Something like that seems crazy to us, but I can sort of understand why it made sense to the family in China. China's medical system is presumably a lot less r

Something like that seems crazy to us, but I can sort of understand why it made sense to the family in China. China's medical system is presumably a lot less regulated, and probably full of its fair share of hucksters, snake oil salesmen, and fraudulent service providers. Demanding to see proof that a surgery was performed would be understandable in those circumstances. (An unscrupulous doctor could still fake the proof, of course.) This is thematically, if not completely, similar to the American practice of running a battery of expensive, redundant diagnostic tests on a patient as a CYA measure. It's not enough to have a reasonable guess at a diagnosis; you need five different kinds of proof to back up your decision. You are performing not just to the standards of medicine, but to the presumed standards of insurance companies, lawyers, and WebMD self-diagnoses.