In 1989, I was once again inside a Chinese hospital, but this time as a patient advocate rather than as a supplier or consultant. A good friend (a young official at a Chinese foreign trade corporation) was pregnant. Due to the severe overcrowding of Chinese hospitals at the time, everyone needed all the help they could get to secure a bed in a top-rated hospital and, given our relationships, this was something I was able to help with at the obstetrics hospital in Beijing.

However, because she lived far from the hospital and we lived close, she came to stay at our house as her due date approached. When her labor started in earnest, my fianc and I drove her to the hospital. What then ensued was what I can only describe as a humiliating experience both for my friend and her husband.

It was 6 pm when we arrived at the hospital and the dusty, smoky haze of a typical Beijing winter sunset gave way to the dim and dreary hallway of the hospital, already abandoned by the daytime workers and the hoards of clinic patients one would have seen just a few hours earlier.

As my friend entered the intake exam room the nurses, who a minute earlier we could hear cheerily chatting with each other, became suddenly and completely absorbed in some piece of paper on their desks, and it took several knocks on the open door, a number of throat clearings and finally the surprise of me, a foreigner, tapping on a shoulder to get their attention.