Feeling Sick in China

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I have been previously writing about gifts that travel has given me. Self-confidence and a lot of new possibilities, opening my mind, being excited about life among other things. And now I have gotten a new gift which is maybe more practical than the rest. 

That gift stems from the fact that I spend a lot less time online when I travel than when I live at home. I don't read the news. I don't have time to read that many articles. I think less about what other people think of me and I spend much more time just creating. 

I have previously thought that it's better to listen than talk. Therefore I have taken more in than what I've put out. I have spent more time studying theory than practicing, assuming that it's necessary. 

In fact, it has been harmful and I can clearly see that now. Sometimes it's really good to read less, listen less, and do more, create more, put out more.

As I am writing this I'm slowly recovering from whatever has been making my stomach sick for the past five days. I've had constipation, diarrhea, pain in the stomach and in the lower back, low energy and sleepiness. As a result I have been unable to eat. For one whole day I couldn't eat anything at all. Even the smell of soy milk made me nauseous. I spent the day sleeping. I didn't have a fever, but I was feeling very weak and depressed. 

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Then I slowly started to get better. I started eating fruit and bread in small portions, then crackers with jam. I still can't eat any ”Chinese food” meaning anything cooked in a sauce, or fried in oil. 

After I had gotten a little better, I had a Chinese massage. Our local host Johanna told me that I had dyspepsia, which means upper stomach problems. She said I should try eating more hot food. The fact that my body feels weak and the coldness of my hands signifies that my stomach is ”cold”, too. 

This hot and cold duality is characteristic of Traditional Chinese Medicine (or TCM), which is all about balance. Too hot, too cold or too much of anything at all disrupts that balance. To restore the balance I have to try eating something to make the intestine work better again. 

At first I thought Traditional Chinese Medicine was very interesting, but then Johanna's moralizing started to annoy me. All I wanted was a smoothie, but she wouldn't let me eat or drink anything cold.

Johanna also said that I had some problems with my lungs. She said it's not pollution as I've been in Beijing for just a week (and it hasn't even been that polluted). To make that better we put some pear in hot water and I drank that for half an hour. If there is some problems with my lungs, I think it's the pollution. It has to be.

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The next day, we went to a Chinese doctor who looked at my back and agreed with Johanna that my body was too cold. Then I had a massage, a spoon massage (this thing where they scratch your back with a Chinese spoon), cupping and a foot massage. Oh my God! So great! I have ugly round cup marks on my back now to prove that I've done something authentically Chinese. (I wanted to put pictures here, but Aapo said don't, because they might upset someone).

I also had two moxibustion therapy sessions. In moxibustion therapy, dried mugwort (moxa) is burned close to certain points on the body. It's a form of fire heat treatment that was supposed to treat the "cold" in my stomach.

I feel tired. I have found it quite difficult to stay healthy and energized in China. Actually, I'm surprised with how much time I have spent being sick already. Whenever I have travelled for a week or two in the past, the body was able to handle the different food, bacteria, time zone, emotions, air, water and the environment. Also, I've never travelled outside "the clean zone" of most Western countries.

But now we've been travelling already for over a month. The body cannot take it anymore. It has been waiting for when I'm going to get back home to the familiar lifestyle, but I haven't. Now it has to get used to the new lifestyle, which really takes a toll on me (and it).

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Chinese food is usually cooked – boiled or fried – and it is served in a (greasy) strong smelling sauce. There is no raw food here. Whenever I order a plain green salad, I get a salad that is covered in huge amounts of onion and some kind of sauce. The only raw plain vegetables I've seen here I saw in a hot pot restaurant. It was the kind of place where everyone gets their own cooker and a pot with broth or your choice in it. Then you order stuff to cook in your own little hot pot – vegetables, meat, tofu, mushrooms, eggs... (It's actually a Taiwanese brand, called Xiabu Xiabu.) So I said ”no thank you” to the hot pot and ate my vegetables raw. 

Also, drinking water is expensive and the air is polluted. All of which makes me feel not so great.

Thankfully, there is a lot of fruit available in regular supermarkets, and that's mainly what I've been consuming while I've been feeling ill. Fruit and crackers. And tea.