ever had. It probably tasted that great because for the 1.5 weeks I had been eating nothing but Chinese food. Although I was only in Beijing for the weekend, I took early morning strolls and found many people in the parks at 6:00 am dancing in the very cold to Ballroom music.
The reason that I was now in China was that I had built the cardiology practice up in Perth and I was generating maximum volume of new patients. I decided to see if we could export our knowledge and expertise to the emerging market in China. Using a consultant, I had secured meetings with the CEO’ s of China’ s top 10 hospitals. Off I went to deepest darkest China to see first hand what their health care system was all about. I was so deep in China that in some villages I visited, people wanted to touch me as they had never seen a white person before.
What I discovered was awful. It was third world medicine that was practiced throughout China when I visited in November 1994. Filth is an adjective that summed it all up. It appeared to me that Eastern traditional Chinese medicine that was 2,000 years old, was practiced on a widespread basis. When this failed, patients together with their families went to the hospital for treatment.
Usually, it was too late and they were in end-stage of their illness. So essentially, they went to the hospital to
Woman on Camel, Beijing, China Photo by Barry Epstein
Reading News, China Photo by Barry Epstein
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