It all started with a lazy Susan. I was meant to be celebrating my last night in China at a banquet.
Instead, I celebrated with a doctor and nurse in the emergency room of a hospital near the center of Guangzhou.
But before I share that story, let me first share with you the point of today’s Daily Postcard: Don’t fret when it comes to healthcare overseas.
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I’ve been inside more foreign hospitals than I can remember, in at least five countries that I know of, and there’s a good chance I’m forgetting one or two.
And what I know from that overabundance of experience is that a) healthcare is pretty darn good overseas and often better than I’ve experienced in the US, b) the prices are often so low you’d think I’m lying (under $4 for an MRI in Portugal); and c) forget American Express—instead, don’t leave home without your American health insurance card.
For more than 30 years, International Living has scored healthcare as its own category in our Annual Global Retirement Index. We look at the doctors, the hospitals, and what a visit really costs. In our 2026 Index, France scored 97 out of 100 for healthcare. Spain scored 94. Panama scored 92.
But even the best system won’t help you if you can’t pay at the front desk…
No Cash to Pay The Bill
To wit: When I went to check out after my hour-long visit to that hospital in Guangzhou, I realized I had no cash in my wallet.
I’d only taken my American Express card to the restaurant that night… and when I showed the AmEx to the doctor, she scrunched up her nose in the universal sign of “we don’t play that game here.”
My wife (at the time) was still back at the restaurant with… well, that’s part of the story we’ll come to in a moment. And I didn’t have my phone with me because that, too, was back at the restaurant in my then-wife’s purse.
I pulled my health insurance card out of my wallet in a gesture that was more wishful than questioning and…
“Oh, we love Aetna,” the doctor said with a chipper and perfectly proper Singaporean-British formality.
Which is how Aetna came to pay the equivalent of a $37 bill for an emergency room visit in southern China, during which a Singapore-trained Chinese doctor applied some kind of magical potion to my hand.
But back to that lazy Susan…
My wife and I had spent nearly a month in China—part of the process, at the time, for adopting a baby girl into our family.
Back then, 2004, China ran the process with near-military precision.
You and a bunch of American families would fly to China and head to your assigned orphanage—in our case, in Hefei, a few hours west of Shanghai.
Navigating Chinese Paperwork
You’d meet your new future-college-cost obligation still in diapers, take her back to the hotel with you, and then spend about three weeks basically living locally while navigating all the Chinese paperwork.
The last few days, all the Americans on your adoption tour would gather at the White Swan hotel in Guangzhou, down near Hong Kong, for all the US embassy paperwork…
And a final group banquet at an upscale Chinese restaurant.
Which, in China, is just an upscale restaurant.
The restaurant goes all out.
Food and formality everywhere.
Plates and plates of real Chinese food—none of this General Tso’s Chicken nonsense you find all over America.
Server after server placed platters of sweet, spicy, and savory goodness on a ginormous lazy Susan, each banqueteer spinning Susan this way and that for spoonfuls of this and that.
Soup Heated in The Heart of A Volcano
The egg drop soup came to rest in front of me.
I love egg drop soup.
The thick, chicken-y richness of the broth. The ribbony wisps of egg whites, what the Chinese call “egg flowers.”
So, so tasty.
Except this particular tureen of soupy goodness had apparently been heated in the heart of some nearby volcano.
I know this because as I ladled soup into my bowl, someone somewhere else around this table of maybe 30 lazy Susan spinners decided that was the perfect moment to spin the lazy Susan in their direction.
The tureen spun into the ladle.
The ladle spilled its molten chicken lava onto my left hand.
And God-awful, searing pain instantly short-circuited the neurons in my brain.
The only thing I could think to do was yank the wedding ring off my finger because I knew my entire hand was four seconds away from swelling up like the Elephant Man.
The Chinese facilitator running the banquet raced to get me a taxi and rode with me to the hospital, leaving my wife and newly adopted daughter behind because, well, gathering up the car seat and the diaper bag all the accoutrements of babyhood would have taken too long.
Healthcare Abroad Beats the US? Often, yes.
And, so, I spent my last night in Guangzhou in a Chinese emergency room, thankful that the Chinese love Aetna insurance cards.
Don’t leave home without.
And yes, what a magical potion the doctor applied; the pain was gone the next morning.
Not even a hint of redness on the hand that had been crimson the night before.
Thirty-seven dollars well spent—though I never did get any egg drop soup.
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