23,000 Doctors

Can you imagine getting medical advice from 23,000 doctors?  That's what it seems like at Sias University when you get a cold.  Every student has a remedy and tells you about it.  Nian Ci (Jean) is currently suffering through her third cold of the fall.  The worst part, or so it seems to us, is the open invitation sickness provides to anyone to offer free advice.  And they expect you to follow it.

For example, the most common suggested cure for a cold is drinking lots of water-- hot water.  We heard that again today.  Or perhaps you should use the water to make soup using red sugar (we had no idea what red sugar is so the student went to the store and bought us a bag of brown sugar, labeled red sugar here).  Nian Ci learned from another student that there is a medicine with her name, Nian Ci, which is also a good treatment for the cold, but we never went to the pharmacy to pick it up.  Another common prescription, of course, is to dress warm.  One day when I greeted a student as I arrived at class and said that I had an upset stomach, she pointed at my short sleeved shirt and said, "No wonder!  Put more clothes on!"  (it was still warm outside!)  Other bits of advice have included changing my custom of drinking a cup of coffee upon awakening; "You shouldn't have coffee on an empty stomach."  Finally, my favorite prescription is to eat more pears.  A "pear" is not the fruit we call a pear but a "papple"-- a pear-apple hybrid that is common here.  Eating lots of pears, it seems, is the cure for the common cold.  While Nian Ci has had frequent colds so far this year, I have only had one.  Or rather, I felt one coming on.  So that night at supper I ate a pear.  The next day the cold was gone!  Now I'm a believer.
Does some of this advice remind you of the remedies your mom forced you to take when you were young?  Many foreign teachers have exclaimed to their student- doctors that "You remind me of my mother!", to which they smile appreciatively.  There is no higher compliment than to be compared to a mother.
In my next blog entry I will continue the topic of being healthy in a Chinese culture-- a fascinating study.