What constitutes food poisoning in China

[abcdefg]

Just to mention something obvious which is still sometimes overlooked: foodborne illness is more common in the summer months. That's true anywhere. Harmful bacteria multiply more quickly on food that is left sitting out when the ambient temperature is warm than they do when it's cold.

Was it winter when you were there in 2004?

[pprendeville]

i was there from Sept 2003 - Sept 2004

ok so i think i've been extremely naive since coming to China this time around. on all previous 5 visits i only had problems with spicy food. anything else was fair game to eat. this time around my body is not accepting anything that is cooked in street vendors or that has been left overnight. i've had diarrhea 5 times at least (you'd think I'd cop on after the first incident) at this stage and this morning was by far the worst does I've had for a long time. i felt as though someone was twisting my gut every 5 minutes the pain was so intense. luckily enough i'm in the city today visiting a friend so i went to the hospital and they tested my crap. long story to that. one frustrating thing about the No.2 Hospital in Shijiazhuang is that the doctors in the non-emergency building go off for lunch arund 11:30 am and don't get back til round 2pm. we got there around 11 and managed to see a doctor and she gave me an examination and a thumbs up and a big giggle when she said very good. went to get my crap tested but docs had gone on break and had taken all the sterile containers with them. ended up heading home, crapping into a ziplock bag and collapsing onto the bed while friend delivered the goods for testing. all clear and he came back with no less than 4 different types of medicines.

i'm blaming the indicent on some chicken I ate last night but really i'm not sure if that's the culprit. this link (http://www.sinosplice.com/culture/a-pictorial-guide-to-life-in-china) is a really good representation of what to expect from China, and the first 3 really apply to me.

[abcdefg]

From a medical standpoint, this has gone beyond "funny traveler tales" to genuinely worrisome.

I wonder what the stool analysis showed. Hope they included a check for parasites in addition to common bacterial pathogens because of the recurring nature of your ailment.

Four prescribed medicines is puzzling too. One would be an anti-motility agent and one would be an antimicrobial. The other two, who knows. Were they 西药 or 中药 or some of each?

Perhaps the difference between 2005 and now is explainable by deteriorating sanitary conditions at your village and in your temporary home there.

[gato]

Five times in 6 weeks is quite a lot -- though I did get diarrhea twice in two weeks in southern Mexico, eating street vendor tacos (they were so good and so deadly). Very few people have complained on this forum about diarrhea problems during visits in China. Your problem does seem to be an extreme case, but then again, few people on this forum have spent so much time in a rural village here. I've only had diarrhea twice in seven years in China. Both times from eating in small restaurants in Shanghai: one time was undercooked dumplings, another time fish.

[pprendeville]

abcdefg - to be honest im not sure what they tested for but i'll be getting my blood checked when i get home. will check names of medicine and post up at a later date.

gato - my policy from now on is to eat simple food that i have seen cooked with my own 2 eyes.

so I eventually lost the plot on Sunday evening with the in-laws and broke the golden rule about respecting elders etc etc. arrived home after a shorter than expected stay in the city due to illness and all was nice and dandy at home. left the room to unpack while veryone was having dinner and when i arrived back in fatherinlaw was smoking a fag and i saw red mist but managed to say in chinese 别抽烟 and after a bit of a dismissive wave i proceeded to abuse fatherinlaw verbally (lots of bad language in there which can't be repeated on here) in english for about 30 seconds. cigarette was quickly extinguished but i just took the kids out. this was the 4th time i'd asked him to stop smoking in front of the girls and my wife has never said anything him about it so this infuriated me also. i cant understand the mentaility around this and many other things. probably not the best thing to have done considering he's recovering from a stroke but im just concerned about the girls and passive smoking really pisses me off. one argument that motherinlaw threw back was that loads of others smoke in front of the girls in restaurants and buses but i cant really do anything about that as they're public placs and we dont go out hardly ever anyway.

any advice on how to get my point across without the need to lose my temper and how to patch things up?

[Matty]

any advice on how to get my point across without the need to lose my temper and how to patch things up?

Scare the hell out of her with creepy medical facts.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/health_effects/

My friend who is a medical researcher scared my off mushrooms by telling me how mushrooms love to such up heavy metals and mercury. She banned me from them. I miss mushrooms.

[Scandinavian]

Scare the hell out of her with creepy medical facts.

But the Chinese doctor says he will get cancer if he stops, how would this internet thingy compete with that. I completely agree with you, but the problem here is not the facts, but how to, as a son-in-law to convey this message to father-in-law, with what that requires of tiptoeing around the cultural differences.

Matty, I hope you will be able to find some safe mushrooms. They can only such up heavy metals if they grow in soil that is polluted with these. If you are scared of mercury then you should also avoid several types of fish.

[gato]

I am afraid of because of language and cultural barriers, you'll just have to make nice and bear with it for the rest of six-week stay. I want to suggest getting the old man on to another addiction from smoking, but not what that would be. Gambling? Maybe that'll get him out of the house, but you said he's immobile due to the stroke.

[jkhsu]

Actually, losing your temper in this case might not have been a bad idea. At least you've established that you're not a pushover and that the health of your kids is a high priority.

After reading many of your posts, I get the feeling that you and your wife don't see eye to eye on many issues or perhaps she's just afraid to bring these things up with her parents. In my opinion, it's really important for you to communicate with her and make sure that she's on your side. Cultural conflicts with Chinese in-laws who live in the countryside are not uncommon. What concerns me is that it's you vs. the in-laws + your wife. (Now I am assuming that you and your wife have been living outside of China for some time right? So she should be well aware of Western views on health and 2nd hand smoke.)

[pprendeville]

don't think gambling is the way to go. motherinlaw was up 300rmb today in majiang so there's enough on that side of the family.

seem to have gotton over awkwardness of argument already. chinese friend called him and had a long chat with him and talked about smoking bans etc in ireland. also, family didn't understand why i didn't have a problem with conditions before but have suddenly changed. hasn't really been a sudden change as such as i've made several requests on a few things but its obviously for the kids. last time we came we were only here for 2 weeks.

yes, wife definitely doesn't see eye to eye on this issue and i don't think i can change her. i need to take the softly softly catch a monkey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Keenan) approach. again, this goes back to do chinese children ever go against there parents wishes. friends was telling me they don't like to argue with parents or at least as little as possible. i have done my best to get her to see the importance of not smoking in front of the children. she has been in ireland for 5 years and knows that there is a smoking ban in public places but when she comes back to china her whole way of thinking seems to change and revert back to old habits.

[pprendeville]

heading off tomorrow. a great cultural experience and a good eye opener for the future. i was making notes of some strange things (or at least i found them strange) which i observed during our stay, many of which i had forgotton about from previous visits.

- No seatbelts required in taxis.

- Bus driver wouldn't go to final destination on arrival in Shijiazhuang from Beijing (we had been travelling for 26 hours at this stage so it was the last thing i wanted). Wanted to stop early. Had to be forcibly persuaded otherwise by passengers.

- Li Dans grandmother going around topless on a very hot day (wife didn't bat an eyelid and not a word about it after leaving).

- Cat having kittens in the kitchen somewhere (not sure where).

- Our daughter making number 2 on living room floor while we're all eating there.

- Friend mopping the floor and using the toilet as the source to wet the brush (and he's hygience conscious)

- Being told not to touch door handles at the hospital or walk past the entrance to casualty in case of infectious disease

- Cars pulling up directly outside hospital main entrance sharing path with pedestrians

- Being accompanied by friends in supermarket and told I can buy whatever I want. First 2 items I choose I'm advised not to buy

- Mice tunnelling in ceiling for 20 minutes and throwing debris down onto floor in inlaws home. No word about mouse traps.

- Almost a big massive scrap on the bus between conductor, driver and passenger. Lots of slagging before passenger eventually asked to stop the bus. Conductor (a lady) gave as good as she got.

- Met a boy on train to Beijing and he wants to move from Tianjin to Shanghai (one reason being the roads are not straight and it is easy to get lost)

- In Beijing, bus driver stopped in traffic, got out of his seat, opened door and had a few puffs of a fag before resuming driving again when traffic started to move.

- Spinning class in gym akin to a nightclub with people smoking

- Rotten vegetables in refrigerator seemed to be strange to my Chinese friend as if to say they can remain fresh indefinitely in there

- Saw a man with foot resting outside the window while driving on the expessway

- Mother in law takes out her breasts and offers them to daughters jokingly while I'm massaging father-in-laws legs (now that is bizarre).

[abcdefg]

Your stay there could become the nucleus of a 电视剧。It might become a hit.

[skylee]

I agree. So many naked (older) ladies around the son-in-law. It could be more popular than 50 shades of grey.

[Lu]

yes, wife definitely doesn't see eye to eye on this issue and i don't think i can change her.

Of course you can't change her, just like she can't change you. (I thought the cliche was about women always wanting to change their man. Generally doesn't work either.) There will always be things you don't agree on, but you need to be on each other's side. (This goes vice versa as well: if, say, your family would give her a hard time about showering in the evening instead of in the morning, you would need to be firmly on her side, even against your family.) You'll both need to compromise, but you need to talk these things out with each other, discuss what is and what isn't feasible or a good idea, and then form a united front to the rest of the world.

[pprendeville]

My family don't give her a hard time as far as I can see and wife has never brought up any issues about it although Chinese are known not to want to create disharmony and I have asked her is there anything that annoys her but there doesn't seem to be anything (not sure how showering in morning v evening makes a difference to anyone). They just let her do her thing when she's down visiting. I wish it was the same on her side of the family. Sometimes It feels like every decision I make at her home I'm told do the opposite, too many examples to list. At hotel near the airport now so glad to be returning to normality. 

[Scandinavian]

Ah, shower-time, a complex thing in China. From the thread regarding going against parents, we know that the upbringing is done using fear to prevent children from doing things, so, if you shower after eating, something (unspecified) bad will happen, if you don't shower in the evening, something (unspecified) bad will happen.

Remember when you say things go back to normal, your wife may think slightly differently, in that China might be more normal for her.

[imron]

if you don't shower in the evening, something (unspecified) bad will happen.

No, it's quite specified, namely that all the dirt, sweat and other gunk that you've accumulated during the day will go with you to bed. Washing it all off beforehand actually seems quite sensible to me.

[Scandinavian]

namely that all the dirt, sweat and other gunk that you've accumulated during the day will go with you to bed

That is trumped by the "shower when it is needed. If its not morning vs. evening, then it could be showering after eating, going to bed with wet hair etc.

[Lu]

It was just an example, picked especially because I can't imagine that actually being an issue for real...

[jbradfor]

Friend mopping the floor and using the toilet as the source to wet the brush (and he's hygience conscious)

Is that really such a big deal? Don't you flush after using the toilet, and clean it once in a while? How much "stuff" do you really think there in a toilet?

It might seem disgusting, but I bet you the water is actually pretty pure. Well, as pure as the water is in China.

[What gets me even more is people that are think the water in the tank (not the bowl) is dirty. It's fresh water from the pipe!]