Courtesy of Andrea Lucas, our patient at Tyson’s Dental Associates

On one of my extended trips to China I broke a tooth while eating lotus root, having forgotten about the ever-present bones in any dish served in China, even in a vegetable dish, where bones are added as a flavoring agent. I rescued the broken piece and folded it into a napkin while contemplating what to do. The thought of going to a Chinese dentist did not appeal to me, but the alternative was to stop smiling for the next two to three months until I could get back to the States to have proper dental work done there. So reluctantly I asked my Chinese partner to arrange a visit to the local dentist.

This morning the escort party arrived: the General Manager of the company (our cooperation partner in Hainan); the Sales Manager; the driver and Miss Sun, the translator. We all piled into the car and drove the short distance to the dentist’s office, which was located down a narrow alley way off one of the main roads of the city.

As we entered the ground floor office, I could not believe my eyes – the arrangement was like that of a barber shop. On one side there were five dental chairs lined up against a mirrored wall in this room, which was just a bit bigger than an average hotel room, 12 by 18 feet perhaps, while half a dozen people were sitting or standing on the other side of the room waiting their turn to be treated. By the time the five of us entered, the place was so crowded it was difficult to move.

We were greeted by the owner of the office, a tall middle aged gentleman in a suit, who grinned from one ear to the other when he was informed by the General Manager of his luck to be visited by a Very Important Person – me. My Chinese partners never fail to over emphasize the importance of my person; making me important makes them important and gives them “face”. The Master Dentist however, was not to be intimidated. He quickly pointed to one of the chairs and proudly announced that another Very Important Person has honored him this day with a visit – the Mayor of Haikou herself. Now it was my turn to Oh and Ah, shake his hand and to congratulate him on his very famous practice and to state my honor for having been introduced to him.

One by one the people in the “waiting room” changed places with those in the dentist chairs, while I waited for my turn. Actually, it turned out that they wanted me to wait for the Mayor to be finished, so we could be properly introduced.

The Master Dentist rushed to inform the Mayor, a very nice lady with big, protruding teeth, about my predicament with the broken tooth, and I was invited to fish it out of my purse and show the miserable fragment to the Mayor. This prompted a sympathetic smile and a flood of words from the Mayor, who spread her lips and opened her mouth wide to show me the once broken teeth the Master Dentist had fixed for her.

Miss Sun translated the praise the Mayor bestowed on the dentist, and while we were talking a flashlight went off somewhere, and then another as this very momentous occasion was being recorded by the staff. Now it was posing time, and we dutifully lined up in front of the dentist chairs, first I in the middle, then the Mayor in the middle, followed by every possible combination inside and outside of the dental office to ensure eternal recording of this important event.

After the Mayor had left, it was my turn to get into the dental chair. First, one of the assistants, who spoke some English, examined my mouth; but when she saw all the intricate dental work that had been done on my teeth, she must have gotten scared and decided that none other than the Master Dentist himself should work on my tooth.

While the change took place, I had a moment to observe the hygiene of the instruments and the procedures the dentists were using. I was pleased to note that pre-packaged instrument sets were opened for each patient and that the dentists wore masks while working on a patient. However, none of them washed their hands before attending a patient, and in fact, the Master Dentist moved from mouth to mouth like a chess master among tournament game boards, inspecting the work of his assistants.

It was pointless to ask him to wash his hands before attending me, because there was no wash basin visible in the room, and I knew what the local toilets looked like. Alas, a few more germs would surely not upset the already thriving community in my system, so I resigned myself to the inevitable and opened my mouth wide for the probing fingers of the Master Dentist.

He was in his element. Here was a chance to demonstrate his superiority with the drill and his dexterity with other tools, as well as his knowledge of modern Western dentistry methods! He proudly announced to the General Manager that he would drill a hole in the neighboring teeth (which were capped at a cost of $1,000 per tooth) to build a bridge for the broken molar. He gathered his audience around him, and as one head after another appeared above my face, including the General Manager’s, driver’s and translator’s, he showed them every nick and cranny of my mouth with detailed explanations like a teacher demonstrating to his pupils. While I did not understand a word that was being said, I had a good idea of what was going on. Thank God I did not have to see the gynecologist!

When Miss Sun explained the proposed procedure, I practically jumped out of my chair – no way he was going to drill holes into my crowns! No, no, I said, all I want is a temporary solution; just glue the broken piece back on and don’t touch anything else!

After a heated debate and consultation with just about everybody in the room, the Master Dentist consented, but only after he extracted the promise from me that some day he would do some real dentistry work for me. After that the work progressed smoothly under the watchful eyes of my four escorts and the constant flashlight of the staff-turned-photographer who recorded every angle of my open mouth. I was done in fifteen minutes with only one moment of minor discomfort, when the Master Dentist dropped the drill on my chest to greet another patient. The drill slid to my throat and choked me before I could retrieve it from its resting place. But the tooth was back in one piece, and I was happy I could smile again.

When it was time to pay the Master Dentist for his services, he would not hear of accepting money. Instead, he brought out a big binder with a red cloth cover, the kind that is used for special certificates, and asked me to write a few lines to commemorate the occasion, which I mustered with the greatest of care knowing that this note would be shown to many people. The honor was mine, I said, for having been treated by such a fine gentleman and skilled dentist in such a modern dental office…