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By Root 3941 0

of the founding of Communist China. The roads were empty all the way to Huairou, and we parked at the city’s main hospital. Inside, a nurse wrote a prescription, and we went to the blood clinic for a test. The place had the feel of a speakeasy: patients shoved their arms through a hole in the wall, where an unseen technician waited with a needle. At first Wei Jia resisted but his father spoke sternly: “Be laoshi!” The boy wrinkled his face but didn’t cry. Afterward the nurse gave us a computer printout and told us that his xuexiaoban count was low. I didn’t understand the technical term, and I hadn’t brought my dictionary; but I could see from the woman’s face that it was serious.

“His count is only seventeen thousand,” she said. “It should be more than a hundred and fifty thousand.” She recommended that we go immediately to the Children’s Hospital in downtown Beijing for further tests.

Wei Jia had been born at a hospital in the capital, and this was his first time back to the city. Usually the boy was excited to be in a car, chattering questions about everything along the road, but today he was quiet. The moment we entered the Children’s Hospital, I knew that it was a mistake to come here. Kids were screaming; parents chased down stubborn charges; the staff looked harried. Wei Ziqi seemed overwhelmed: he entered the place and halted right in the doorway. A city man bumped him from behind, cursing under his breath (“Out of the way!”) as he hurried past. Wei Ziqi wore army pants and a military-green Public Security vest, and here in the city it was as if the camouflage actually worked. People jostled him, and jabbed with elbows, and brushed him aside. When he asked hospital employees for help, they just waved him away. He might as well have been invisible—that’s what happens when you wear peasant clothes into the city.

Finally I picked up Wei Jia and marched to an information booth. The attendant snapped to attention and answered all of my questions; it made all the difference in the world when she saw a foreigner instead of a peasant. The woman told me where to go for the blood test, and we paid a fee of a few dollars and joined a line of waiting patients. A sign hung on the wall of the blood clinic:

WITH YOUR COOPERATION AND OUR EXPERIENCE

WE WILL TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOUR PRECIOUS

The line already contained more than twenty Preciouses. Each was accompanied by at least two adults; some kids were surrounded by both parents and two full sets of grandparents. In urban China, young children possess a freakish gravity—the smaller the kid, the closer the adults hover, like massive planets trapped in orbit around some dense little sun. But such proximity does nothing for discipline, and the waiting room rang with shouts and screams. Preciouses chased each other around the room, darting in and out of line; at the front they screamed bloody murder when it was time to get pricked. We had been there for less than five minutes when one Precious vomited straight onto the floor. Another girl broke free of her orbiting adults and slipped into the testing area, where she fiddled with a rack of tubes. “Stop that!” shouted a nurse, slapping the girl’s hand.

Wei Jia was by far the worst-dressed kid in the room. He wore a filthy green sweatshirt, and there were holes in the toes of his cloth shoes; his neck was streaked with dirt. But he was calm—I was grateful for that. When he finally reached the front of the line, his face twisted, and his father spoke again—“Be laoshi!”—and then the blood test was over.

It wasn’t until later that I realized only a fool goes to the Children’s Hospital on a holiday. The doctor on duty just hoped to evacuate the place—he glanced at Wei Jia’s test results, scribbled a prescription onto a piece of paper, and told us the boy should rest. We picked up the medicine: a bottle of Vitamin C pills. On the way back, I decided to take the new Badaling Expressway, and both father and son became alert. “This is a highway,” Wei Ziqi explained to the boy. “Look how big it is—that’s so people can drive faster here.