The Secret to Good Postal Service

I live in a "communist" (more properly "socialist") country. Well, in name anyway. (In reality the world's lowest concentration of actual communists is in the Chinese Communist Party.) As such I live in, at least by popular perception, a surveillance state in which every move I make is watched by the agents of the state. This paranoid worldview has some merit, of course. Just to make sure people don't think I've gone native and am acting as an apologist for China's government let me make it abundantly clear: the Chinese government is evil. More evil, even, than the American government or the Canadian government. (The fact that the Dalai Lama is more evil than the Chinese government is a separate issue that I'll address at some other point.) The problem with using the word "evil", however, is that to most people this brings up comic book imagery—evil for the sake of doing evil—and that is patently not true. The evil has a purpose and a direction and, as a result, can actually be dealt with. We are not talking psychopaths exhulting in their service to evil here, we're talking normal people without the usual checks and balances that other, slightly less evil, societies place upon them.

So why am I babbling about evil as a precursor to talking about good postal service? Well, it's instructional, you see. Most expatriates living in China have the cartoon version of evil in their heads and are convinced that lurking behind every wall and around every corner is an agent of the 公安 (Public Security Bureau, a.k.a. police) just waiting to do something hopelessly evil for kicks. My first teaching partner in Jiujiang was that way. She would tell me tales in hushed breath of finding a microphone concealed inside a Santa Claus candle that was only exposed because the candle burned down to the point where you could see it. (She told it as a first-person story. Oddly enough, so have about two dozen other people from all around the country which leads me to believe that either these people are all passing along an urban legend as personal fact or that Santa Claus candles are very common surveillance tools spread all over China. I know which I believe.)

There I go again, talking about evil and not about postage. Well, the thing is, you see, that China Post is known for opening mail. Packages especially. Most expatriates have had lots of experience with getting packages in the mail that had been very obviously opened, rifled through and then passed on to them. And, of course, this leads to suspicions that things have been removed. (In many cases things have been removed, in fact.)

I don't have this experience. In eight years of living here I've had two packages opened and three which went astray. (There was also one that was delayed by a humourous whole year.) And the reason why? Basic psychology at work.

Yes, China Post opens mail. (So does Canada Post, incidentally. And every other mail system in the world. But since they're not labelled with the "communist" pejorative people assume it's for a "good" reason.) The trick to not getting your mail opened is to be aware that the people opening it aren't comic book villains. They're underpaid, overworked ordinary people just like you. In short, they're lazy. Just like you. If they have a choice of packages in front of them to inspect, they're going to take the one that's easy to open. The packages my mother sends (like the one I got today) are no such thing. My mother probably single-handedly props up various tape manufacturing companies' stock prices just by the way she packages the boxes. At least five metres of tape wrap every parcel. The parcel I got today might have had a grand total of 20 square centimetres untaped. This is not a parcel that's easy to open. This is the kind of parcel that an overworked, underpaid worker just like you is going to pass over in favour of another parcel that's got thin paper wrapping it (if any) and a few pieces of tape strategically placed to hold it in place.

That is how you get good postal service in China.

Settling down to the new routine.

So, the last couple of weeks have been very crazy and I lacked all energy and desire to think about my life at all, not to mention telling people about it. Things have settled down (somewhat), now, so I'll do a brief recap.

Lucas' medical problem is definitely not a serious version. There is every indication, in fact, that he could have learned to walk on his own and just been a little odd-looking while doing it for the rest of his life. There's even the possibility that there isn't a problem at all and that he's just a slow developer walking-wise. Still, that being said, I support the therapy for him. It's really simple analysis:

1. We don't do the therapy. Lucas has a problem. He's saddled with it for life. (bad outcome)
   
2. We don't do the therapy. Lucas doesn't have a problem. No change. (neutral outcome)
   
3. We do the therapy. Lucas has a problem. The therapy helps him. (good outcome)
4. We do the therapy. Lucas doesn't have a problem. No change. (neutral outcome)

If we don't do the therapy, we've got one bad possible outcome and one neutral possible outcome. If we do the therapy we've got one good possible outcome and one neutral possible outcome. (I'm not factoring in the cost of the therapy because the analysis is specifically for "should we spend the cash?" I'm also not putting in pessimistic evaluations like "we do the therapy and it makes things worse" for reasons I'll outline below.) Basically the answer writes itself, doesn't it?

Anyway, after some serious adjustments to lifestyles, we've settled into a new routine. I've had glimpses of his treatment in bits and pieces over the last little while but today, courtesy of visiting friends of Joan's mother and my own availability because of the national holiday (Grave-Sweeping Day), I got the whole picture and can paint a copy of it for those of you who haven't fallen asleep because of Yet Another Lucas Blog Entry (YALBE). Here's what my son goes through every day.

First he's bundled up and taken to the hospital. Upon arrival he's scheduled for the "neural channel balance" treatment. When the time comes, he's taken into the torture chamber treatment room and hooked up to the machine. The first round, for ten minutes, has electrodes on his wrists and at his elbows. He's given low-voltage, low-amperage shocks about 2.5 times per second making his muscles twitch. He hates this with a passion and starts squalling along with the 10-15 other babies in the room being given the same indignities. After a few minutes of this he stops squalling and just whines a lot. Now I'll point out that this treatment is not painful (I tried it out once for a lark as a form of exercise a few years back). It's just really, really annoying and to a baby undoubtedly really, really frightening.

After the ten minutes on the arm, the electrodes are moved to the ball of the foot and the back of the knee and he's left twitching there for 20 minutes. He hates this even more and squalls the entire time, exhausting himself. When this is finished he's moved to a different machine and hooked up behind the ears. I don't know what this particular machine is called since the labelling is all in Chinese, but it doesn't seem to cause any visible twitching. Further, once the electrodes are glued on and the machine turned on, Lucas slowly relaxes and, because of the exhaustion from the first two rounds, falls asleep. This goes on for 30 minutes.

Once the electroshock neural channel balance treatment is completed, he's moved over to physiotherapy. There a very nice doctor (and very patient, something he has to be to deal with a child as strong and wilful as my son!) puts Lucas through his paces. Now in the past, according to Joan, Lucas actively fought with the doctors. I saw no signs of this today, however. He didn't cry. He didn't struggle (much). He whined at a couple of things, but mostly he just patiently endured and played with Joan and I while the doctor forced his feet and legs into proper postures and held him there for a while. (The one time he whined loudly, but not quite cried, had the doctor forcing him to squat and stand repeatedly for about five minutes straight.) This goes on for about 40 minutes. After that Lucas is left free to crawl (and walk!) around the physiotherapy room with its padded floors and walls (not to mention the large selection of toys and balls, the former supplied by the various parents in the room who share with each other).

Some of the equipment in this room amused me. It looks very basic and unsophisticated, like a rustic's notion of a hospital, but each piece was actually quite well-designed for its task. One piece, for example, for assisting with balance, is basically a platform with a V-shaped bottom. The doctor stands on the platform, helping the baby stand, and then rocks the platform back and forth. In a western hospital this would be an expensive piece of electrical equipment, likely computer controlled, but in the end would do exactly the same thing -- just for a thousand times (literally) the price. Sometimes the technology fetish of the west amuses me.

Anyway, back to Lucas' day.

This is his lunchtime. Normally he's taken back to his bed in the hospital and is fed, but today was special. We dragged him out of the hospital and into a restaurant with Joan's mother and the visiting friends. After that we returned to the hospital for the manual torture massage therapy. Again Joan insists that he usually fights the doctor and screams loudly, and to give her credit the other babies in the room (six tables, four were active) were certainly lending credence to this report. Whatever the reason, though, Lucas today just slept through it. I mean that literally. He slept through 30 minutes or so of the 45-minute massage.

The doctor was very good. Very strong, but very skillful, fingers worked over my boy quickly, precisely, firmly and yet gently. (I wish I could find a masseuse like that for my back!) Lucas woke up toward the end, when the massage moved up to his head, and he started a low-grade whining when the masseuse started working on his head around his face. Otherwise, however, he was having more fun playing with Joan and me than he was having annoyance at the massage. This despite the fact that all around him were babies screaming at the top of their lungs as they were manipulated up and down the entire length of their bodies.

Then it was time to come home again, Lucas cheerful, practically bubbling and me silently bursting with pride when I mentally compared his behaviour with that of the other babies I saw. (That same comparison, incidentally, is why I so confidently assert that his problem is not a serious one.) I also left with considerably more respect for Chinese hospital treatment than I went in with. Chinese hospitals are still a little weak on germ theory, it seems, but surgery and now physiotherapy they're both top-notch at in my opinion.