Eye Exam Recalls Popes in the Pizza Skit

I got a physical exam today, Chinese style.

Even though I have a work visa, all foreign teachers in China must get a residence permit within 30 days of entering the country. The first step is getting a health certificate, which requires a medical checkup.

Escorted by university liaison Qi (pronounced “chee’’), I went to the Henan International Travel Healthcare Center along with my teaching colleagues Edith and Jennifer, who are both from Canada. There, we went through a five-step physical that included a chest X-ray, blood and urine sample, eye exam, blood-pressure check and ultrasound. All the equipment was recognizable, though the eye test was a little strange. Instead of reading an eye chart, I was asked to identify the hidden shape of a star in a drawing. It reminded me of the classic “Find the Popes in the Pizza’’ routine on “Saturday Night Live,’’ except that nobody laughed when I mistook the star for a baseball field.

I met some other foreigners there, including two teenage German girls who are going to attend middle school in Zhengzhou for a year and a 27-year-old Ethiopian  named Getenet Solomon who will be studying food science at my university. He told me his brother (a economics professor) and father (a lawyer) both live in Chicago, but he has never visited the U.S.  He also told me an interesting story about why Rastafarians in Jamaica worship former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as the Messiah.

Rastafarians, the most famous being reggae legend Bob Marley, believe that Selassie will lead black people back to the Promised Land of Ethiopia. They also believe in smoking copious amounts of ganja, a powerful type of marijuana that is supposed to make you wiser but definitely makes you hungrier for Fritos and Twinkies.

Getenet said Selassie solidified his status as a god when he visited Jamaica during a drought and it immediately began to rain. I have no idea whether this is true, but it’s a terrific story. As the newspaperman says in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,’’ “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’’