Foreigner's Medical Exam

One of the girls from the office takes me down to the International Medical Centre to get my exam - you don't make an appointment there, you just show up. We have to stand in one line to get the application form, another to turn in the application form, and another to pay - it is nearly three hundred kuai for this exam, 比较贵 (bi3jiao4 gui4, kind of expensive). The application process takes more than half an hour all by itself. Then we take our form and go to several examination rooms on different floors of the centre for each piece of it. First is a blood test, which feels pretty standard (I don't actually watch), though they don't seem to be taking much blood. Then the urine test, with a plastic container the size of a creamer to pee into that you carry by yourself to the lab. Then blood pressure, height/weight/EKG, ultrasound, and eye/ear test. (I've never had a doctor with one of those actual mirrors on a headband before.) The final step is an X-ray. Each step doesn't take long - I think the ultrasound takes only thirty seconds or so, and the next person is in the room before you are out.