Some players offer to drive me home and bring back my bicycle later-on. But I politely reject, not desiring to mean any trouble to them or to spoil their Saturday evening. So I get on my bicycle and head off (second mistake). The distance that I have to ride is not very long: about 14 km, and usually it takes me a little more than half an hour to get from here to there. But now I turn ever slower. My right leg cannot tread any more, the pain gets worse, I have to willow the trousers, they rub and squeeze. The injury swells significantly.
Along the first part of the road there is no settled area. This is some motorway or bypass along the coast, just a construction area. Only seven kilometres further-on there is finally a residential area where I can find a pharmacy. I tell them my problem and receive a cooling spray, ice, and Chinese medical plasters.
No way that I would continue riding that bicycle. What to do now? I walk along the road, leaning on the bicycle. Some businessmen and craftsmen are sitting there around a table. They drink beer and play cards. One of the players, craftsman Wang, recognises me. Once he has repaired for me a bicycle chain that was ripped on the way riding, another time he pumped lots of air into my tires and spread oil on the chain.
Craftsman Wang addresses me, and his wife, LuLu, offers tea and more ice for cooling. I need a car that would take me home and my bicycle, too. Craftsman Wang knows what to do: He phones someone, and five minutes later a tiny minibus approaches
– a shady taxi driver who has never before taken a bicycle aboard. He objects.
Craftsman Wang convinces him. Together, he and his neighbours try tucking both my bicycle and the seats until at last everything, bicycle and me, fit into the minibus, ready to go. Five guys tried everything to help me. Craftsman Wang asks me to tell him later under any circumstance what had happened about my injury. I promise to drop in soon when I will be able to ride that bicycle again, and to tell him news about my leg.
Back at my apartment, some neighbours assist me in tucking the bicycle back out of the minibus. I pay the driver twice the usual charge. Leaning on the bicycle (for the lack of proper crutches) I limp to a nearby shop. The sellers know me, I am allowed to remain outside the door and tell about my problem; at once half a dozen sympathetic viewers gather around me, examining and commenting on the swelling.
The sellers know that I am playing football (the more because I am still dressed like that), and they understand why I ask them for more ice and some cold beer. I cannot pay, however, before tomorrow, for I never take much money along when going for a football play, and I have already used up my today’s budget for the pharmacy and the minibus driver (lucky that I can tell all that in Chinese!). Well, no problem.
Now I am cooling my outside with ice and my inside with beer until late night arrives. And the whole Sunday I continue cooling, the only interruption is my lesson in Chinese. In the afternoon finally I am able again to step on the ground quite well.
At Monday I take a plane to ShangHai. I have some appointments there and in KunShan, and from ShangHai I go on to Japan (third mistake: no visit to the doctor). At least I keep on cooling that leg during almost all the flights, in almost any restaurant, in any hotel. It is Friday night when I return to my apartment. The swelling is immense. The blue bruise has turned more colourful, but I can step quite normally and walk without pain.
At the weekend I call my driver Fang ShiFu, telling him that Monday morning I would like to go to the hospital and get an examination. He objects against my wish to visit the SheKou People’s Hospital: “That is not enough, you will have to go to the Central Hospital! I have a friend there, he will help us.” And so, we phone three-way with SunLi, for I do not understand everything at once.
SunLi is relieved that I do not want to go alone to the hospital, even though Fang ShiFu is anything but an interpreter. But with me telling him slowly what it is all about, and with him patiently interrogating SunLi, sometimes by SMS, sometimes by phone call, he is yet able to assist me in using proper Chinese for Chinese people.
At Monday we set out in early morning; we want to arrive at the hospital “before the real rush” and it is a drive of about 40 km. Two facts, however, we underestimated: first, the traffic, second, that the rush wants to be there before the rush, too, so that everyone is there already when we arrive early enough.
The traffic and the additional time that we needed to get to the hospital as wanted was at least useful to find out something when talking to my driver: his friend was not a physician at all as I had believed, but he was an electrician. I seeeee... (How is an electrician supposed to help me in a hospital?) He is Fang’s friend because his 20-yearsold daughter from his first marriage has a boyfriend whose father, well, happens to be that very electrician.
The hospital is revealed to be a small town behind walls. The access way is the first ordeal – if you do not pass it you seem to have forfeited your right to get treated. On the territory of the hospital there are dozens of buildings, most of them being about 20 to 30 years old, which means that they derive from the founders’ age of ShenZhen. Streets are narrow and blocked – no chance to find a parking space here.
I guess that Fang ShiFu will have to drive (or “crawl”) in circles while I will err across the hospital with his friend, the electrician. I should have gone to that hospital that I was familiar with … Meanwhile, Fang ShiFu busily phones with his friend and I understand that he apologises for being late because, etc., and we are now in front of this and that building, and, please, which street do we have to take left or right to find building F20.
Suddenly we stop at a turn. Plastic “traffic cones” (or pylons) are set up there for cordoning off. A guard hastens to put three pylons aside. We drive in. Someone approaches our car and welcomes Fang ShiFu heartily – seems to be that electrician! Indeed he is. So we got an invisible VIP passport and a reserved parking space.
