Eric's Beijing Diary

Finally getting things put back together. My laptop was stolen a week ago while I was on the bus. The bus was really crowded, so I was standing just inside the front door. I had my briefcase with my laptop and books between my feet. A couple stops after I got on, someone stepped off the bus, grabbed my computer from between my feet and took off. It was dark, and I couldn't see anyone, and, you know how it is..you spend a couple seconds checking to see if it is anywhere near you, and then it's too late. I called the police and they came and brought me to the station so that I could file a report. Don't know what good it did, but I thought I should do something. Pretty useless, I'm afraid. The irritating thing is that the thief ended up getting an old laptop that has little, if any, market value. But I had it all set up, and it was very useful to me. I think I could have made it go another year or so.

My neighbor chided me, "You should always watch your things when you are on the bus!"

I said, "It was right between my feet!"

"You should never put it between your feet! You can't see it. Your belly is too big!"

I thought I would be without a machine for awhile, because I am not in the mood to go out and buy a new computer right now, but last Sunday, James brought his old Thinkpad to church for me to use. It's old, but my laptop was old, too, and this thing is in very good condition. God is good. His Name is not Jehovah-jireh for nothing.

Sunny is a story teller. Her background is in Education, and she loves children. She feels most comfortable speaking her native language, so if you want to follow this one, you will need to brush up on your Mandarin. Join us on the Beijing Diary for an interesting visit with a warm-hearted performer and educator.

Yesterday, the Disanji Book Building was crawling with cops. We had to sign in just to enter the building. A bunch of us often go to the food court in the basement of the Disanji Building. The Disanji Book Company has actually moved out of the building. I don't know whether they went bankrupt, or just moved out because the rent was too high. So the building is practically empty. Didn't seem to justify the number of officers. There were cops all over the place. I asked one of them why there were so many police, and she said because of the two meetings (obviously the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference). It's that time of the year again. Still, I have been in Beijing for seven years, and I have never seen anything like this.

The BBC this morning gave me the answer. Apparently, there were messages sent out throughout China recruiting people to demonstrate. Somebody wants to foment a Middle East style protest in China. Not so easy to do here. The government intercepted the messages and sent police to all of the proposed demonstration areas. The government also announced that the effort would fail, because Chinese people want stability and are happy with their government. Government propaganda statements can be pretty nauseating, but this time it is pretty much true. Young people in today's China are focused on getting ahead. And for the most part, they have jobs. Not like Egypt, where the government poured lots of money into higher education to ensure that they had a large pool of professional people, and were then unable to get work for them.

Security is pretty tight around Beijing during March every year because of the two meetings. But it does seem to be a little tighter this year. I have never heard of them actually removing propellers to make sure that planes can't fly. Seems a bit extreme, doesn't it? I don't know. I remember when I first came to China, I was at BICF one Sunday, and I walked across the lawn that separates the Twenty-first Century Theater (where the church meets) to the Twenty-first Century Hotel (where the church library and offices were). There was some sort of officer standing in front of the building. Ignorant me, I thought he was a security guard or something. I nodded to him and kept right on going toward the door to the hotel lobby. He quickly put out his white gloved hand and said, very loudly, "NO!!" I guess every PLA officer knows at least one English word. The government had commandeered the hotel to use for the twin meetings that year, and they weren't allowing anyone else in. Well, I didn't want to get blown away, so I backed off rather quickly. Crossing a security guard is one thing. But if you're dealing with someone who has orders to shoot to kill, it's better not to press the matter.

Took the subway to Dongdan today to see a doctor at the International Clinic at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital. I have been dealing with an inflammation of some kind on my foot since last summer. I wasn't sure what it was, so I wasn't giving it any treatment, since it didn't really hurt; it just looked red. But when it didn't go away, I started to apply a fungicide, even though I didn't think a fungus would develop on that part of my foot. Athlete's foot usually develops between your toes, not on the ball of your foot. When the fungicide didn't seem to work, I went to the clinic and got a drip. No real change. I decided to go back to the fungicide, which seemed to be better than nothing, but not really effecting a fundamental change. So I finally decided to go to the International Clinic at PUMC. The doctor there told me it was neither a fungus nor a bacterial infection. He called it a "sterile inflammation." Something about they way my bones are rubbing or something. It does make sense, actually, because I tend to walk a little sideways on one foot, which may be a little wearing on the ball of my foot. We'll see.

As with many other things in China, it is simply not the case that the more you pay for something, the better it is. There is an international hospital in Beijing, for all the foreign businessmen with high dollar foreign expat benefits packages. The doctors there may be OK, but not necessarily exceptional just because they charge more money. But they are foreigners, and so foreigners feel comfortable going to them.

The International Clinic at PUMC is certainly more expensive that an average Chinese hospital. I paid 150 RMB (about 25 US dollars) just for the doctor's visit. That's astronomical by Chinese standards, but a whole lot less than what you would pay at the international hospital. And the physicians there at the clinic speak English. Ordinarily, to get the benefit of lower medical costs in China, you need to be proficient in Mandarin. The International Clinic at PUMC is a compromise, I guess. More expensive that ordinary Chinese hospitals, but cheaper than the foreign hospital, and still able to accommodate foreigners who don't speak Chinese.

If the doc turns out to be right, I will have wasted too much money on fungicide over the past few months, except that it taught me that rubbing some sort of cream on it does make it better. So the fungicidal cream didn't hurt anything, but it's expensive Vaseline.

The Peking Union Medical College was founded in the early years of the 20th Century by a union of Christian mission boards, and taken over by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1915. It is one of the many residual effects of Christian missionary activity that began in the middle of the 19th Century in China.