China has at last discovered the word 'proctology'! Perhaps we can now begin to hope that 'gynaecology' will soon be adopted into regular use too.
At least, in this area they have been talking about 'anus disease' for some years now; though I imagine, back in the 80s or early 90s, it would have been 'Butt Dept.' or 'Arse Ward'.
For some years now, we've been kept entertained in Beijing's public toilets by the colourful advertisements for the Dongda Anus and Intestine Diseases Hospital over on Dongdaqiao Lu. Many of us are still haunted by the image of a balding, middle-aged white guy grinning demonically out at you from the one of the early posters - and giving a huge thumbs up. Was he a patient celebrating an 'all clear', or a doctor demonstrating his examination technique? We hardly liked to speculate.
He was eventually replaced by a rather cute girl in a nurse's uniform. Well, cute - but for the fact that she was raising her right index finger dramatically skywards, and...... well, it was a small and not terribly well reproduced photo, but the tip of the finger did seem to be, er, oddly discoloured. Not nice.
The latest campaign (oh, how I wish now that I had taken pictures of the earlier ones to preserve them for posterity; but taking pictures in loos is such a dicey business....) has gone back to simply showing a picture of the hospital building. But NOW it's called the Dongda Proctology and Intestine Hospital.
Progress indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment