A visit to the Doctor’s Surgery – Beijing, China

An unpleasant cocktail of pollution, dry weather and too much air conditioning has led to me getting a minor case of dry skin. Whilst not debilitating it’s not ideal, so after a few attempts to find a cure I went for my first visit to the doctor’s surgery in China.

After briefly considering a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) cure or a visit to the standard Chinese hospital, I decided this wasn’t an ideal opportunity to test my language skills and started looking for one of the Western-style medical centres.

There are an increasing number of these modern facilities spread around Beijing. Since I arrived a new one has been built within walking distance, so mainly due to laziness that was the one I chose.

I arrived and filled out all the necessary forms to register as a patient, then received my membership card. This should have been enough warning – my membership number suggests that they’ve had less than 100 previous patients.

Cuff, attached to a Sphygmomanometer

An initial check-up suggested I might have been the first patient they’ve seen over 6 feet tall as the weight scales only went up to 90kgs and the blood pressure cuff would barely have encompassed my wrist. A hurried trip to the stores located an as-yet unused extra-large (or normal sized to me and many Chinese I’m sure) blood pressure strap and the checks continued.

Happily, all the measurements were well within normal ranges and after a cup of tepid water I was sent in to see the English speaking GP. As it transpired ‘English-speaking GP’ means ‘a GP with access to Google Translate’.

Knowing how poor online Chinese translation can be, this was somewhat disconcerting and after describing my symptoms, I awaited Google’s diagnosis.

Bracing myself for ‘Lampshade Turtle Purple’ or ‘amputate legs’ I was somewhat relieved when my condition was diagnosed and translated as ‘dried skin caused by allergies’. I’m sure I’ve seen that on a restaurant menu somewhere…

Satisfied that it wasn’t anything major, I suggested some sort of extra thick moisturiser might be adequate if that’s all it was.

She seemed worried by this, as though it would be admitting that Beijing has a pollution problem, so decided that I should see a specialist, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. The usual specialist was unavailable, so I offered to wait a few days.

Instead they called his boss…

So it was that within a couple of hours the very impressive Ye Ganyun (world-renowned Professor of Dermatology at Peking University; the man who led China’s research against Aids and Leprosy; the leading skincare practitioner in all of Asia; one time chairman of the World Congress of Dermatology and recipient of both the ‘Oriental Son’ and ‘Excellent Party Member’ awards), was summoned to a little surgery in Chaoyang to tell me that yes, what appears to be a case of dry skin caused by pollution and air-conditioning is indeed a case of dry skin caused by pollution and air-conditioning.

Then he politely scolded the GP for wasting his valuable time during which could have getting on with research, and left.

I was given some prescription-only extra thick moisturiser and some over-the-counter steroids.

All this cost was 178rmb in diagnosis and prescription fees and a slight delay to the cure for cancer.

Image (and new word) from WikiCommons

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