Beike Europe’s will is to avoid your disappointment and avert any possible future complaint: hence, before going to China both patient and his or her caretakers should learn by heart a basic concept of paramount importance, i.e.

In Europe we are prone to take for granted a lot of things that down there are not. The reason is easy to understand: while european hospitals take an overall care of the patient (i.e. from medical aspects to more mundane necessities of the hospitalization period), the asian hospitals only provide the sheer medical assistance: of course the patient is given a room, but nothing more.

A very easy way to fully grab the important consequences deriving from such a difference is to play yourself this sort of mental trick:

Please consider yours not as the classical "hospitalization", but rather as "a period, aimed at a clinical treatment, spent in a mini-apartment attached to an hospital".

This is not absurd nor difficult: if you will be able to merge yourself into such a point of view, you'll consequently and with no effort understand that yes, the hospital will cure you - but it will be up to you and your caregivers to take care of the other practical necessities, from food downwards.

Let's make some examples:

--- Each and every patient has to provide for towels, personal hygiene products, etc. - in a word, all that is needed for bathroom.

--- Same situation for the food. In Europe it is either served in your room or -provided your physical conditions allow you to do so- you can eat at the hospital’s refectory. In any case, food is considered as integral to the standard service provided by whatsoever hospital. In Asia things go in a different way, and it’s up to the patient and his caretakers to think about it. The food has to be bought outside.

--- Here in Europe we are accustomed to see in our hospitals a member of the staff that -depending on the local language- is either called Nurse’s Aid, Cure Assistant or something similar. In any case, we are talking about a person who takes a very close care of the patient, helping him out in all possible ways: bathroom, hygiene, getting up from the bed, etc. Mind you, asian hospital usages simply do not foresee such a role. Useless to say, there are very professional Nurses, but they strictly perform their proper role as paramedics. They give medications, do injections and so on: in a word, whatever implies a certain degree of medical skill, but do not expect them to do more than this. As a consequence, the chores of the “typical european Cure Assistant” entirely fall on patient’s family members, relatives or caretakers. No exception to this rule is made for the westerners.

--- Asian hospitals haven’t got their own inner laundry service. It goes without saying that it is surely possible to have such a service anyway, but your dirty laundry will be collected by the personnel of a reliable city laundry: as a consequence, this will cost you something.

We could go on with more similar examples, but we think this should be enough: we’re pretty sure you understood the way things go. We are aware that this is simply unthinkable in Europe, but in Asia it’s absolutely normal: should you complain about this situation with some member of the hospital staff, that person won’t simply understand what are you complaining about, that’s it.

Mind you, this has got nothing to do with the quality of the medical care that you will receive, nor with the absolute cleanliness of the place: the hospital is a modern structure with state-of-the-art equipments and procedures, and it has been highly praised by whoever has been treated there. Nevertheless, dear patient, from a service point of view you should please never, ever forget that

Given this, two important issues:

1 – Please bring with you a certain amount of extra money in cash, in order to pay for all the extras. The bright side of this situation is that the cost of life in Asia is extremely low in comparison with Europe’s, hence you won’t spend that much: the amount of extra cash money we recommend is normally sufficient. It goes without saying that if you’re going to eat every day in fancy downtown restaurants, buy a lot souvenirs, in a word if you will allow yourself the best, well - you’d better bring a larger amount of money with you.

2 – Just a few members (namely, some of the doctors) of the hospital staff are truly proficient in English. No one there speaks German, French, Portuguese, Flemish etc. Let’s assume now that your native language is not English or that you can’t speak it anyway: then please be sure that at least one of your caregivers does, lest you want to feel stranded in Asia with no chance of communicating with the persons who are treating you.

If neither patient nor caregivers speak English, we regret to inform you that no Translation Service is currently provided by Beike Europe. To do so, we must find out professional and reliable translators in Asia, and it’s no easy task. Anyway, when we will be finally able to find out the right persons, their work will be one more extra issue at your own cost.