staff came over and asked us again what our room number was. We made a few guesses, but when they responded with, “The hotel only has six floors so you can’t be staying on the eighth,” or something like that, we decided it would be a good time to leave. Don’t worry, we still paid. So Leo and I took a taxi back to the apartments. At this point, it was about eight in the morning, so it was time for me to get ready to go to the exam. I managed to show up at the school on time with my passport. I took pains to get there exactly at nine, as requested by the English First staff. Now there were two other new employees that were also supposed to be getting their exam. It’s actually a couple. There’s a British guy and an Italian woman. They’re really very nice and I normally have no problem with them whatsoever. However, after a night of drinking and then sitting through an all-you-can-eat breakfast while I couldn’t eat (those of you who know my love of food should be able to guess how heinous this situation actually was), I was not in a good mood. All I really wanted at this point was to crawl into bed. And then wake up and devour approximately a metric ton of food.

Anyway, the couple showed up late. We hopped in the school van and eventually made it to the hospital. After penetrating the usual 532 layers of Chinese bureaucracy (see, China’s really not that much different from the US), we finally made it to the actual examinations. Much like Austin Powers, I was subjected to a confusing battery of tests while I wandered around in a haze of semi-consciousness. I wasn’t sure if they were conducting a human rat-in-the-maze test on me for their amusement, but it certainly felt that way. I didn’t really understand all the tests, either. I was pretty certain that I was going to fail one of them. They kept showing me these pictures where there was some animal represented in one color and there was another color in the background, but it was all really just a big bunch of dots. They told me in broken English that it was supposed to test my ability to distinguish colors. However, my inability to name any of the animals in the pictures due to the fact that I can’t speak Chinese essentially defeated the purpose of the test. I can say “rooster” as many times as I want in English and they can keep pointing to the animal all they want, but until they learn English or I learn the Chinese word for every animal, we’re not going to get anywhere. I don’t know how many pictures we went through until I finally came across a dog, but it took a while. I happen to know the Chinese word for that, so I was released. If I didn’t know that, who knows how long they might have kept me.

Then there were x-rays. If you think I wanted to be subjected to an x-ray from that decrepit-looking machine, you’re crazy. Naturally, there weren’t any lead vests to be seen either. If I can’t have children in the future, I’m not going to have any trouble pinpointing the cause. After the x-rays, it was on to the blood and urine tests. These were fairly easy for me and I figured that if I could accomplish those tasks in my state, anyone could. However, when I returned from the bathroom, I saw the British guy sprawled out on a bench with ice or something on his forehead. I felt like going over and pummeling him, screaming, “LET ME GO HOME!!” In hindsight, this would have been a bad idea because he really is a good guy and this also could have resulted in my being escorted from the building, but the thought was tempting. Although I suppose if they’d escorted me from the building, I wouldn’t have been able to undergo that ultrasound test. Yes, that’s right folks. All people going through the exam, male or female, must undergo an ultrasound exam. I can only guess that they’ve had a problem with pregnant women posing as men before? You’d think there would be an easier way to establish these things before the ultrasound test. Or maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito were involved, who knows?

Anyhow, we eventually completed all the tests, from the absurd to the possibly-damaging-to-my-reproductive-system. I finally got to go home and sleep. The moral of the story? Well, I’m not sure there is one, but if you come to China, I recommend that you not spend the entire preceding night out at bars or the following morning at a breakfast buffet where you can’t enjoy the food and instead endure the taunts of everyone else at the table. Just some friendly advice.