"Health and happiness are more than important than anything else."
The subject of last week's lesson from 汉语口语, and a topic that's come up frequently since.
The very first thing I did in 2009 was board a train at four in the morning bound for a tiny village in Lianoning Province. It's name is Ge Jia Cun, and my connection with it is based on no more than the fact that my comrade-of-a-female-persuasion's mother once met one of its residents on a train and as I gather offered to help pay for their son's tuition during that journey. All of the families in this village are very poor, but life there isn't too bad because everyone has a roof, a heated stone bed (kang), probably a television and certainly an allotted area on the mountainside to grow pear trees (which size depends on the size of their family). I spent my time there helping out making corn dumplings, planting beans, breathing cigarette fumes and trying to avoid drinking too much or bankrupting every family that hosted me, as they would put quite literally everything they had in front of us at the dinner table (by which I mean kang).
During the summer we were invited back again to attend a wedding. This time was much the same, except everyone was wearing their best, drinking their most and spending money they'd carefully saved for many years to pay for it all. Meanwhile even I joined in the smoking (out of respect for local wedding traditions, you understand - and just one puff).
Fast forward to September, and the news from Ge Jia Cun is not so good. One of the women has contracted cancer, and in this country that would pride itself on a state that cares, her family now faces the prospect of unbearable debt or unbearable loss. The hospital in the nearest major city (Shenyang) told her they weren't capable of dealing with it, so they sent her to what is ostensibly the best one in China - where they have now removed who-knows-how-much of the cancer (and they're at no pains to explain it in much detail) at a cost of 25,000RMB. They have borrowed from everyone they know (what bank would help?) and will probably work decades to pay it off.
Here's a heartwarming aside: the hospital that bankrupted her family also charges for food - at prices far higher than you could find across the street at a regular restaurant. Like the others in the ward where I met her, she and her husband had since the operation forsaken all meals save for one bowl of rice gruel (zhou, tastier than the word "gruel" would imply) a day. That which we brought was of course refused, and then reluctantly accepted.
Her husband - who without enough income from the pear trees must risk his own life working on inner-city construction sites for half the year - now faces the prospect of more jobs and longer shifts. And if his wife needs another operation? Her stated wish is that she'd rather die than get them into more debt.
So when my teacher introduces the word 社会 ("society") with the example "China is a socialist society", I almost laugh out loud.
Of course, it will never be able to afford a state healthcare system unless it taxes its rich properly - and judging by this article there's a long way to go.
