Duncan got sick just before Christmas with a sore throat and laryngitis. He decided to see what traditional Chinese medicine would do for him. We were with one of my HK colleagues, Pak Sheung, and he volunteered to facilitate the process. First was finding a practitioner. There are plenty of them around, with little shops around the neighborhoods, but Pak wanted to make sure we found a good one. The one he chose, I pass frequently and there is always a line of people, sitting on stools in the store, waiting to see the doctor. I did not experience that part of it (Pak and Elizabeth, along with the patient seemed sufficient), but the doctor felt various energy points and asked several questions before prescribing a concoction that was to be taken for 4 days. It would not be ready until the evening, and in we had to go back for each of the next 4 evenings to pick up a 10 oz paper cup that was filled with the medicine. I don't know the ingredients (barks, leaves, roots, etc.), but it was black and thick and smelled sort of like licorice, but worse. The taste was extremely bad - very bitter, the sort of thing you might give somebody if you wanted them to throw up. I just had a small taste to see what it was like but Duncan was supposed to consume the entire 10 oz. We discovered subsequently that many people have switched to western medicine here because they cannot deal with the taste of these remedies. Duncan did his best, and by the fourth day got down about half of it, but I think he has had his fill of Chinese medicine.
Did it do any good? Hard to say, because he was not that sick and would have got better anyway. Pak's point of view was interesting. He said that experiencing the bitterness was part of the cure. It was part of the price to be paid to get the benefit of health.
Elizabeth enjoyed the football at the East Asian Games- sort of - though we were there for about 5.5 hours which was a little much. So the following, we went to a different marathon activity, Cantonese Opera. Elizabeth's exercise class teacher was performing. There were nine sets of two performers, one playing the female and the other the male role, although they were often both women. The female role was sung in falsetto, which meant it was really high. Each pair only sung one song, but each song lasted about half an hour, so you can do the maths. Everything was in Cantonese, so we had no idea what was going on. Good live music, with a mixture of Western and Chinese instruments, but overall something of an endurance test. The performers are supposed to be singing for the gods, which is just as well as the audience didn't seem to be paying too much attention. Actually, sometimes they were, but at other times they would be having loud conversations with each other or falling asleep. It was an older crowd. We were the only white folk there and also part of the few who were under 60.
I took a break at one point and wandered round the neighborhood in search of some flowers to give to Elizabeth's teacher. They were easily found and more interesting was the scene at the local office of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. It was mobbed, with lots of people spilling into the neighboring plaza, where they were sitting around, perusing the racing paper and often smoking cigarettes. Mostly male, but not entirely so. I think I wrote about going to the races a couple of months back. This is the off- track part of the experience. It looked like the Hong Kong counterpart of a familiar working class British tradition. However, here, the Jockey Club has the monopoly on betting (or legal betting, I should say), so the shops are fewer and the crowds at them larger.