2003: a dental odyssey
the dentist office was too perfect, at times. it was all rather kubrickian.
going to the dentist in china is like going to a foreign policy pow-wow at the white house: you just have a feeling that something is going to go wrong. think the streets of shanghai are dirty and overcrowded? just take a look at some of its smiles. sure, china has experienced its share of economic growth recently. but it ain’t nothin’ compared to its oral decay.
* almost half a billion people in china never brush their teeth, according to the chinese preventive medicine society. less than half of the country’s rural population brush regularly, while just 10 percent of those living in cities clean properly. many people are still using twigs or green tea to “brush.”
* not surprisingly, 5-year-olds in china have an average of 4.48 bad teeth and people aged 65 to 74 have 9.86 missing teeth on average. so says the office of the national tooth disease prevention and treatment steering group (or, if you like acronyms, the OOTNTDPATSG … geez!).
* according to the national dental prevention and treatment advisory group, there are only 25,000 dentists in china. that’s just one dentist for every 50,000 people. the international standard for developed countries is one dentist for every 2,000 people.
i have seen dentists in action in rural china. this is because their office fronts are typically windows, their examination rooms in full view of curious people passing by on busy streets. i suppose if you are one of 25,000 dentists in a nation of 1.3 billion inhabitants, you want to show off your unique skills. but i always turned my head — it’s not the kind of window shopping i like to do.
speaking of shopping, have you ever tried to find dental floss in china? f*cking-A! but then again, i am an american and, as an english friend said recently, “you americans are obsessed with teeth.” now, is that a bad thing? regardless, it kind of explains why i was a bit skeptical heading into my first dental appointment in china.
i was also a bit soaked for my appointment, thanks to a sudden rainstorm, and 40 minutes late, thanks to the way i am. i was met by smiles, however, at the front desk of this hong kong-owned dental clinic which “targets middle-class patients,” according to a story i just read. as i filled out the office’s admittance form, a drop of rainwater fell from my soaked head of hair onto the paper. it kind of made my first name look like tie-dye.
i had little time to enjoy it, however. one of the smiling women behind the counter quickly blotted the drop with a tissue. then another approached me with a soft towel — and a smile, of course. after that, everything about my visit to the dentist was the opposite of what i expected. it was perfect. it was too perfect, at times. sci-fi perfect.
“please sit,” one of the smiling ladies said.
i did and i took in my surroundings. the lobby was excruciatingly clean and sparsely decorated. everything was blindingly white. the place had an affected modernity, kind of a 1968 image of what 2001 might look like. yes, it was all rather kubrickian. i half expected to hear HAL9000 say, “what are you doing, dan?”
but it wasn’t HAL who called to me. instead, a young woman in a pink 60s-style knee-length skirt and surgical mask approached me. she leaned forward and said, “i am your nurse. please follow me.”
we exited the lobby into a hallway lined with more nurses in pink skirts. i could see their reflections in the spotless white tile floor. there was classical music playing over the sound system. thankfully, i never heard richard strauss’ “thus spake zarathustra.” that would have been too weird.
but the hollywood imagery continued when i entered the examination room. my dentist’s name was lucy liu. she was not a charlie’s angel, but a pleasant woman with braces on her teeth — only the second pair i have seen during my one year in china. she saw that i was wet and asked, “would you like me to raise the temperature of the room a bit?” the dental assistant was equally attentive. every time a droplet of moisture appeared on my face during the cleaning, she immediately dabbed my face with a kleenex.
everything else was proper, precise … and actually rather normal. no faces pressed against the window. no mysterious black rectangular monuments. no apes throwing bones into the sky.
it was all rather cheap, as well. the whole visit was less than US$40.
“i am your nurse. please follow me.”
09.24.2003, 12:32 AM · Observations
6 Comments
i really like what you write especially those pieces written after midnight when they are half asleep and half sober.
One of my profs. told me a story. A bunch of business people from the states went down to a small town in the South America. They announced that they were bringing civilization to these poor people who did not have proper teeth. They taught the local people how to brush their teeth…how to use toothpaste. Then, they set up a tooth paste company in the town and making cheap tooth paste and brushes. You might start to add tooth brushes with “I Love PRC” in your cyber shop.
Can you mention the name or contact information for the dentist? I’m in Shanghai, and still looking for a “middle-class” dentist. Thanks.
hey chicago girl. it’s nearly 3:58 and … shit, i just spilled my beer on the keyboard.
brad. it’s arrail dental, 204 lippo plaza, 222 huai hai zhong lu, 5396.6538 or 5396.6539. good luck.
Growing up in China in the city, I remembered brushing my teeth everyday, but still I got bad teeth. I frequented the dentist’s much more often than others because one of my teeth was knocked out after being tripped by one of my classmates. My father told me that my teeth were perfect before that incident. I wish I could take my revenge on that SOB who tripped me 30 some years ago. Dammit!
Yeah, I never heard of flossing in my life in China. But now in America, I can’t go without flossing after each meal.
China has a long way to go to reach the level of the US.