HEALTHCARE

Health care is scarce on the ground in poorer areas with people's children being seen by medical workers and then sent home while still on a drip. When the communes were broken up in the early eighties, farmers started having to pay for healthcare.

As China modernized, medical services improved in the cities, where it was still free to state employees, but far less so in the countryside. The rural sick often cannot afford the treatment they need.

Those were the days and still is now that everything has two prices: that is, a price for "Waiguoren" (outside foreigners) and "Renren" (local commoners). There is queue for foreigners and there is queue for locals. Of course, the queue for foreigners is the shortest and the prices is also eighty times more expensive than the locals consulting a doctor.

Healthcare for foreigners are limited to a few expatriate-run medical group from Hong Kong. Grant it, in Shanghai, one inevitably falls ill every season - at least. Most often during summer and winter. Consultation may cost from 300 to 500 green bills, excluding the US drugs prescription, which is hard to come by in China.

Where I worked, within the city center, that's the happening. Every and any expatriate or foreigners working for US-based joint ventures stay, work and eat the typical American lifestyle within the city property project development area.