Even the public bathrooms at the hospital demonstrate this difference.

A typical traditional bathroom in Beijing

The typical Shanghai hotel bathroom with heated seats and power bidet

The hospital I visited had 1100 beds with almost 2 million patient visits every year.  They perform 27,000 surgeries a year.  The orthopedic service has formal rounds with a full team of attendings, residents, all nurses, and all therapists twice a day.  Yet, to keep costs controlled, they employ traditional interventions.

A bamboo splint for a low cost option

Their medical experience is different from ours.  Neither is better but without question, China’s experience is vast.  Both their medical teams and their patients demonstrate stoicism, perseverance, and discipline.

This applied discipline appears to begin early and continues in nearly everyone I have met.

2nd grade recess in the school yard

For complicated reasons, I found myself at a street side noodle shop at 2:30 in the morning with an equally hungry 30 year old man.  I am in my business suit and he is in his hip torn jeans with an equally hip polo shirt.  He tells me he makes socks.  I wonder if he works in one of the many narrow alleys I’ve seen around the city.  Rather, he makes socks for the US.  He makes all the socks for the US, including those for Walmart, JC Penny, Target, and Nike.  He owns a large factory outside of town and employs 300 people to make socks.  Armed with 2 cell phones and a laptop, he constantly monitors the price of cotton in Turkey and Yemen to remain competitive and worries over the timeliness of his container ships crossing the Pacific.

I leave wondering if he is typical of every 30 year old man in Shanghai.