No such thing as fluency...

I read in a magazine once, that "there is no such thing as fluency in Chinese". I experienced for myself the very essence of this statement just this afternoon... They were speaking Chinese, and yet I couldn't understand them. People were screaming in Shanghainese on either side of me, and I couldn't understand them. I only caught a few words, like "you're crazy" and "what's wrong with you"...

Having caught myself a nasty cold last week, I've had a horrendous cough ever since. The days that I've been in the office, my manager has told me many times to go home, get some rest, and go see a doctor. I have a hunch my coughing is causing more ruckus than my constant sniffling during allergy season in Oregon...

I have to admit fear has played a role in my delay of seeking out medical advice. I've never gone to a doctor in China. At least, I've never been to a non-international hospital...but that's all that my insurance will cover. *sigh* So I broke out the Excel spreadsheet with the list of direct billing hospitals, and looked at the list of approved locations. Considering that they all looked relatively the same to me, I called the one that was closest to my house. After getting past the gruff nurse in the VIP department, I gathered that I should go down to the hospital to get myself an appointment. (Despite the fact that the spreadsheet said to call to make an appt)

Arriving at the hospital, I was then told that appointments of my type could not be seen today. WHAT?! So I complained. And they felt bad for me. So they found me a doctor in another department...in a department that's not in the "VIP department". The rest of the nurses were really nice, but I had a hard time understanding them too. They were speaking Chinese, I think...but I just couldn't understand...maybe it's this cold. So the doctor turned out to be super-nice too, but it was so strange that there was no stethoscope, and no closed door privacy of the typical doctor's office... Nope. I walked in, and she took my pulse. She asked me questions, wrote my prescription, and filled in my paperwork, all under the watchful eyes of the next patient in line. Oh yeah. That was another weird thing. Since I was from the VIP dept, they cut me straight to the front of the line. *shrug* I guess that was one nice thing. Next weird thing? She was prescribing me Chinese herbal medicine. The whole darnded hospital specialized in Chinese herbal medicine. When I asked for western medicine, she luckily said that was fine. There were two separate pharmacies, too. One for herbal medicine, and one for western medicine...

When I got back to the counter to pay for the visit, that's when I encountered the screaming ladies that I mentioned earlier. In the usual method of not really forming lines, the next lady in line came and stood on my left while I was paying. The lady behind her came and stood on my right. When I was almost finished, both of them started shoving their payments at the lady behind the counter. That's when the argument started. One said she was here first, and the other started chewing her out... Considering I didn't understand what they were saying, it seemed like a totally illogical argument. The last to arrive was clearly in the wrong. *shrug* Go figure. It's China.