Stuart Wolfendale

Reclining in a chair with width for a cat walk model, an orange light was staring blindly into my eyes. The masked dentists ceased his needle probes, reached for a surprisingly modest instrument and wrenched out a molar the size of a traffic bollard. The sound  of the gum giving up its rotting treasure was  of  damp cardboard being torn.

I was definitely on the cutting edge. I was having my teeth pulled in Shenzhen.Well, people of my age who had been sloppy in their youth and mocked twice a day dates with Colgate, find themselves with a whole gob full of trouble in a world where dentists’ fees  make private doctors look like a 90cent store. Given my problems, settling in with a Central dentist would mean re-mortgaging the flat. Yet, I couldn’t get out of my head the picture of an expatriate friend on hard times in Yung Shue Wan who was brought down to his gums and Doll noodles so I asked around. Rick, a British friend who has lived and worked on the Mainland for most of twenty years told me of this dentist in Baoban Road, Shenzhen who was a mate of his girl friend, had done a couple of crowns for him, didn’t have the shakes when he was operating and ran a joint that was clean as a whistle.

These two considerations seem to preoccupy expatriates objectors who imagine painful fillings followed hot foot by AIDS.We met up at the dentist; me, Rick, his girl friend, his 10 year old son from a previous marriage (they get around up there) and my Cantonese partner who had to be trained up in translation for future visits. Shenzhen has really been beamed into Guandong from outer space. Everybody speaks Putonghua.It is s a bright, airy practice with smiley teeth on the door and windows in the treatment cubicles so everybody gets to see everybody else’s pain.

There a very chatty, almost communist air to the place. People wander in and out to talk to the dentist as he works and all but look into your mouth to see how it’s going. Everybody in my party got to see my X ray and comment on it. The 10 year old, who spends some of his summer holidays in Lancashire, explained it to me in English.Whilst I was in the chair, in the corner of my eye, some of my audience was jumping up and down. A cockroach big enough to saddle-up had wandered from the wall. So much for squeaky clean but then big mothers like that get everywhere and it wasn’t in my mouth, was it?Up to now, I have had two consultations, one X ray, one tooth medicated and two yanked out.

The total cost was 500 yuan. Add on to that HK$124 for twice up and down the KCR, a couple of woozily pleasing foot and leg massages in a ‘Korean’ sauna across town, lunches in a very entertaining Chinese restaurant that is struggling to be Portuguese and the small change attached to  pleasant afternoons out.

It’s a whole new approach to dentistry and to becoming one with the Mainland. We are going to be finding that the most sensible thing to do in so many more ways. Heart transplant, bespoke tailoring anybody?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Abroad, All