Of course, arriving in any new place will shock your system as you experience the wholly natural tribulations of hosting a variety of new creatures in your intestinal tract. Try to smile and remember, this is your initiation, your body's way of welcoming you to a new place. Do not be afraid. Do not feel singled out by fate. It's just China!

Here are some things you can do to reduce your sick time, or even prevent ever feeling bad.

1. As often as possible, DRINK BOTTLED WATER!! You might be told it's safe to drink the water if you boil the living daylights out of it. These are sweet lies. Boiling the water will kill a lot of the bugs that could be thriving happily there, but there are things in the water supply in China that cannot be boiled out - such as benzene, cadmium, and a host of other heavy minerals. These can cause neurological disorders, cancers, and kidney or liver damage in the long term. Of course anything that destroys your brain or kidney over a matter of years can cause limited problems over the short term. As organs are still expensive to come by even in China, you probably want to take care of the ones you arrived in the country with. It is not reasonable to expect you can 'only drink bottled water' as restaurants will serve tea and soups with boiled tap water. Vegetables are often grown locally and local contaminants can and will make it into produce and livestock. It's inevitable you'll get some amount of nasties in your system, but you're a strong bloke. You might rinse your chopsticks or bowl with the boiled water brought for tea if you are especially sensitive. 2. Choose your streetfood carefully. Fried food - from octopus to chicken feet, chives to tofu - is a popular and easy to find street food, available at all hours in little alleyways and hutongs, cooked by all manner of colorful folk who might pop back a bottle of baijiu while chortling at the foreigner. Try to frequent popular, cleaner looking stands. The grease and fat used to cook the foods is not always fresh and clean, and vegetables or tofu cooked in rancid oil can make you just as sick as eating foul meat even if the meat or vegetable itself looks fresh and well cleaned.

A doctor in Changsha once told me he could look out his window and watch intrepid businessmen scraping cooking oil which is allowed to flow into the gutters, melting it down, and selling it back to the street vendors.

3. Wash your hands compulsively (who cares if there's bacteria in the water).

Especially when using public transport, such as the buses - I have seen beautiful, elegant women with butchered pigs let their purchases fall out of the plastic bag onto the bus floor, only to blow a snot rocket, wipe their face clean, pick the raw pig up, and grab onto the hand rail.

Choose your hospital carefully. Fellow teachers who chose the wrong hospital dealt with drunk doctors attempting minor surgeries with a scalpel in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other. Realize you will have to pay for each test, procedure, and treatment before it is carried out. This can be troubling if you're in a lot of pain, and it might be best to bring someone with you to go back and forth between the doctors and the cashier's counter. Also, all the cashiers will go home for lunch, leaving one line open. And even in the best of hospitals the electricity will periodically be cut and the bathrooms will threaten you with crashing waves of blood, urine, and poop.

Hunan