Sino-Malady

I was told by many before I got here that the first thing that you are required to do upon arriving in China is to get sick. Every traveler I’d met told me to prepare for the worst; they told me that the mixture of smog, questionable drinking water, un-FDA-ified food products, and general filth was a sort of reverse catholicon, ensuring a uniquely horrifying sickness experience for one and all.

And so I arrived in Beijing determined not to succumb to that dreaded infirmity. At first, despite the mixture of jet-lag and confusion lowering my overall immunity, I felt fairly confident that I would make it. I was steered clear of shady food by my friend and temporary host, Chet, I felt none of the telltale signs of sickness that I have come to know so well, and I avoided tap water like the plague (which, ironically, it possibly contained).

But 5000 years of history and viral circulation was not to be denied, and on my 6th day I awoke well before dawn with the first of many hints that I might be succumbing: uncontrollable diarrhea. From approximately 3:30AM to 6AM, I made at least 15 trips to the bathroom, the last few during which I’m almost certain I evacuated several of my back teeth. At 6AM, however, I received a much needed reprieve as the flow of traffic suddenly reversed, and I, in the space of a few seconds, reenacted the entire consumption of my dinner from the previous evening in reverse. It was quite a show.

Exhausted by the performance, I curled up for a quick nap on the bathroom floor. After a few moments, however, the rumblings in my stomach suggested that I take that nap sitting up, which I did. Eventually I dragged myself back to my makeshift bed in Chet’s study, and sank into a deep coma-like sleep.

Around 7:30AM I received another clue to the origins of my ordeal as Chet approached my door, swaying unsteadily like a zombie, to inquire if I, too, was feeling ill. I informed him that not only was I feeling ill, but that I had been sharing some disturbingly intimate moments with his guest bathroom for the past several hours.

“Throwing up helped,” I weakly suggested to him as he staggered back to his room. Later, what sounded like a bear attempting to sing Pavarotti began to audition in the master bathroom. The most I could muster was a muted chuckle as I pulled the blankets over my head and was consumed again by sleep.

Apparently, the food that we had ordered delivered the night before contained traces of some nameless evil that rendered the two of us useless for the remainder of the day. I spent most of the day sleeping, and the rest waking up in strange places and wondering how I got there. For variety, I interspersed this with uncontrollable shivering and more bathroom escapades.

Curled up in the bottom of the tub with shower water beating down on me, lying prone in a patch of sunlight on Chet’s living room floor, sprawled across a wooden bench with a Tonka truck as a pillow, and sitting at the kitchen counter with my moist forehead resting perfectly in the rim of a lukewarm mug of tea were only a few of the strange places I regained consciousness that day.

Chet and I crossed paths occasionally, in our wanderings around the apartment. We would grunt what neither of us was sure was a greeting or a dry heave at each other and continue on our meanderings. We were much like the walking dead…only aimless as if all the humans had already died. Suffice it to say that we both eventually recovered. The next day we were both more or less convalesced, leading us to believe that it must have been one of those 24 hour poisonings.

In my errant anticipation, I had thought that the sickness would come for me from the skies in the form of bad air quality lowering my immunity. But, as if sensing my wariness towards that angle of attack, the insidious affliction hid itself in an unsuspecting carton of sweet and sour chicken. I almost wish that I had been less vigilant and let nature (well, actually, the opposite of nature) run its course, for in my futile calculations I failed to factor in the risk that my friend and comrade Chet might become the collateral damage of my initiation illness.