I reported on my adventures with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) earlier, and I’m back with more. After two visits to a reportedly famous TCM doctor here in my town, I found myself slowly getting better. Energy not so great. Lingering cough, but getting better. Then I managed to catch a cold from one of my students, and kaboom, major setback. I am worse than I was before.
I couldn’t tell what the doctor was thinking when I trudged in with my translator. I’ve probably tarnished his professional reputation by not getting better, and my first thought was that he had two choices: either kill me off or actually give me something that will work.
He asked me a different set of questions this time concerning sleep, appetite, and energy, and then wrote a scrip with the comment that ‘This time, it will work.’
I would really like to take some photos of the hospital here. It is absolutely filthy. The doctors spit on the floor. There is no way to wash your hands properly in the bathroom. People bring their dogs in with them – keep in mind that rabies is on the rise in this part of Hunan (one of my students died after his cat bit him). And everyone is smoking, staff included.
My medicine consists of a long list of natural ingredients. I’m not big on using antibiotics. I think in the long-run, they do very bad things to your body. I also don’t like the idea of supporting evil multi-nationals who have their fingers in way too many pots, pots where drug lords don’t belong.
Anyhow, I tried to find out what was included in the latest concoction, but interestingly, my translator told me that she didn’t know what the things were.
The ingredients are cooked fresh for you each morning, the end product being a bitter brown juice, which I don’t mind at all. You get enough for two doses. The course is 4 days long. Wish me luck!
I also decided to take some advice that I have receive from many, many people here. Steamed Asian pears are supposed to be good for coughs and the lungs. Within TCM, they are considered to be a ‘cool’ or ‘yin’ food, and eating them will cool you down and relieve your lungs.
So I prepared them. I’m not a big fan of this fruit in its raw state, and I don’t normally go out of my way to buy them. At home, they are also really expensive, but here, I was able to get 3 pears for the equivalent of about 75 cents (US). Raw, the Asian pear is crisp in the way a water chestnut is crisp, and so juicy that it drips everywhere. Steamed, however, it is delectable. Regardless of what my lungs thought of them, they were an enjoyable snack 
