OK, Geezer, of course I don't know your health situation, I'm just saying that I've had a few health issues that were well taken care of at a public hospital here, and the prescribed meds were available. It sounds like your cardiologist was at a Trad. Chinese medicine hospital, is that right? I don't necessarily think Chin. Trad. medicine doesn't work, even though I don't understand anything about the theory behind it and what I do understand makes no real sense to me. I also think that there's a lack of 'quality control' in Traditional Chinese Medicine - some of the doctors and treatments may be useful and others useless but I can't tell which is which, so I don't go there.

on the internet

"The green medicine shops that are at every corner of the city and that say Health Store usually have Western medicine..."

WTF! here is no green medicine shop on EVERY street corner of the city.

Getting western medicine here is not really easy and they even seem to fear selling the stuff. They keep the BUfferin cold medicine behind the counter and when my wife and I tried to buy some the girl told my wife "do not take this medicine, it is bad for you!" and when we insisted she would only sell us two boxes at a time. Superstitious xenophobes. Must be bad because it works, unlike all the so called TCM stuff that does nothing and can cost even more. Like a couple peoople say you will have to know the Chinese term and then deal with the person at the back counter who will sometimes (not always) try to get you to buy Chinese medicine instead. What you will not really find, with a couple exceptions like the Bufferin cold medicine (which has Chinese writing on it) is any real western medicine. It is xi yao 西药 and yet made in China. Cool, so maybe America can start making Chinese medicine and makes pharmacies there put the real Chinese medicine behind the back counter.

And you can find a few things on Tao Bao type sites, but not much and expect to pay big time. This si no lie though it is unbelievable. I found a bottle of Advil flu medicine on Tao Bao. 60 caplets. How much you think? Well, it came out to 120 US dollars! yea. About 730 RMB. They have no interest in selling or taking western medicine here because China is for China and screw anything that is not Chinese. People here are terrified of western medicine, thinking two aspirin may kill them or something, but they have no issue with slamming bottle after bottle of expensive antibiotics into their bodies at a authoritative doctors behest.

You have to wind up having a connection back home that can send you stuff (though it wil not be prescription of course) or paying big time on Tao Bao. I do get a few things on Tao Bao, but there is not much. All the cold and flu medicine is only children strength! Backwards thinking culture man. Good luck to you.

My guess is that there are so many pharmacies that sell western medicines here because people buy them, and those people can't all be Chinese.

PD likewise the amount of western medicine practiced in the hospitals.

Damn I can't type - I mean 'those people can't all be foreigners".

@zhulaoye: You are pretty much correct. I have experienced most of what you have related. Ignore @Alien, he/she is either negative (don't do this), or clueless, "I don't understand anything about the theory behind it and what I do understand makes no real sense to me," or is flat dispensing misinformation based on what makes common sense but not connected to the China reality.

Before I committed to living in China I researched my meds and all were available in Beijing and Shanghai. Silly me, because I had no problems buying them in BJ and SHA, I thought, wrongly, I could easily get them elsewhere.

I buy Aspirin, Tylenol, Vitamin C, and Zinc from Amazon.com, have them sent to my son. He remails them to me. Even with the airmail costs, it is much much cheaper that way.

Kirkland (Costco) Vitamin C, 500 1000mg tablets cost about $35 USD to get to me. To get the same amount of Vitamin C in a domestic brand would take more than 420 bottles and cost more than $7,000 USD.

Aspirin in China is usually 40mg/pill. Standard US pill is 325mg, so, you need to take 16+ Chinese aspirins to equal two US aspirins.

Chinese either say Western medicine doesn't work or is too strong. I get the doesn't work because I find the effective ingredient is usually a fraction, less than 25%, of the western dose. I don't get the too strong idea but think you have the answer.

If you buy medicines or food supplements in China, you need to be very aware of what you are taking. Read the labels, understand the effective dosage. Check the expiry dates on EVERY bottle.

@Alien: Before you inject yourself into this conversation you should know I was Controller for a food supplement company so I am quite familiar with the production of such items. Also know I brought together a Taiwan Chinese, a mainland Chinese (with a USA PhD) and a Vietnamese to make and sell US made food supplements in China. They paid me for 10 years for each and every bit of product shipped to China. That is why you can find US made supplements in China.

Zhulaoye, they limit cold medicine because of certain ingredients.. Like dextromethorphan, and another one used in breaking bad lol...

@Geezer, let me get this straight - you have aspirin, tylenol, vitamin C and zinc sent to you all the way from the US? Is this because you don't trust the aspirin, Vitamin C and tylenol (I've never bought zinc) you can get here at most western-medicine pharmacies ( can name 4 such pharmacies within 400 meters of my flat, and plenty of others elsewhere)? Or do you just want to make sure that the western-medicines you buy are made in western countries?
I'm beginning to find this all very hard to believe. Or is it just the savings from buying in relative bulk? When I've had to buy prescription medicine here it has almost always been pretty cheap, at the pharmacies inside the public hospitals.
Anyway, as for Vitamin C, the region has some excellent fruit.

As a former medical supply and pharmaceuticals purchaser I like to add my 5 cents of information.
Vitamins first of all are not medicines most of the time but food supplements and it is questionable if health people eating a varied diet need any additional.
Geezers Vit-C of 1000 Mg is 10 times the recommended daily dose so anyway a waste of money. As a food supplement even 50 Mg should be more than enough.
Everywhere in the world including China there is a misconception that medicines have to be expensive to be good. Pharmaceutical companies play on this and with a bit of extra advertisement sell stuff far above the price. The world market price of Vit-C is about 3 USD per Kilo. After tabletting and packing the stuff and some additional cost the price does not have to be higher than double that in resale. In reality it is a multifold with most suppliers.
If you enter any pharmacy you will be first confronted with the expensive stuff. It will be located a premium location in the store at eye height (The suppliers even pay for that). And well you pay for that and go home with quarter full jars with expensive packaging. If you go to the corner of the store and go through your knees you will find small (But nearly fully packed) small plastic cups with a simple label stating Vit-C. They usually come in 100 tab 100 Mg packaging. Cost: 1.8 to 2 RMB per packaging. (Cost per Kg thus 180 to 200 RMB). You yearly need at a tab per day is 365 tabs thus less than 8 RMB.
FYI. Nearly all Vit-C is made in China (Even the process for making it is Chinese). So most likely if you buy Vit-C in the USA the stuff comes from China.

The asperin tabs you talk about of 40 Mg are intended for blood thinning for patients with hard problems. 40 to 80 Mg is the right dose for that.

Tylenol is an American brand. The active ingredient is Paracetamol. Paracetamol tabs are cheaper than Tylenol also it is thus the same thing.