Entry #5: I'm so glad I never committed a felony

Alright, it’s about time you guys found out about this little incident of mine in the Orient. In my second month in Shanghai, I decided to join a gym. Having moved downtown, I decided that I would join the closest one, which just happened to be a little place called Physical. It was apparently one of the oldest gyms in Shanghai, having been open for over 20 years. Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know. Regardless, I went for a tour and it seemed relatively decent. They had nearly all the equipment that 24 Hour Fitness had back at home except a swimming pool and free exercise classes, neither of which I used on a regular basis anyways. So at first glance, the place is pretty good right? I mean, everything seems to be A-Okay. The guys there are also a lot buffer and cut than the guys at the US gyms. I suppose it’s easier for Asian guys to get cut since not many of them are fat to begin with. So I figure, great. It’ll be motivation for me to loose some excess luggage. I go to the sales girl and I sign up.

Oh, here’s another funny short story. I went to take a tour with Tina while she was here and I suppose the sales girl thought I didn’t speak Chinese because the whole time, Tina and I spoke in English. So the next time when I went to sign up for a membership she starts speaking English to me, or at least I guess it was meant to be English. Two white guys were standing at the counter trying to sign up for a membership as well. After a while I could tell that she was having trouble finding the right words in English so I say to her “Ni jiang zhong wen hao le, wo ting de dong de.” Meaning, “Go ahead and speak Chinese, I can understand.” Well, needless to say, this was a little embarrassing for her, as everyone around us started laughing. I guess the situation was pretty funny though. Two Chinese people conversing in English with neither one being able to understand the other, what interesting times we live in.

Okay, so continuing on with the story, or as much of a narrative as this can be, I sign up for a membership and on my first day, I go to work out. The work out was okay. I was able to do everything in my routine without trouble and on my way to the showers I think “Sure, this gym membership is nearly 4 times the amount I pay at home, but I guess it’s worth it considering I’m able to keep up with my lifestyle. Besides, this place isn’t so bad. It looks so much trendier, and it’s in a high-rise so it looks like pretty cool.” No sooner had I finished that thought did I find a condom wrapper in my shower stall. What on God’s green earth is a condom wrapper doing in a MEN’S shower??? Being the incredibly bright young pre-medical scholar that I am, I immediately deduced that its presence could only be due to one of two reasons. Either one, someone had snuck a girl into the shower and proceeded to fornicate with her, or two, the fornication had been engaged in by two male members of the gym. As the shower was located near the back of the men’s locker room and would prove exceedingly difficult for any female to reach undetected amongst a horde of naked men, save the protection of some shadowy cloak of invisibility, I logically concluded that the latter reason would likely better fit with theories of probability. Needless to say, yet still I must say it, as a biology major and a decently educated human being, I immediately realized the health risks of such lewd public behavior and proceeded to inform the manager of this. I think his response was “Well, you know, this is a big place and all sorts of people come here. We’re extremely sorry” As I left, I curtly told him that should I be diagnosed with AIDS, I would be suing the place.

Now, as if that wasn’t enough. The next day while I’m surfing the net, I come across this article on the Shanghaiist website about gay gyms in the city. As you can probably guess, my gym topped off the list with over 50% of the male members estimated to be homosexual or strongly inclined to delight in anal rapture.

Great, it seems that my luck is the same in all hemispheres.

After I found out this little tidbit of information, I have to say that I got to be quite paranoid. Not because I think I’m some hot-shit by homosexual standards or because my ass is as immaculate as a nectarine in late spring, but because it just made me feel downright dirty to be looked at by other men who might possibly enjoy having their cinnamon hole frosted by their spotting partner.

On two occasions, and keep in mind I’ve been at this place for less than a month, some guy showering across from me has opened his shower curtains just as I opened mine so I can grab my towel and dry myself. Now, this would not be abnormal if he were getting out of the shower as well. However, he did not. On both occasions, the guys just kept showering with the curtains open, staring at me while I dried myself. It was so uncomfortable that I couldn’t even look in their direction. So initially, I would turn my back to them while I dried myself, but on second thought, it crossed my mind that they might actually like it, so I immediately warp myself up and get out of the showers, giving the guy a look of murderous rage, which I have no doubt the ass-plunger took to be a look of “come hither”. Again, I do not hate gay people. I just don’t wish to be made the subject of their fudge packing fantasies. Someone save me.

Everyday, I walk out of the gym and think “God, this is what prison must be like.”

Entry #4 What about the Dan Dans of the world?

You maybe wondering just who the hell Dan Dan is. Well, she's a girl in a rural Chinese village that had a hole in her abdomen. Her illness began when she was 12 and she spent 7 years in bed before there was enough media coverage for the local hospital to take some action - the same one that turned her away before when her parents didn't have enough money to continue her operations.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning. I just finished watching the show on CCTV channel 10 where they showed a documentary of a girl named Dan Dan with a hole in her abdomen. The official title of the documentary was called - I kid you not - "She has a hole in her abdomen", I guess someone didn't pay the writers this month. One day at the age of 12 Dan Dan had a sickening stomach ache and decided to tell her mom about it, who - being a truly wonderful mother - took her to the local doctor immediately. The local doctor, summoning all the medical knowledge he had acquired from the self-paced biology lesson he took in high-school, diagnosed her with appenditicis and immediately proceeded to operate on her. Because you know, care and attention to detail is SO overrated in the medical profession. So, after Dr. Kevorkian took out her healthy appendix - or at least we hope it was her appendix, and not her spleen - the aching resumed with the pain being even more fierce than before. The opening from the surgery had failed to close over time and soon the skin around it began to rot. Her parents began to worry more than ever before and proceeded to take her to hospital after hospital in hopes of a proper diagnosis and treatment. This did not happen. She was wrongfully diagnosed at every single hospital and suffered needless surgeries only to be turned away when her parents had given up ever ounce of their life savings and could give no more. She was left to rot in her own bed for the next 7 years, awaiting with each cycle of the sun, her slow yet seemingly imminent death. The wound began to grow larger and more of her bowels began to seep out of the unnatural orifice shaped by rotting flesh. Her parents lived day to day, saving only enough money to keep her barely alive with some meager amount of food, because you see, by this time, so much of her bowels had rotted that the food did not even have a chance to reach the rest of her intestines before falling right out of her body. She was 19 at the time this documentary was made. Her body was that of an 8 year old.

That's when her parents began contacting the media about their story, tv station after tv station, newspaper after newspaper, she went to them all. And as no media source can ignore a story such as this - for a few years before, it would have been far less dramatic and therefore, less news worthy - they flocked to her bedside like vultures sensing the rotting flesh of her bowels. Who could resist a story such as this? For if she died, it could surely be used as a propaganda piece against the healthcare system, and if she lived, it would be a story of triumph and courage about how one little girl survived because an entire country held out their hands and lifted her from the dark well of mortality. Either way, people loved this stuff and the ratings showed that they ate it up. And so it was with this motivation behind them that Dan Dan's story began to spread like wildfire around the country. It was not long before the chief of her county hospital was called to its attention and agreed to take her in free of charge. He instituted a program in which every staff member in the hospital was responsible for providing Dan Dan with one nutritious meal. Of course, all of this was done under the scrutiny of the media. A skilled GI doctor from Beijing even heard about the news and offered to operate on her. Finally, after much diagnosis, it was confirmed that she did not have an appendicitis that one fateful year so long ago, but rather, she had a bowel infection which came about due to her innately weak immune system. They opened another hole on her left side so that she could have a colostomy bag placed there. Her abdominal wound and bowels are suppose to heal over time, after which they will reattach her intestines and remove the colostomy bag. Whether or not this ever happened, I don't know.

At the end of the documentary, she walks out of the hospital, colostomy bag attached - the first time she's been in the outside world since the age of 11. She has no idea how the world has changed in the last 7 years, and considering that she lives in China, I would imagine that she does not recognize much now. The show ends with a scene of her riding on a public bus and taking into her lungs the polluted city air as if it were her first fresh breath in decades. If I had to guess, I would say that it's what air on top of Everest must taste like.

And now that we've saved Dan Dan, what about all of the other Dan Dans in China? Asia? The world? Must we shine the camera lights in every wretched face to read the messages of death that fall from their silent lips?

If history is any indicator of truth, than perhaps we should.