My Destiny

Acupuncture

Part 1....
That morning I had studying to do, five pages of intensive reading to learn by heart before the class in the afternoon, but I smile sweetly when they ask me to take the Foreigner to the Acupuncture Clinic. The leaders have decided that I should be the Foreigner's Minder, and the Foreigner wants to see some acupuncture, so I have to take him. I don't understand why he wants to go, he's not even ill. But I don't question it.

     The hospital is on the far side of the university campus, on the lower slopes of Yue Lu mountain, and as we walk along the path between the blocks of flats everyone stares at us: why is a pretty young student like me walking next to this tall, big nosed, pink faced Foreigner? One peasant woman drops her basket, and vegetables roll all over the road in front of us.

     'What are those long green things?' he asks, watching her as she scrambles to pick them up. Has he never seen bamboo shoots before?

     'Why do you want to see acupuncture?' I wasn't planning to ask, it just came out of my mouth, in English.

     'China is famous for it. I thought it might be fun to see.' Fun?

     'It's for when you're ill, in pain,' I say. 'Not for show.' How could something so old fashioned and ordinary be special for him?

     The hospital smells of herbal medicines, a sharp green smell that reminds me of childhood illnesses and my mother's cool hand on my hot forehead.

     'God awful smell,' he says.

     In the clinic a nurse is treating the neck of an old woman suffering from rheumatism. Under her short, roughly-cut hair, they stick out like knitting needles from a half finished sock. As the nurse manipulates them, pushing them further in, the old woman sighs with the familiar pain.

     I try to make things easier by saying, 'They don't have acupuncture in England.' The nurse mutters, 'Big nosed barbarians!' She pushes in the needles more forcibly, twisting them like those poles with spinning plates at the circus. There is a groan behind me and the Foreigner, green as the young bamboos, falls back on to the wooden floor boards, just missing the corner of a large metal cupboard. What if I'd injured him on my first morning as Official Minder? As I wait for his eyes to open, the nurse carries on angrily pulling out and replacing the needles in the brown, worn flesh.