Kindly Remove Your Fatty Liver

Within the first week of arriving in this blessed nation of 1.3 billion, I was trucked off to an undisclosed location, promptly disrobed, probed, poked, and examined. Alright, so maybe it sounds better without all the mundane details, but it was still quite the surreal experience, only further enhanced by the confusion and language barriers.

Apparently, if you plan on staying in the country and working for more than six months, you must surrender to an extensive health examination to make sure you aren’t bringing in anything that China officially doesn’t have- you know like bird flu, HIV, and hepatitis.

Anyways, we took the company van out to the suburbs to a nice looking hospital which served as the infected foreigner removal center. In fact, I think it said something like that on the sign. Maybe.

First stop was the relentless forms which the Chinese love so much. Then came the red stamps, which they love even more than paperwork. And rice. Combined. Then we paid our fees, got a picture taken and were told to go to room 1 down a dark and ominous hallway. There, a diminutive lady gave me a key, a robe, and pointed in the direction of a changing room. Then comes the age-old question of how much should I really be taking off? This comes up a lot in China, especially in massage parlours (I swear I go to legit ones), so this time I decided to be safe and keep the undies on. You just never know when a brisk wind could come up.

So with papers in head, I set out down a different corridor to acquire all the red stamps I needed to be able to leave. Awkward, robe-induced conversation with people from all over the world is incited, and goes something like this:

“So, where you from?”

“Sweden.”

“Cool.”

First stop was X-ray. Seriously, I don’t know, just full body x-rays. You don’t question the Chinese government and their methods, you just don’t. Then I proceeded down the hall to the height and weight station (yay! I’m average here). I distinctively remember being in the 98th percentile in a height test in the States at some point. Next, I was hooked up to an EKG machine, moved along to the blood sample room, and ended up at the vision test.

The vision test never goes well for the Long family, at least the ones like me that inherited the Koerner side of the genes, like me. I can see fine now, thanks to the glasses that cure me from somewhere near total and utter darkness, but the color blindness gets me every time. However, this time I remembered a trick that my uncle told me last time I saw him in California. On that special visit he decided to take out his tiny, but awesome, 2 seat plane, and pick me up from my grandparents’ house outside of San Diego, and fly me back to L.A. to meet up with some friends. As we are flying back at dusk, we are approaching the runway, and Uncle Mike points out the two sets of smallish lights on either side of the runway. He explains hurriedly that they are some sort of approach warning, so that you can guide yourself in at the right level, letting you know if you are going to over or under-shoot the runway. As co-pilot, and inheritor of the color-blindness to a much lessor extent, it was my job to tell him if it was green for good job, yellow for a bit too low, or red, your ass is gonna end up in the grass. How he flies alone still mystifies me.

Anyways, he said that to get and renew his pilot license, which he has had to do several times, you must pass the color test, but that he manages to use the nurses to his advantage. After they show him the little mosaics with barely different colors, and he is expected to point out the figure 8 in red or whatever, he looks a little helpless. The nurse then prods, asking does he see the eight? After a further lingering, but not too pregnant of a pause, the nurse will invariably say, right here, this eight right here? Can’t you see it? she will dubiously ask. At which point you proclaim, oh yes of course! There it is, I saw it all along, and trace the figure eight right where she has just shown you.

So I tried that with the nurse, and this time added the little twist of pretending to not really understand the question, and I ended up with just the marginally bad “Red green color weakness” stamp on my form. But there are worse stamps. Oh, much worse.

The next stop is the ultrasound, which I frankly thought where only given to pregnant women. I got all gooed-up, and got to experience maybe just a little bit what it may feel like to be having a baby. That’s really about as close as I’m hoping to get to the whole process. After all that, I see a few of my fellow compatriots who are having a good laugh out in the hall. Apparently one of the “heavier” teachers didn’t do so well in the ultrasound room. No, he wasn’t pregnant, but should maybe reconsider his lifestyle.

Although still cleared to teach, he received the Scarlet Letter of the stamps, the creme de la creme of all possible proclamations, “Fatty Liver.”

No explanations, no prescribed course of action, no reprimand, just the stamp to let him know that his liver wishes he’d stop drinking beer and eating at McDonalds.

All it took was a quick trip to China, where they have no qualms about telling it like it is, and stamping it out for the world to see.