Breathe Deeply.
Fire-Up the Coal and
Hand Me another Marlboro,
I See a Kung-Fu Bacteria
on the Hazy Horizon.
Be Sure to Take
Your Amoxicillin.
By David James
DATELINE: Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China
A sickness sweeps through the country, some kind of kung-fu bacteria. It tears up Westerners like a bear caught in a silk dress. Almost every foreign teacher has been stricken with something that seems to be a cross between a mutant bacteria and "flu in a can".
I got this thing about two weeks ago, but was just a little sick at first. So I thought I'd go ahead and teach. At the end of my night classes I went home and crashed, hoping it would all go away by morning. But Bruce Leebola had different plans. I woke up and felt like death. So I stayed in bed most of the day and slept.
In fact, I slept for about sixty hours in a three-day period. Finally I sent an E-mail to my doctor back home, who wrote back with instructions to get some Amoxicillin.
Pass the Box of Pills, Please.
Would this thing called Amoxicillin be easy to find? I mean, Amoxicillin isn't your everyday cough-drop remedy, is it? Since I was out of commission, my friend Marlin took on the mission. To my surprise, about fifteen minutes later, he returns with a little box of high-power pills. I make another discovery about China: Prescription drugs are about as difficult to get as a nice box of Kleenex. I think you can get extra strength morphine with five bucks and a note from a schoolteacher.
After a couple days of Amoxicillin, I was back in business. The bad part, though, was that since I was in the house for a good three days, my roommates caught the bug.
Marlin started taking Amoxicillin as soon as he got sick, so he only stayed sick for about a day before fighting it off.
Dan got it a little worse and went to the hospital. They gave him the same stuff, and within a day he was feeling better, so he went about his business as usual. It didn't last, however; all too quickly, Dan's business got all too unusual. It seems the doctor told him to take the drug for only three days, whereas you're supposed to take it for ten.
Dan is currently in a Chinese hospital, and will be confined there for probably five days or so before the illness runs its course.
The first day Dan went in to get an x-ray from the doctor. The doctor came out with x-rays in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. He was explaining the problems with Dan's lungs between the puffs on his cigarette.
Spread to My Heart? Oh, My!
Then yesterday they told Dan to get an Electrocardiogram. When the results came back, they told him: "We think the infection has spread to your heart." Now, it doesn't take a medical doctor to know that an infection in your heart isn't good news. An infection in your heart would probably mean evacuation and a long stay in a Japanese or South Korean hospital. That is, if you were lucky enough to get there in time.
Dan was a little taken aback. He was thinking about how to get out of Dodge when they came back and said: "Oh no, the readout actually means you're fine. Keep taking the IVs, and you'll be well in no time."
A little miscommunication goes a long way toward instant terror to a Westerner moored in a hospital bed in China. Me? I hope to stay healthy enough to avoid the Chinese-style hospitals.
Smoke from a Billion Fires.
Let's switch subjects and talk about pollution. It's a part of life here, that's for sure.
I had the first hint of the atmospheric adventures awaiting me a couple of months ago. When I first started teaching in Xi'an, I decided to try and explain the word coal to my students.
"It comes from the ground and it's black," I said. "You can use it to make fire. They used to use it a lot for power."
I kept trying to explain this scientific enigma to my students, but they just didn't get it.
Then the Chinese teacher gives it a try. "You know, it's round with holes in it, and you burn it in your house to cook food or keep warm in the winter." Instantly they all shook their heads in agreement.
Now in the States you just don't hear about coal, at least not in my part of the country. No one really says, "Yep, getting pretty chilly out. Better shove some coal into the fire."
Here, people have stacks and stacks of coal outside their homes and businesses. People are always riding along the streets towing bicycle carts full of coal. Coal is almost as popular as cigarettes — but not quite.
An Unbroken Chain of Smokers.
I'm convinced that half of the smog problem isn't actually caused by the burning of coal, but by the burning of cigarettes. Everywhere. All the time. Almost every man here is a chain smoker. And this chain has no missing links. As soon as one cigarette gets low like a stub, they are fishing around for another.
I tried to figure out a reason why so many people smoke. It eluded me for the longest time, but now I think I have the answer. The way I see it, the smog is so bad in China that smoking cigarettes actually helps. My theory is that the filter in a cigarette actually blocks out some of the smog. I think the smog is more powerful than Marlboro's tar and nicotine. (This is too bad for our manager, though, who rips the filter off his cigarettes before lighting up. I think he's sixty or so, but he really doesn't look a day older than one hundred and ten.)
Soon after I got here, I was a little curious about the smog. I needed a way to measure how bad it was from one day to the next. One morning I looked to the heavens — and found my answer! There on the horizon stood a distant tower, sort of hazy. Then the next day it was a little clearer. The solution was right there in front on me. All I had to do was look at how clearly I could see the tower. The sharper the image, the less the smog. I had found my genuine, personal, free-of-charge 'smog-o-meter'.
Smog-O-Meter Rating System.
I've since devised a rating system. It's not official, but maybe some future day my smog-o-meter rating system might become a standard fixture on the horizon of every polluted city around the globe. Here's how it goes:
If smog-o-meter is crystal clear:
Wake up....
You're dreaming.
If smog-o-meter is pretty good:
Beware of tomorrow....
The smog is playing hide-n-seek.
If smog-o-meter is just a little fuzzy:
A good day in Xi'an,
but a bad day downwind.
If smog-o-meter becomes really fuzzy:
The weather is turning colder
and people are burning more coal.
If smog-o-meter becomes hard to see:
Time to put on a facemask
and watch out for falling birds.
If smog-o-meter is barely distinguishable:
Stay at home.
If smog-o-meter has disappeared:
Start smoking
like every other Chinese person,
and make use of those filters.
Take a deep breath for me, will ya?
*This is the next step toward THE One World Language.
Step Sixteen: Your common noun obscured by smog!
|
