Silk Road Suzie: How to get rid of "germs" Chinese style

This is the story of going to hospital in Kashi. Somethings the Chinese do better than the NHS and others they do differently. As you might have gathered since Kyrgyzstan there were references to not feeling too good and by the time I got to Kashi something needed to be done as I was suffering one of the worst upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) I have ever had in my life. So rather than going camping up the Karakorum Highway and over to Tashkurgan and nearly into Pakistan I stayed behind at the hotel and went to hospital instead. However I was not the only one in need of hospital treatment as another traveller called "L" had bronchitis, so the 2 of us, with great disappointment, sadly waved off the others, "the Karakorum 18", and Archie in the morning, for 3 nights adventure in Archie while we made our way to the hospital. As John, our guide for China, was with us we became the "Kashgar 3" But our consolation prize was seeing Chairman Mao every morning on our way to the hospital.

With a suitably sombre sky behind him.

Once at the hospital I don't suppose that "L" and I had to wait more than about 20 minutes before being ushered in to see a doctor. She did the usual things, listened to chests, looked at throats, say "ahhh", etc. all of this being relayed back to her in Chinese by John, although the doctor was Uyghur. When she asked me the colour of my "expectorations" and when I told her the colour she looked very impressed (I did say it was one the worst or possibly the worst UTRI ever) or she did not believe me!!! After this we were sent upstairs for a blood test. Again this was done with minimum wait. We found ourselves in a ward with a large nurses station behind perspex windows, and in the windows there were lots of little holes a bit like a booking office at a train station. Looking around to see what other people were doing, we knew, when our turn came to stick our arms into the "ticket office". The needle was put in and blood taken and this was tested immediately and a few minutes later, armed with a printout of results we were back down to see the doctor. All in the space of about another 20 minutes. The doctor assessed the results of the blood test and made out a prescription there and then. Back upstairs again to pay for the prescriptions - I think my whole treatment came to about £30 or £35. The prescriptions came as 3 small bottles of antibiotic and 3 larger bottles of glucose/saline solutions. We then presented ourselves at the treatment ward where we sat down in one of the chairs round the edge of the room and took stock. The ceiling had a track running around the whole ward and suspended from this were lots of brackets. The nurses mixed the antibiotic into one of the solutions and then put a needle in the back of the hand and slowly drip fed the antibiotic intravenously - only I found out how to make the solution go in quicker by fiddling with the control mechanism while the nurses were not looking! But even with that it took about 3 or 4 hours to get the antibiotic in. So that gave plenty of time for observation and reflection. One of the things that "L" and I noticed and commented on was the cultural division in the ward. As the ward was large and as the nursing station was central it made a natural divide in the ward with two separate areas although still an open ward. "L" and I found ourselves in the "Uyghur" half of the ward, where there were more patients than the "Chinese" end on the other side of the nursing station. The ward was none too clean when the dirty dish rag came out to wipe down the surfaces I felt like bringing in some jay cloths! But the nurses could not be faulted they were incredibly kind and helpful despite the language difficulties (I had my Central Asian and Turkish phrase books with me to help us along but we had lots of smiles from other patients as well) but The next couple of days it was the same procedure but we were clued up by this time and asked for a bed in a side ward (at 10yuan roughly equivalent to £1) and were able to lie down. Perhaps because we were not locals we each got a bed each rather than sharing as some others appeared to do. I found it a very aggressive way of delivering antibiotics but it really did the trick. We really broke the rules on the last day by bringing in a "thank-you" box of biscuits for sharing in the nursing station - but not allowing for communist (or Chinese?) culture where any sort of tipping or acknowledgment such as a box of biscuits is an absolute no-no. They refused to take them and in the end we left them by the beds and I don't know if they were eaten - I hope so.

One of the interesting exchanges we had at this time was with a young man we met who had worked as a tour guide. His English was good and we were able to pick up quite a bit about the political situation in Xinxiang Province (or (Uyghur Autonomous Region) where the Uyghur are the majority population. Although a significant physical area of Xinxiang is covered the Taklamakan Desert (named by Charles Blackmore as "The Worst Desert in the World) there are also very rich mineral, natural gas and petrol reserves which contribute significantly to the Chinese economy. And therefore Xinxiang Province is of great importance to China both economically and politically. He told us how the Old City in Kashgar was being destroyed, the old houses pulled down and the former residents are moved into high rise flats. He explained that this was "government" policy. When I asked where the "government" was based, as Xinxiang is an "Autonomous" Region first of all he said "Urumqi" and then "Beijing". His distress and anger as he talked to us became more apparent with each explanation. The mud brick houses, which have stood for hundreds of years are deemed "unsafe" and therefore have to be pulled down - but there is more to it than that. There has been unrest in Xinxiang Province over the last years and particularly in Urumqi as the Uygher try to express their protest at what is being done to their lifestyle and culture. The overall emotion at the siutuation he finds himself in that I picked up from this young man was an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and abandonment. "L" was much more up to date on this whole situation than I was at the time as she had seen a programme on the television about the Old City in Kashgar. I enclose a few links which explain this far better than I can and a few of the photos that I took in the Old City. And who knows as the destruction is happening on such a scale that the streets where I took these photographs may no longer exist - and that is since May this year.

http://www.farwestchina.com/2010/09/what-remains-of-kashgars-old-city.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/aug/08/china-silk-road-kashgar-heritage

Photos from the Old City taken 23rd May 2010