I was traveling with a few of my friends here in China. Along with us was a Chinese teacher from my friends school. She lived in Arkansas for about 2 years and her English was really good. As we were walking down the street we came across a place I have never noticed before. When we walked in I was reminded of a scene from Harry Potter. The scene where Harry walks into the wand shop to purchase his wand and there are these huge shelves that go all the way up to the ceiling. It looked like this.
It turned out that this place was a traditional Chinese doctors office and the shelves included all kinds of weird things that they will give you to take. Most were flowers, roots, nuts, and strange dried up stuff. The Chinese teacher told us that people come here even when they are well just to be safe. What I heard was, "this could be a cool experience and I want to go see a doctor." So that is what we did. We went upstairs to where the doctors were checking their patients. Now this is not at all like a normal doctors office. There was a long hallway with many rooms. In each room was a doctor sitting at a table. Some doctors, we were told, were specialist. Some were for women, kids, pregnant women, etc. However most were just generalist. So what you do is go into one of the rooms and wait until the doctor picks you to go. I don't mean a waiting room, i mean the same room with the doctor. So, i am sitting there watching other people get checked out, waiting for my turn.
The doctor did not do anything that required privacy. I was told that first he would check your pulse on each wrist. It is called the 6-point-test. I have always thought by checking a pulse you could only feel for one thing, a pulse. Somehow they are able to tell other things by this test. The doctor would then give you a number from the pulse test. Anything between 60-100, I was told, was good. I had a nice low 65. While holding your wrist he also looks at your eyes, the color of your skin, and your tongue. I passed all things until the tongue test. When he told me to stick out my tongue I got a noise and small head nod. I could tell that this was not a good nod, but the doctor said I was fine. The only thing i needed was to do something about my dry mouth. Then that was it, I was finished. Here is me getting checked out.
The funny things about this experience is what has happened to me since then. I have been joking with everyone that the doctor put some voodoo on me. The next day after I went, I woke up with my first sty ever. Since the sty went away, I have been battling with being sick. I ran my first fever in a long time and got pretty sick for the first time in years. I have been in bed most of this week trying to get all my strength back. I know it is not from the doctor but I find it really strange all this happened since going to the doctor. My lesson is, don't go to the doctor for fun.
You should've bought a wand.
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