Cash

My third encounter with the Chinese medical system since my arrival in February occurred this week and it was another reminder of how much technology has changed our lives. I realized it had been more than a year since my last eye examination and I was concerned about my vision and so wanted to be examined and refracted. I made an appointment in an eye hospital here in Beijing and went with my young colleague to help me negotiate the language problem I have (I don't speak mandarin) and of course the hospital logistics. There are typically more steps in registration in the Chinese system than in the outpatient setting in the United States. The registration in the Chinese hospital is in addition way more automated than in the US. I register at an ATM like kiosk and the ticket I receive after paying tells me exactly where to go. I still find it amazing. To me as a consumer (as opposed to a provider) the extra steps to complete registration is related to the fact that the outpatient facility that I am attending is in a hospital, so I must register my presence in the hospital and then in the clinic. I paid for being there, then to have a screening vision test then to see the doctor and after seeing her (a very pleasant efficient English speaking professor) I needed to register for visiting another provider to get refracted. Of course I’m talking as if I was doing the registering, but the reality is that my Chinese colleague was doing all the work. It turned out that I could not pay with my WeChat as it is associated with a credit card and the hospital would not accept that. So, my associate was paying for me with his phone. By the time we reached the final necessary payment, he no longer had enough money in his WeChat account to pay! We both stood there in front of the cashier trying to think of what to do. We texted and called a couple of colleagues to send us money, to refresh his WeChat but no one answered. We didn’t want to leave the hospital without completing the consultation. We easily spent several minutes trying to think of something to do to pay the 49 RMB fee – and then – my friend’s face lite up. He said “I have some cash!” I responded, “I have cash as well!” Between us we had 500 RMB, 10 times what was needed to pay the fee. It was a great irony that the 73 year old American who grew up using only cash and when he is in the US still has to use cash for some transactions did not remember that he had a usable method of payment in his pocket that did not need technology. I had totally forgotten that I could exchange those paper bills for services. The Gen Z Chinese man who never uses cash was the one who came up with the solution. But perhaps the greater irony was that both of us stood there dumb founded for five minutes before we thought of an alternative to our phones and handed over that 100 RMB bill to the cashier! My action step was to make sure that between my two phones, I possess every possible form of payment available globally. With a little luck I'll never have to use cash again.

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