Language Barrier

As an athlete, pain is my companion; and will continue to be until I stop exercising. Today, pain caused me to seek a doctor after hours. Unfortunately, at 7 pm, normal doctors are off work; and even if I could find a doctor, all they could prescribe me are pain killers and a referral for a physical therapist. So since I'm in Hong Kong, I went in search for a traditional Chinese doctor. I eventually managed to find one.

The clinic itself was stocked to the brim with interesting Chinese medicinal ingredients from caterpillars to snakeskin to sea horse, etc. and every person sitting in the shop had needles sticking out of their bodies left and right (hands, head, scalp, nose, etc.). The doctor was a pretty old man. And although I think I'm decent at conversational Chinese, we definitely had difficulties communicating.

It's interesting how language evolves over time; and one of the easiest ways to see this is through talking to the older generation. Many of the words he used were quite obscure and I'm pretty sure many of them had been replaced by other words. His writing was also not only very traditional but also very messy and written in seemingly no sense. He wrote left to right, right to left, and above and below. Then he laughed at my fear of needles and gave me a light session of cupping, taped some black balls behind my ears and told to rub them until it hurts, and gave me ingredients that I had to boil for an hour and then drink. All for the price of $346 HKD.

Although I feel slightly better, I can't help but feel that with the language barrier, lack of receipt, and bag of random ingredients, I'm missing something vital and maybe I've been fooled somewhere. But I've done Chinese medicine before...and its always worked in the past, so maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me.