Chapter 7 - Eat, Gawk, Love

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Chapter 7

On our first day of acupuncture class, the class is split up into groups. The first two weeks will be hospital rounds in small groups. The following weeks will incorporate classroom-based lectures into the clinical-based work. The teachers assign us to different floors of the hospital to shadow our acupuncturist preceptors. I can barely disguise my disappointment when I'm randomly grouped with three middle-aged women, and my preceptor is yet another female middle-aged doctor. The four of them make small talk about their adult children, and I start to wonder if I've made a horrible mistake in coming here.

By Wednesday afternoon, I'm dying to meet up with my age-appropriate friends again. Since it's the beginning of summer, the patient load is light. Dr. Chen, our team leader, shows us pictures of her grandchildren doing their morning exercises in kindergarten. I can't remember the names of Dr. Chen's grandkids although everyone else seems to. As far as I can tell, they all dress alike with little red scarves around their necks and blue sailor shorts. The older women ooh and ahh. They make plans to go out for eel noodles and laugh at me when I wrinkle my nose at the prospect (Don't eels taste like snakes? I ask).

Mary Lau, the shorter and the more boisterous of the three middle-aged women in our group, tells me she'll take me to a cong you bing street stand right outside of Shanghai University of TCM during one of our lecture days. They make the bing hot, flaky, and crispy with an egg on top and a special house pepper sauce.

Our next lecture day is Friday, and I can't wait to sit in a classroom and pass notes with my friends. I need to get away from these well-meaning, dull, older women who seem to be here to Eat, Pray, and Love in a type of Asian-American middle age summer camp.

I hide away from them after eating lunch in the cafeteria. The group of women is watching Dr. Chen perform some electrotherapy on a grandma with facial palsy. It would have been cool to see, except I'm only three days into this class, and I've seen it about thirty times by now. Dr. Chen says that the humidity in Shanghai's air makes people prone to Bell's Palsy, and I believe it. I've never thought of the humidity as a mystical, illness bringing creature, but just a couple of days after getting off the plane, I have the worst tension headaches of my life. It's like the air here contains a wetness that seems to seep into my marrow and linger there. I feel soggy and heavier like my bones are turning soft and porous. I guess the idea of sending jolts of electricity through needles directed at my nerves seems like a more attractive prospect every day.

By Wednesday, I'm sneaking off during my lunch break to browse my phone and play hooky cafeteria courtyard. It's not that I'm not interested in acupuncture; it's that my small-group is full of women old enough to be my mother. I didn't sign up for a summer of older women asking me about college entrance tips, whether I'm sure it's safe to drink coffee with ice cubes in it and whether I'll catch a cold if I wear shoes without socks.

"Are you having trouble sleeping?" A voice asks from the stairwell where I am seeking some quiet refuge. It's Su, he smells a little like cigarettes, and there is a splatter of blood on his left trouser leg. I'm guessing that he went outside to smoke a cigarette before his next blood transfusion.

"Why do you ask that?" It seems like a weird thing to ask someone. Usually, people around here ask have you eaten today? first, before they jump into more personal questions.

"You look tired," Su says and checks his cellphone. It's beeping away with the sound of texts. I don't know why he's talking to me when he's needed elsewhere.

"Do you have any medication that could help me sleep?"

"Maybe you need something more drastic than a pill," Su says, and I groan deep inside. Oh no, is he going to tell me my chi is out of whack? I just want some Ambien (or maybe some Toradol if he wants to be really helpful). "Come with me; we can talk some more. I have a patient who can't wait."

"It's okay; I need to go back to Dr. Chen."

"No, come with me," Su insists and waves me through an open door. "I'm sure she can perform her herb burning without asking you for directions."

Now I'm sure he's making fun of me. I follow along because he's a doctor, and I'm just a high school student.

"How do you like our hospital?" Su asks as he leads me through the halls, into an unfamiliar ward that I'm sure contains acutely sick people and not just old grannies looking for someone to chat with. The truth is, outside of the TCM unit, this hospital is modern and sleek; all the surfaces are curvy, futuristic, and shiny like a spaceship.

Strangely, I like the part of the hospital where the Eastern Medicine department resides better. It's more casual, warm, and personal. As the daughter of a man who works at the Met and a lover of history — the Eastern Medicine Ward seems to be a place that has a history and story to tell. The locker where I keep my street clothes is narrow and made of wood. I found a preserved plum and a train ticket in the back of mine on the first day. The train ticket was for a 6:30 pm train from Shanghai North to Nanking dated ten years ago. I suspect it's an antique by now with its edged brown and tattered with age.

As I held it on my first day, it made me wonder what it was like for my mother to train here before she went off to war. I wonder if she felt some desperate need to save lives or to save her country. I don't know if I've ever felt either.

As a kid growing up in the suburbs of New York City, the only time I've been placed in a life-threatening position was that one time when a naked man flashing me from under his trench coat followed me home from school. As for country, what country did I belong to? The one I call home or the one my ancestors called jiā xiāng?

"It's not bad. I like it here. It's more modern than I imagined. From the war stories my mother used to tell, I thought I was going somewhere with crumbled walls, and piles of bricks everywhere like the church turned hospital in Gone with the Wind. I'm starting to think she made a mistake in leaving."

Su laughs at that. "This city has changed a lot in the last ten years." He winks at me as he knocks on a hospital room's room. "It may surprise you yet. You'll see. Who knows, maybe you'll go home with a renewed appreciation for Shanghai and medicine."

"Really?" I ask skeptically as we walk into the room. I stop dead in my tracks. The tall, handsome guy sitting on that hospital bed — I know him from somewhere.

"Good morning, Yao Xiōngdì," Su says in an overly cheerful demeanor. I can tell by the way he's referring to the patient as Yao bro; the two of them know each other well. "What's bothering you today?"

Even though the tall, handsome patient is hiding behind a pair of giant sunglasses and a hat, I suddenly realize where I've seen him before. He's Fang Yao, the guy I saw on T.V. at the airport. That's why Su wanted to know if I was a fan during the car ride home that night.

Fang Yao, the same guy every girl in this city is thirsting after, is a patient here.


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