Snow and Lights

It snowed on me yesterday in the deep south. The picture shows about how drastic it got, though. It was snow, sleet and rain all at once, a definite wintry mix. The 43 degree weather soon turned it all to rain, which continued throughout the night.

I asked my employer yesterday about medical care while I'm in China. The answer I received was that most Chinese don't know how to acquire medical insurance and to just go to a good hospital if I feel really sick and they'll take care of it. I have a cold right now, and over-the-counter stuff takes pretty good care of it. I'm just not sure what the availability of Sudafed is, or if I come down with something more serious, how I can quickly get my hands on some penicillin or something. I jokingly replied that I would just avoid getting sick. It's 24 degrees in Qingdao right now, which has me sniffling and wondering if in a couple weeks I might be building a snowman, or drinking hot tea and trying to recover from the same damn cold.

This brings me to the medical exam. I did find some information online regarding the medical exam all foreigners entering with a Z visa looking for residency in China must pass. It's a basic physical with a couple weird twists, as far as I can tell. I'm eating the entire cost, which comes out to about $50USD. The list of things can be found here, as told by some guy who went through it all: http://journeyeast.org/News/MedicalExam.asp . There's a blood test, probably to check for diseases and more serious problems health-wise, but I wonder how invasive the test is. Then a series of other tests, strangest of which is a sonogram. They want to know if I'm pregnant I guess, but that shouldn't be an issue. Still, this is something I'm kind of concerned about, because I can't find any information on what they're primarily screening for, or what would cause them to deny an applicant the essential Residency Permit that is the purpose of the test. Spend $2k to fly halfway across the world and have them tell me I can't stay? No thanks.