This Just In: APC Blog

The trip to Beijing has gone swimmingly well so far with one exception. Here’s what happened…

After an exhilarating visit to the Great Wall, my guide convinced me that I had to pay a visit to the Beijing Traditional Chinese Medical Health Preservation Research Center for a “unique” experience.

Located in Beijing’s ChaoYang District, the building looks like any other Western-style office high-rise in Beijing. We take the somewhat smoke-filled and dingy elevator to the 4th floor and enter through a large wooden door to a large and well-lit clinic lobby. Decorated to look more like a spa lobby than a clinic, we were ushered through a maze of narrow corridors to a 10 feet by 6 feet room with a ceiling to floor window on one side and a couch that has seen better days on the other. I was told to sit and wait.

Click here to see the view through the window. Not exactly the most soothing of sights.

In the time that it took for me to snap a couple of shots of the smoke stack and the playground below it, a distinguished, balding older Chinese man in an official looking lab coat (a doctor type right out of central casting) entered the room. Close on his heels were 2 boys who looked like they were fresh out of high school. Each carried a wooden bucket of water. They were followed in by my guide. Turns out the buckets of water were for our feet and we were going to be treated to a little Chinese foot massage.

It wasn’t long before Doctor launches into the underpinnings of Chinese medicine and its 4000-year history. Listening to him blab on in a slightly British-accented English, it occurred to me that I was listening to a verbal reading of a corporate brochure but with less enthusiasm. Although one bit of emotion did come through during the “Western medicine is bad” part of his speech.
After 7 minutes or so, we were joined by 2 women. As the older lady took her place on a stool next to me, Doctor ended his speech. This coincided with the end of the foot soak and the beginning of what was to be the “no pain, no gain” part of the visit.

Before his departure, I did learn that the center was a joint-venture between the government and a quasi-government Chinese pharmaceutical company. Interesting…

In the next phase of this so far benign session, the older lady (we refer to her as Bertha) takes my pulse for 30 seconds, stares at me and then proceeds to tell me in rapid Chinese what was wrong with me. This is what I was able to understand:

- I have weak kidneys
- I had deep cellular damage in my pancreas/liver (not certain which, she vacillated between the two)
- I was hormonally imbalanced as evidenced by the freckles on my face and needed more nutrients to prevent wrinkles and rapid degradation of my skin cells (all you folks out there with freckles — Watch Out!)
- The needed more sleep (could have told her that!) and the lack of sleep plus the cellular damage would lead to insomnia and perhaps CANCER

The cure: about USD$120 worth of herbal medicine

As I was still trying to digest all this, it occurred to me that Bertha bore an uncanny resemblance to my 6th grade math teach Sister Jean who was used to terrify me with her pop quizzes and what she could do to knuckles with a regular plastic ruler. Bertha had the same thin lips set in a perpetual scowl, the same piercing eyes and the same expression of disapproval. But Sister Jean had a kindler side; something that I suspect may be alien to this women sitting next to me with her hand on my wrist pronouncing my medical fate.
The scolding that I was getting almost made me forget the pain that the foot massage was inflicting. (The Chinese believe that certain parts of your foot correspond to certain organs and parts of your body and that pain in a section meant that that organ was “sick” so I suspect that they were trying to get me to yelp out in pain so that she could prescribe more medicine)

Anyway, after her pronouncement of my impending doom, Bertha unceremoniously takes a prescription pad and two brochures out of her coat, circles a few items on one of the brochures, shoves the brochure on my lap and demands to know which of the 3 items I was going to purchase. It was at this moment that I felt empathy for the deer pinned into a corner by a pack of hungry wolves. Feeling my face flush red and trying not to be rude, I turned to my guide and said: “Please tell the doctor that I thank her for her diagnosis and would be happy to take her prescription under advisement.” There was a 2 minute uncomfortable silence after the translation before Bertha, in a more kindly tone, reassures me that “as I was still relatively youthful, my condition can be reversed with just a month’s worth of the medicine.” I had my guide repeat my response.

After 2 more rounds of verbal sparring, Bertha finally gives up and sweeps out of the room. No handshake, no “thank you for coming.”

Walking out of that place, I was outraged. Not at the shabby treatment but at the bastardization of 4000 years of Chinese herbal medicine history.