No, I didn't have to make my way through a cramped back alley with steaming buns and bleeding chicken heads. The Chinese doctor actually has an office in the clinic or hospital like all the other branches of (Western) medicine. It's even covered by my university health care and much cheaper than western medicine, as I was to discover.
Chinese medicine is known for just using the measuring of your pulse to determine what's wrong with you and focuses mostly on balancing one's 阴 yin and 阳 yang (cold/hot or dark/bright or female/male - the characters contain the symbol for moon 月 or sun 日, respectively), for example if a patient has fever or inflammation, it means she has too much yang in her, so she is prescribed stuff like herbs or berries or in extreme cases dried animals to be cooked into a tonic that are associated with yin qualities. I got a prescription for about ten different components, of which I only recognized two as camomile (or some Asian relative thereof) and Wolfberries - which I believe are yin, but if someone knows better, please let me know. I have to say, I think the doctor did not quite take me seriously. He questioned my translator (poor Xu Feng knows more about my medical record now than most my family members) why I didn't go to the Western doctor. Well, I don't really think constantly being on antibiotics is a good measure to prevent ear infections. He thought I was just curious, which I guess is true to some extend, but I had actually hoped to get something out of this.
What I was not prepared for was the 针灸 zhen jiu (accupuncture and moxibustion). I had read about that in my Chinese textbook (remember when you're starting to learn a foreign language and the first lessons are "at the train station" or "at the doctor's office" - well, it turns out to be useful when learning Chinese in China). According to Wikipedia
Moxibustion is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy using moxa, or mugwort herb. Suppliers usually age the mugwort and grind it up to a fluff; practitioners burn the fluff or process it further into a stick that resembles a (non-smokable) cigar. They can use it indirectly, with acupuncture needles, or sometimes burn it on a patient's skin.Ugh. I don't think any of this was actually involved. All I can tell is that he stuck two about 10cm long needles into my neck, just below the ear, which were then heated up using some kind of heating lamp. I think the idea is that the heat can drive out infection. Uhm, in my case it hurt more after than before and caused swelling where he had stuck the needles. While sticking them into my neck he exclaimed to everyone's amusement (including the waiting patients - there is not much privacy in Chinese doctor's offices, or anywhere in China I suppose) that my ear would look extremely different from a Chinese ear. That explained the pain, I suppose...
So, I'm still working on drinking my herbal tonic, it tastes quite disgusting, but I have been told it's really harmless for Chinese medicine. I have to soak the herbs, flowers and tree bits in water for a while, then cook it for 20 minutes and drink this twice daily for three days. Nowadays Chinese medicine also comes prepared in pill form, but according to my friends that's not as effctive as the freshly brewed kind. No wonder, if you have to drink bitter tonic every day, wouldn't you want to get better quickly?
And btw, I only paid 4yuan for three bags of herbs. They sell them in most pharmacies. Usually they carry both western and Chinese medicine. And it's not just measuring the pulse and looking at your skin - the doctor asked a lot of questions what my problem is. So much for the magic of it...
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