H1N1, Part II

I already mentioned how H1N1 has been a big deal here, and how my temperature is checked by my dorm staff. Well, a few weeks ago, the H1N1 vaccine was made available to all university students.

I happened to be taking a nap when my friend frantically called me and said we had to go to the university hospital immediately to get vaccines. I stumbled out of bed and was not prepared for the chaos ensuing at the hospital. Hundreds of students were pushing and shoving, waiting to fill out some papers and get their vaccines. Nurses were injecting people as fast as they could.

Since my friend and I are foreigners, we always get special treatment (not fair, but, hey, I’ll take it!). We went to the front of the “line” and tried to fill out the papers. We only wrote our first names and the name of our dorm; the other blanks were irrelevant since we are not Chinese.

Then we got our vaccines, and the nurses said not to shower for three days. My only guess is that the hospital doesn’t want to be responsible for thousands of students with infections from the unclean water…



That night I started feeling sick. For three days all I did was sleep. On the third morning, I went to the hospital, but they just gave me some cold medicine. That night my fever was ridiculously high, so I went back to the hospital. They tried to take blood, but because I had only been sleeping for the past few days, they could not get any blood from the vein in my arm. This was not a fun process of being poked, prodded, and having to squeeze my fist, move my arm, etc. Finally they were able to get a small amount of blood, just enough to run some tests.

I ended up getting some more shots. After that I was fine except for being tired. I stayed home from class for four more days to rest. I’m completely fine now. I’m pretty sure I was sick because I reacted to the H1N1 vaccine; it was the poor-quality Chinese one, not the standard western one. Once again, great job, China!

I’m not sure if this counts as having H1N1… I think it does, and when I am old, I will tell my children that I went to China, got H1N1 during the 2009 pandemic, and survived.

H1N1

Everyone in China is freaked out about the swine flu, and rightly so. China is crowded and dirty. Several people live together in apartments the size of some U.S. families’ living rooms. Many apartment buildings have shared bathrooms that are, needless to say, filthy. And friends share food and drinks all the time.

Universities are especially concerned. Students are housed six or eight people per tiny dorm room. Libraries, dining halls, and classrooms are all crowded and thousands of people use them every day.

The number one in Chinese is “yi” so everyone says H-yi-N-yi, which I find very funny. If they say “H” and “N” (not Chinese) can’t they also say “one”? Actually, I’m wondering what other countries say in their languages… for example in Russian, what looks like an “H” says “N” and they don’t go around translating the name of the swine flu into н-один-N-один. No, no one does that. H-uno-N-uno, H-eins-N-eins, H-un-N-un? Anyone?

But back on topic, last week I entered Zhuan Jia Lou - where I live - and the desk workers stopped me and checked my temperature. Beside my name and room number they carefully recorded my temperature to the thousandths decimal place.

And just today, all the international students met in an auditorium, and the police talked to us about safely and sanitation. (I’m not sure why it was the police who came… that doesn’t really make sense, does it?) Then they gave everyone a fairly large bottle of disinfecting solution. As soon as I had hot water tonight, I cleaned everything in my room. I’m not so worried about getting the swine flu; I just like to clean things, especially in China.

I would also like to mention that the cleaning solution they gave us was produced and bottled in Lanzhou, by the Lanzhou Numerous Sterilization Products Company. It’s “galloping horse” brand, and is called 84. Impressive.