Always eat your vegetables!

This story is true. A student here studying Chinese at the university came from Africa to learn the language. He's a tall, handsome dark man and is well liked by all the students.

It seems that in the short time he has been in China he has not enjoyed the food here. I wonder why really as the variety of food is enormous. However it appears that for nearly three months he has survived on little more than noodles.

Last week he was rushed to hospital for major surgery as his bowel had ceased to function. How scary would that be. He's only in his early 20's!!

Not only has he had to have radical surgery, he's run up a bill at the hospital of some 10,000 RMB! And despite recommendations from the university he had no travel health insurance.

The students and teachers are looking at ways to raise the money for him at the moment. He is still in hospital but improving and she should be back here this weekend.

Certainly the message is - Eat your vegetables!!!!

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As we would say here...

Submitted by huttriver12 on Tue, 2008-12-02 20:28.

use your noodle and eat up your veges!

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Though Jeanne

Submitted by Elly on Tue, 2008-12-02 17:27.

it was not a language problem he had. The university has a three good canteens and there are vegetables. He is studying Chinese and his language is good. He "chose" to eat just noodles (I couldn't think of anything that would be worse!) but he was a little young to dare to eat something he was not familiar with. But his diet of 3 months on nothing but noodles must have been boring in the extreme, but this young man did not know any better.

Elly

Wheels in China
Adventures of an Australian English Teacher
About Housesitting

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Maybe he thought that would be the least expensive thing to eat.

Submitted by Jeanne on Tue, 2008-12-02 17:50.

That would be the only thing that would drive me to eating nothing but noodles for 3 months.

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That would be especially hard, Elly, for someone not native

Submitted by Jeanne on Tue, 2008-12-02 16:50.

to the country. I went 70 miles over the border into Mexico with my two youngest daughters once, and found a town where no one we met spoke English. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if we needed emergency care.

In addition, I was turned around so that I couldn't figure out which direction to go to head home. After asking about 40 people which way it was to Ti-a-wana (the way pronounced it) and getting blank stares in return, a kindly old man finally caught on and said, "Oh, Tuh-waana, and pointed me in the right direction. For some reason, it hadn't occurred to me to ask how to find the United States.

After that I stayed close to the border where everyone seemed to know at least a few words of English. (Today, because of the atrocities in that area, I don't even cross the border at all.)

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