So you plan to spiritually purify yourself by not using the internet for 48+ hours; and your blog gets spammed. My favorite was “horny goatweed Wal-Mart” – my own order of this wonderful substance is being FedExed to China as I write.

As of yesterday, however, wireless high speed is now broadcasting all throughout the Tony-Caeli Fulbright Safehouse in Wuhan. The fellow who came to install it was extremely friendly, and seemed tickled that he was conversing with a bunch of unwashed foreign-folk speaking semifluent Mandarin. Covering a number of topics, he noted that, “these health reforms are trash. Health care here is horrible. Have you ever gone to a doctor in China? Don’t. We are all terrified of getting sick.” Health care reform is one of the major planned changes that came out of the last CCP plenary session. Most of the common criticisms of healthcare here revolve around a skewed incentive structure whereby Doctors are primarily compensated for the amount of medicines they prescribe (through various legal and illegal kickbacks from local pharmaceutical corporations). 

Upon further inquiry, he revealed that queues are usually so long that some people are able to make a living selling queue numbers from hospital queues. Woho! The market wins again. Wait…