迷失的老美

Well, I went over to 新光天地 to do some shopping and finally ended up with 2 Puma shirts thanks to K yelling at me
I’m sure every expat has had this experience over here, but here it is again. Chinese sizes are very different.
You probably often see 170, 175, 180, 185 and just know that this has something to do with size, what exactly you have no idea.
This is actually a measurement for the height of the person, and in theory, If you are 180, you should be able to wear a 180 shirt… Of course if you are 190 or taller I guess you are just fucked. I guess this makes sense, however these are ASIAN cuts, not intended for us big barbarians. A 185 will say it’s an XXL, but in the US, it would only be an L. So, If you wear an XL (like me), you need a 190 (XXXL), or if you wear an XXL (like I used to), you need a 195 (XXXXL) which doesn’t exist. Finding something that fits or not.. either way you will just feel fat in the end.

Credit cards are fun too. Most banks will look at you and write you off right then and there because they assume you are an English teacher. If you can get past that part, they see your residence permit expires in one year and not understand that you will just renew it. An open-ended contract confuses them even more. I waited for 6 months about for my Citic Bank (中信银行) application to process. They FINALLY mailed me a card, what a glorious day… but, they got my name wrong and it wasn’t a credit card… yes, being the geniuses they are, they actually gave me another debit card. K yelled at me until I stopped being lazy and applied today over at Merchants Bank (招商银行). All I can say so far is that their service is in line with Western banks (or at least how I remember western banks, or imagine them to be). They actually were HAPPY that I was applying and EAGER to help me and CORRECTED any mistakes I made in the application form. Two weeks and I should be getting my first real Chinese credit card, hooray for airline mileage.

Well, this post gets English.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT GO TO TEMPLE OF HEAVEN HOSPITAL FOR DENTAL WORK.
Now that that is out of the way, I will elaborate.
I popped in last Sunday to get the job done. I applied for the damned hospital card, I payed my 5RMB to get in, I climbed all the way to the 5th floor and waited in line for an hour.
It was finally my turn. I accepted my fate and walked into the room and sat down. This is basically the place they do all the teeth pulling. The water dish at the side of the chair was spotted with dried blood and screaming was not too unusual to hear. I showed them my chart, closed my eyes and told them to go ahead and do it.
However they didn’t start the work. No, they got the whole staff gathered around and came up with the decision “No, we cannot pull your teeth”.
What the fuck? Why not?
Apparently, they believed that pulling just the top two means the bottom two are rendered useless.
I told them to gank all four… I still cannot believe I said this.
Their answer? No, we cannot pull healthy teeth, you have to go get the top ones filled, 3rd floor.

Fucking hell. I get up, leave the room and go down to the 3rd floor only to find that they don’t work on weekends and I would have to wait till 7pm until I could use the emergency dental ward.

I gave up and told my story at work on Monday. The boss called in a favor and got me in over at Beijing United Family (Yes the place I went for this!) to see a real dentist. No insurance, so company would cover it, cool. Well, first difference of note was the fact that they cleaned the area and actually looked at it. Then took a full mouth X-Ray to see what was going on. Guess what? My wisdom teeth came in perfectly straight, fully erupted, no problems apart from the cavities. Unfortunately, with the cavities, it means that they will always have problems and it’s just best to get them ganked out now before they cause any other problems. Oh and they have overlapping roots, possibly 3 of them. The good news is that the upper second molar still makes contact with the lower third, so pulling the uppers only isn’t a problem (fuck you Temple of Heaven).

This dental clinic, unlike Chinese dental clinics, has dentists with full certification who are the best at what they do. This means that I can have all the yummy drugs I want. It’s 90 minutes and it’s only the top ones, so I elected for Local and Nitrous as opposed to General, which is overkill for this. The price tag was looking at about 6k RMB, but I was able to sign up for the membership plan retroactively and basically got it for free while saving the company a little bit at the same time.

27th of June, 10:10 AM is when they get ganked out and I should be laughing the whole time. Beats the hell out of the local places in terms of quality and safety as well. So, my advice to all expats here in BJ – Don’t go to the local places, they will probably fuck up your mouth, just fork over the cash and get your dental work done at United Family.

这次要写双语因为外国人应该了解这件事
Ok you English speakers, you get to read this one because you’ll appreciate it.

昨天发现到了我的智齿有问题。上面的有虫。 我早知道有问题但我以为了不是太重要的。吃了杨梅以后（很酸）才能发现到。
先去了药房给他们看，她叫我去医院，但那个医院已经关门了。终于去了天坛医院看牙。特别紧张，为外国人中国牙科是最恐怖了。但是一看到能放心一点，跟美国的差不多一样，医生也是在美国读学了。。。让了他们看一看。
她们同意有问题啊给我两个选择：拔，修。 如果不是智齿我肯定要修好了，但在美国我们的想法就是智齿有问题的话，拔是最好因为第一个问题出来以后，问题就是越来越多，最好的办法就是拔。放了一些氧化锌在里面然后我说了明天要再来。然后我问了医生可以给我看拔牙的工具么？因为如果是很可怕，我能早知道。给了我看，没什么，跟美国一样。

So, yesterday I noticed a rather large problem with the old wisdom teeth, yes, those wonderful vestigial teeth that irritate 90% of us. I knew there was a problem before, but it seemed rather small and I let it pass. I had some Wax Berries and they were rather sour, this irritated the situation and the full extent of the gumline decay was made apparent. Top two wisdom teeth, exterior decay into the dentin… yep, gotta get that taken care of. Went down the the pharmacy to see if they had anything temporary, no pain, just annoying. They looked at it and said I should go to the dentist and they recommended one. Went there, closed. I got sent over to Temple of Heaven Hospital. Chinese dentistry.. yea, scary as all fuck. You have heard the horror stories and if you found this page on Google, it’s probably why you came here. Well, shockingly, it was the same exact setup pretty much that you have in any western dentist office. Doctors trained in the US and they know what they are doing… big relief.
I give them a look and they see the problem. Two choices: fix it or pull it. Well, if it was any other tooth I would have it fixed, but it’s the wisdom tooth, so it’s pretty standard to just yank it. It’s not worth the trouble or money to keep fixing it. They don’t pull teeth at night though, something to do with higher blood pressure and it being dangerous. I got them to pack it with zinc-oxide too. Ok, come back tomorrow. I asked to see what they use to gank teeth, basically just wanting to know if I had to prepare for a horribly frightening ordeal or not. She showed it to me, same shit as the US, much relief.

今天又去了。我准备好了去拔牙。不紧张。叫了我去办卡后去4层付钱（5块）。然后去了5层等。终于是我的号码。进去了，坐着，叫了他们拔牙没问题。然后医生叫了同事过来。说了拔不了。。。 哇？
说了我的牙都是太好了。如果拔上面的，下面的没用。我说了那也要拔下面的吧。
他们说下面没虫，不许拔。就会修牙，叫了我去3层。。 靠
去了3层，今天没上班。。。 再靠

Today I went back, prepared for what must be done, not nervous, just anxious. I went to the front desk, applied for my health card there and went off to 4th floor to pay my 5RMB fee to check in, then off to 4th floor to wait my turn. Finally got in, sat down and told them to just go ahead and pull it. Suddenly a crowd of dentists gathered around and after some discussion said “No”.. what?!
Pulling the top two leaves the bottom two useless and my bite is too good, they were afraid of messing it up. So, pull all four I said, shocked by the words coming out of my own mouth. Nope, can’t do that, the bottom two are perfectly healthy and they refuse to pull healthy teeth. They told me to go to the 3rd floor to get them fixed. Shit.
Went to the 3rd floor, but they don’t work on Sundays… Shit shit shit

What to do? Get em fixed or find someone who will yank the top two. The biggest learning experience coming out of this is basically one of knowing that dentists here in China are not so bad and know what they are doing. Just go to a hospital to get it done and ask questions and ask to see things if you are nervous… that doesn’t, however, solve the problem with them applying their ethics to your case