Hospitals.
I seemed to spend a lot of time in hospitals this visit. My wife's best friend was knocked off her electric bike last month, and she hit her head, causing memory loss and she broke her leg.
My wife's friend is a nice person, who has an interesting personality, very different from my wife's placid and calm one. She is almost always arguing with someone, on the phone or in person. She has an almost-permanent affronted expression on her face. It is difficult to tell whether she is seriously offended or just joking. Her eight year old son's expressions are the only clue to whether she is telling him off or joking with him. He knows. I don't have a clue. She lives in a very modest and dark ground-floor flat in Changsha. The living room is like a garage, unpainted concrete floors, her two bikes, a wooden bed and a little table. Her bedroom is equally modest, with a bed, a computer and an old sofa. The kitchen is very small and basic (there is a duck and a chicken who live there) The squat toilet/shower is tiny. There is an energy-saving bulb in each room, but they give out little light. The wiring looks very dangerous and there is no decoration on any of the walls, no paint, no wallpaper. She is 38, she has a younger brother, who visits regularly and uses the computer - he is very pleasant and friendly. She has two older brothers, who she gets on with, but argues with a fair bit.
On the day we got married, my wife and I visited her friend in the 8th Changsha hospital near the station. It was not very clean or hygienic. Her room had broken tiles and had not been decorated since ever. The walls were shabby and dusty. Her friend's mother was there looking after her, they shouted at each other a lot. A male friend received the same treatment, especially when he started smoking a cigarette in her room. The only people the friend never shouted at were my wife, me, and her younger brother. The friend struggled to her feet a few times and tried to hobble down the corridor, to practise walking. The nursing staff seemed mostly disinterested.
A few days later, returning from our honeymoon, we visited her again on the day she was being discharged from the hospital. To get from the hospital to the taxi, my wife carried her friend on her back. I offered to help, but she insisted. The taxi went to a different hospital, slightly cleaner, but not much. I think she wanted a second opinion on her treatment. This time the male friend carried her on his back. The male friend offered all the male medical staff cigarettes. (Unbelievable!)
A few days later came the news that the friend's father had broken his leg in a traffic accident. We took a slow uncomfortable two hour bus ride to the orthopaedic hospital in Liu Yang, a small town maybe 40 miles East of Changsha. This was an incredibly dirty, rundown and dangerously unhygienic place, dark, dirty corridors full of beds with dirty linen, uncleaned toilets, and a massive pile of waste just piled up in the car park. Her father was in a bad way, but I couldn't help feeling he'd be better off at home. My wife had to leave after a while because she felt nauseous because of the smells in the hospital. We took a hairy motorcycle ride to the bus station on a bike with an umbrella, just about keeping out the driving rain. Then we took the slow bus home.
There were many arguments in the days that followed between the friend and her brothers. She hasn't been working for a month. She has had to pay the hospital bills with the support of her brothers. Now the brothers are having to pay the father's bills. It is no fun being ill in China. Thank God for the National Health Service in Britain.
A few days before I left the friend went to yet another Changsha hospital, this time much cleaner and better run. She was having painkilling injections because she had overstretched herself visiting her father in hospital. She doesn't really trust the doctors to operate on her father, so she wants to be with him. All this time, my wife and I tried to be as helpful as we could, bringing food and cooking for her and just providing some moral support and trying to reduce the stress.
On my last day but one, she asked us to accompany her younger brother to the East Changsha bus station, so that he could visit her father. I didn't know why we had to accompany this man in his twenties, but my wife explained that he was a bit slow and couldn't speak very well (news to me). He just seemed to be a polite and pleasant young man. He gave up his seat on the bus to an elderly woman - first time I've seen anyone do that in China. But the friend phoned when we reached the station to say she had made a mistake and that the brother wasn't to visit after all. It was at this point when my wife asked me whether I wanted to visit the friend's father the next day. By the look on her face, I know that she didn't really want to go, but didn't want to be disloyal to her friend. When I suggested we spend the day together in Changsha, she smiled and looked very relieved that I had made the decision for the both of us. She said that her friend might be disappointed, but when we asked her, she said it was fine. Both my wife and I are keen to help out friends who need help, but we know we need to draw the line somewhere, and make sure we find time for each other.
I am getting used to crossing the road in Changsha - it's like a dangerous kind of line-dancing. But after these two road accidents to these two family members, I can understand just how dangerous it can be to deal with Chinese traffic.
