When translated literally, this is the name of the dentist’s
office where I got a wisdom tooth pulled today. My roommate and I combined our
Chinese character (hanzi) reading skills, along with the help of another
teacher who just happened to be at the dentist office at the same time as we
were, and it only took us about 20 minutes to figure out what it said. In our
defense, it was written in script.
Anyways,
today I got a wisdom tooth pulled. It was rather painful, and in the future I
will avoid it if it can be helped.
When one
has such a procedure done in a country other than one’s home’s country, it
becomes necessary to make a few cultural observations.
First of
all, my appointment was at 9:30, and my roommate, who played mom for me today,
and I arrived at the dentist’s office at 9:15, and the first thing that the
dentist said to me was, “You’re early.” Here I was thinking that I was running
late, and we ended waiting for at least a half an hour. Before I came to China, I remember learning
the rule of three; everything takes three times longer in China. This was a
truth that was seen throughout the day.
I won’t go
into the details of the procedure. I am sure that it was much the same as it
would be in any other modern dentist’s office. The only difference was I
couldn’t understand what they were saying. They would talk to me in English,
but they spent most of the time talking to each other in Chinese. I am not sure
if it made things easier or worse that I did not know what was going on.
After the
procedure, the dentist asked if I had any antibiotics. I was thinking that she
meant Neosporin, antibiotic ointment. I wasn’t sure if I could ingest Neosporin,
but that was the only thing that I thought that she could possibly mean. Then I
realized that she meant an actual antibiotic, as in the pills. It did not
register in my brain that she could mean the pill because a doctor/dentist the
US would never ask if you had an antibiotic at home, s/he would simply
prescribe them to you.
Well, as a matter of fact, I did
indeed have antibiotics. Here in China, you can get antibiotics
over-the-counter, most of the time. You see my roommate has been sick for a
while now, and one day, the school nurse suggested that she get an antibiotic.
She went to the pharmacy to buy it, but they would not sell it to her. Then she
called a Chinese friend, Summer, and Summer said that the pharmacist would sell
it to her. So Summer went and bought the antibiotics for my roommate, and while
she was at it, she bought two extra boxes just in case.
Once I figured
out what she meant by antibiotics, all was well. I paid the bill, set up a
follow-up appointment, and was on my way.
My roommate
and I went down to get a taxi. We waited. And we waited. And we waited. After
several minutes of not having any luck finding a taxi, we saw this adorable
little boy eating an ice cream cone. I was feeling pretty good, and ice cream
sounded soothing, so I suggested that we go to McDonalds, and put our taxi
waiting on hold.
Our conversation
with the lady at McDonalds went something like this (Please note that this was
in Chinese):
“I want this (pointing to a picture of
an ice cream cone), but I want it in a cup.”
Blank Stare.
“I want this (pointing to a picture of
a sundae), but I don’t want Strawberry on it.
Blank Stare.
“I want ice cream, but I don’t want
this (pointing to the picture of the cone).”
I think that at this point, she
understood, but then she tried to charge us 7 kuai (about a dollar) for ice
cream in a cup while ice cream in a cone is only 3 kuai (about $0.40). So we
went through the whole charade again, but she didn’t get it. We decided to suck it up and pay the extra 4
kuai. They don’t really do special orders in China. It’s just not a part of
their culture, so it really confuses people when you try to make a special
order.
Once we finally
got our ice cream, we endeavored to wait for a taxi. And when we finally got
one, I would say that the wait was worth it. We had ice cream, and we had a
taxi driver that was very conversation, and he spoke a little English. I genuinely enjoyed listening and somewhat
talking with him on the way home even though my roommate did most of the
talking.
Once I got
home, I rested by watching A Christmas Carol, and actually, as I was watching
it, I thinking about another blog post that will come in the future.
All-in-all, it
went well, and aside from a sore mouth, I feel pretty good. Now I am relaxing
to one of the Thin Man movies, a 1930s movie series with William Powell and Myrna
Loy.
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