National Day Week

One of the more noticeable differences for anyone from the West going to China exposes itself when you go out to eat. This won’t happen at some of the more Western places, but it will happen once in a while; you'll be required to pay for your meal up front. Typically the prices are modest. The exchange rate is a favorable U.S. $1: China’s 6.67RMB approximately, and a meal can be very cheap; anywhere from 10 kuai for a full meal to 50 kuai for a lower end, fast food style restaurant. The meals are big. For a grand total of 35 kuai you can get a very full meal including all kinds of fruits, vegetables, rice, meats and a few sodas at the upstairs restaurant in the dining hall on campus. Sometimes, you’ll be required to pay before; sometimes they won’t charge you until after. It can be difficult to judge when they’re going to charge you before based on the restaurant.

After having a meal at the upstairs restaurant in the dining hall, the group of us who stayed behind for national day break decided to go to Wudaokou’s bar street to play pool. I was still a little hungry so I ordered a plate of french fries and a water. After finishing the fries, we played foosball and pool. It was a good time to meet other Americans who weren’t part of a large program. We were from all different parts of the country: Illinois, New York, and Texas. I sipped my water while asking the Texas girl some questions hoping to hear a little bit of her southern accent slip out in the answer. The water was quite cool compared to usual, almost refreshing. No luck on eliciting the accent.

After a beer or two we decided to rent out a Karaoke Television room (KTV). I’d done this on the travelling seminar with people from the Syracuse program, but this time we went with a few native Beijingers and the kids down the hall. KTV is a huge draw in China. There are more KTV sites than probably any recreational activity in the big cities, and they are very popular among the young. How it works is pretty obvious, a group of people rents out a room of an appropriate size, and orders drinks while they sing some of their favorite Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Western songs. This was our final stop of the evening and we were all very excited for it. I sing only Western songs because the other songs' lyrics come up as Chinese characters and my ability to read them is limited.

It was past midnight before anyone noticed and I was on my fourth trip to the restroom. My stomach aches a lot and I lay off the drinking. After I get back to the room, I lay down on the couch until everyone is ready to head back for the evening. Roughly 45 minutes later everyone starts gathering money to pay for the evening’s indulgences and we get cabs back. I took my bike down to Wudaokou but in my state riding back is not an option. I use the restroom one final time at the KTV and begin to suspect that something is not right with me.

The elevator stops on nearly every floor and I'm trying not to let anyone see that I'm sweating. I get flashes of 28 Days Later and Zombies and wonder when I'm going to turn. I can only hope I can make it to my room before someone gets nervous and decides to put me down. We stop on nine and I rush to my room while my stomach gets violently worse with every step. At this point I’m beginning to break a sweat and I’m feeling a bit dehydrated. I have a bottle of water on my desk that I start to down quickly. Within minutes that water is coming back up and I have to use the restroom again. Something is very much wrong with me.

I lie down on my bed and try to rest. Every half hour I’m back up and into the restroom. Without going into too many of the details, what I had was something like dysentery. I would suffer an entire day of these symptoms in which I could not eat or drink anything without it being forced back out of me. I'm miserable, I'm in pain and I'm homesick. At six o’clock in the evening I look emaciated and head to the Tsinghua University Hospital with some friends for a truly valuable cultural experience. I'm hungry and dehydrated, eager for an IV.