What it takes to go swimming

At least if you wish to go swimming in the university's pool, you will need to have a skin health check (yes, another hospital - this makes number four!) and have a card that certifies you as "healthy". So the week after Alex and Sebastien had recovered from their virus we organized yet another student to help us get this check done at the university's hospital on Daxue Lu. Because we weren't clear on what exactly was involved and whether Alex and Sebastien would also need a check Sebastien and I picked up Alex from school early - around lunchtime - which she was only marginally pleased about. Given her lack of enthusiasm for school over the past couple of weeks I'd have expected a more effusive welcome - but no.

Anyway, we met Brett and his student at the hospital whereupon the student joined a queue (hospital payment windows seem to be the only place where chinese people actually queue in an actual line and take turns) and handed over a completed form and paid our money for our checks. We then headed up the stairs to the rooms where the checks took place. The males in one room and the females in the other. For me, the check consisted of sitting in a chair, taking off my shoes and having a couple of nurses eyeball the soles of my feet. That's it. For Brett, he had to also take off his shirt. And neither Alex nor Sebastien needed to be checked - though they did provide lots of entertainment for the staff (yet again we were told by nurses not to let Sebastien crawl around on the dirty floor - I mean this is a kid who's learning to walk and is constantly up and down). We then took the second lot of completed forms to a table in a foyer where we filled out cards, handed over money and passport photos of each of the four of us and after a quick red chop - voila - laminated skin health cards all ready for swimming. We believe that this is something that is necessary to do each year, bizarre though it seems to us. After all, what's to stop you picking up a fungus the afternoon you receive the cards? Anyway, we put this down to being just another bureaucratic wonder of China.

I should add here that finding a suitably clean swimming pool is a concern - standards are not what we have come to expect - and there is much chat amongst the expats about where the most hygienic pool is. Generally it is agreed that you must swim in the early morning at the cleanest pool to have the best experience.We haven't yet (til March 2009) used our skin-health cards.