Getting treatment

Going to the doctor is 看病 kànbìng, literally “to look at the illness”. It is the same verb for the patient and for the doctor: 我去看病, I am going to see a doctor, 医生给我看病, the doctor examines me. Symptoms, illnesses and accidents are on the page Health and illness; this one follows the patient once they have decided to get treatment.

In China, you almost never go to a local family doctor. You go straight to the hospital, 医院 yīyuàn “the courtyard of medicine”, and the first step is the counter: 挂号 guàhào, literally “to hang up a number” ⟶ to register and choose the department. So you have to know for yourself whether you need general medicine 内科 nèikē “the section of the inside”, or surgery 外科 wàikē “the section of the outside”. Today all of this is done on the phone, but the queues outside the big Beijing hospitals are still famous (tickets for the top specialists are gone in a few minutes).

Another surprise for a French person: the drip, 输液 shūyè “to transport liquid”, or more colloquially 打点滴 dǎ diǎndī. For a long time, people were put on one for a simple cold, and whole rooms were filled with patients sitting up, the bag above their heads. The health authorities have been trying to curb this habit for about ten years. I could not say where the practice stands today in small towns.

Chinese medicine, 中医 zhōngyī, is not a curiosity confined to shops: it has its own hospitals, and many “Western” hospitals have a 中医 department. The English name, acupuncture, is in fact incomplete. 针灸 zhēnjiǔ is 针 “the needle” + 灸 “moxibustion”, the mugwort burnt close to the skin ⟶ two techniques that the language does not separate. And the character 药 yào, medicine, carries the grass radical 艹 at the top: the first remedies were plants.

The Chinese doctor examines according to 望闻问切 wàng wén wèn qiè: looking, listening and smelling, asking, taking the pulse. Note that 闻 means both “to hear” and “to smell” (the page The five senses talks about it). On the other hand, some concepts do not really translate. 上火 shànghuǒ, “the fire that rises”, means a mouth ulcer, a spot, a sore throat or a foul mood all at once, and the cause is almost always the same: you have eaten something too spicy or too fried. I know of no English equivalent. It is treated with a herbal tea, 凉茶 liángchá, “cool tea”.

As for expressions, 华佗 Huà Tuó is the legendary doctor of the late Han, and saying of someone 华佗再世, “Hua Tuo come back to the world”, is the finest compliment you can pay a doctor. In everyday life, 你吃错药了吧 nǐ chī cuò yào le ba, “did you take the wrong medicine?”, means “have you lost your mind?”. Not something to say to your doctor.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order is shown stroke by stroke, with the arrow that gives the direction of the movement.