see the doctor learn new things, 看医生学新的事情

Recently I've been infected with a bacteria, so I've developed acute bronchitis. Realizing that, I scheduled a doctor's appointment. It's been a few days now and I feel a lot better.

In Beijing, as a foreigner there are just a few choices on where to go to the hospital. If your Chinese is very good and you trust the Chinese doctors, then you can go to a Chinese hospital, but if you don't master Chinese, then is a lot better to go to one of the Western hospitals or clinics.

In here, you can bargain for almost anything, from purse to food in the restaurant, but I feel that when it comes to doctors or health, there should be no bargaining involved, rather a lot of transparency and good communication can give the patient a lot of confidence. Since the doctors at the Western clinics are very well paid and have good command of English, the price you pay for the service is as such, very high!

Today though, me and Dr. Tony Z., the physician that took care of me, had a very entertaining conversation after the consultation. As most of Chinese en vogue, he is up to date with all the development of the country, the region and the world, has interest in Domestic and Foreign stocks and is planning to correct his nutritional and exercise habits in the future. Does that sound like a Western plan? Maybe... but as he further explained, in China, still right now, before the age of 30 or 40, the parents still somehow look after you, but after that you start to look after them. He also seem to like Singapore's policy on child birth control, the more educated you are, the more kids you can have. In China, it is somehow the other way around, people in the countryside can have many kids while in the cities, families are limited to one. The penalty for having the second child is 100,000 RMB or more (about 15,000 US$) and it goes lot higher if you are a famous figure.

From him, I learned that Japanese people "eat with their eyes" (many colors, pretty food, but when you mix it with the sauces it all tastes more or less the same), Chinese people "eat with their tongues" (things need to taste very well, and have many different flavors and spices) while Americans “eat with their brain" (they think what to eat, how many proteins, carbs, nutrition, etc.) I thought it was a pretty good comparison on the three habits. What do you think, isn't this true?

After the hour spent there, the bill was still very expensive but at least this time, I found out some new interesting things about China.
Still, after one year, China can be a new experience every day!