A Hole in Your Pants

There is no good time to be suffering from gout, and certainly not least while one is travelling. Gout is a painful arthritic condition which happens when sharp crystals form in the joints. Grating against these sharp crystals causes acute pain and debilitation. The affected area gets inflamed and swells up, and even the slightest touch of a bed cover can be agony.

So, there we were, Phoebe and I, making our way to a local Beijing hospital to find a doctor who knew enough about the condition in order to prescribe relief. The first thing which struck me about this local hospital – a large 4-storey building – was the fact that you had to climb up a flight of steps to get to the front entrance. Now, perhaps ambulances would have a different entrance to get emergency cases into the building, but I couldn’t see any. Moreover, if you had broken your leg and were taken to the hospital by your family, you would have had to be helped up all those steps.

After painfully hobbling up to the main entrance, I took a ticket in order to be seen by a nurse. A ten-minute wait later, a nurse spoke to me. Phoebe explained my situation and the nurse rattled something rapidly in Chinese. Phoebe nudged me to leave. That was it? No, said Phoebe. We would have to go to the 4^th floor to see the specialist.

Thankfully, this time there was a lift inside the building. We got inside and selected button number four. What greeted us as our lift arrived at our destination beggared belief. As the doors slid open, right in front of us was a little boy, maybe five or six years of age, with his mother. The boy was squatting down and doing his business on the floor right at the entrance to the lift. Whilst we’re on the subject of numbers, let’s just say he was doing a two. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The mother yelled at her son in staccato Chinese. “Hurry up, you stupid boy. The lift is here. We’ll miss it if you take so long”, translated Phoebe. The child stood up and skipped merrily into the lift – never mind the need to wipe! I had another double-take as I realised that the child was actually wearing a pair of shorts but with a big hole cut out of the seat. As Phoebe was to later explain, it just makes it easier for the child to “go” anywhere without the need for stripping off, or getting the clothes messy – simply squat and go. What an ingenious, if rather City Council-unfriendly, idea.

The mother stepped over the browning puddle of fluids and solids into the lift. She demurely smiled at us and pressed number one. We hurriedly jumped over her son’s number two and made our way to the gout specialist’s office. To make it easy for a child to go to the toilet is one thing but in a hospital? What about health and safety? Hygiene? Perhaps such ideas are too Western for an Eastern communist regime.

Well, I got a prescription for anti-inflammatory pills and that alleviated the pain temporarily. Over the course of the next few days in Beijing, I saw many more children with holes in their pants. We even walked through a night market where Phoebe pointed out trousers and shorts with pre-fabricated ‘holes’ for sale. Phoebe assured me that the practice was going out of style and as more people became exposed to the Western cultures and became more affluent, they became more loath to cut up their Junior Guccis and Pradas.

How Beijing had changed since I last visited in 2001. Then, there were more bicycles than cars. It was not only amusing, but it was also somewhat scary to see an army of bicycles hurtling toward you. You get into the deer-caught-at-headlights mentality where you become unsure as to which direction to go next. Then too, walking on Tiananmen Square was an experience. There were loudspeakers everywhere on the square playing commands on loop, both in Chinese and English. ?Do not run. Do not skate. Do not wave banners. Do not gather in large groups.? being a small sample of these commands. Fast forward to now, and Beijing seems vastly different. From the Times Square-style neon lights of Wangfujing Road to the hubbub of Tiananmen, from the massive high rises to the concrete inner city jungle, Beijing has transformed itself over and over again. This is a country for which communist ideology equates with chintzy all-you-can-buy capitalism.

My advice – visit the country while it still has some of its charms. It’s a sign of the times when crumbling parts of the Great Wall are hurriedly repaired with modern blocks and non-matching cement so that downtime is kept to the minimum and the Wall can stay open to generate as much tourist revenue as possible. Go with a fistful of US Dollars for it is fast becoming the currency of the land, even if official lip service does not concur.

So, yes, visit by all means, but be aware that the country is looking to burn a hole in your pants.