There are many uncomfortable things I do in China for the shear sake of experience. Singing karaoke and sampling fermented bean juice both fall into this category. However, a trip to the dentist was definitely not on the list of experiences I felt was necessary for a fuller understanding of China. Surprise! I'm coming home with a deeper understanding of China than I needed; let's hope I'm not also coming home with a blood-borne disease because, as it happened, the most major dental work of my adult life has taken place in a storefront clinic in Kunming.

After doing my best to ignore an intermittent toothache, the troublesome molar simply broke off and that hurt way too much to dismiss. First I sought dental recommendations from friends. To my surprise, the vast majority of my Chinese yuppie pals had not been to a dentist within the last several years. Some had not been in their entire lives. Now it's true that I have students with visibly rotten teeth, but an equal number have excellent-looking teeth. I had mistakenly assumed the Chinese middle class went to a dentist at least occasionally.

Of course, it's Miss Pi who has all the answers. She assured me she knew the very best dentist in Kunming and he had repaired her broken molar just last year. But it would not be cheap, she warned. This dentist used the most up-to-date American methods to rebuild broken teeth, she boasted. I doubted the practice of "up-to-date American methods" and limited my hopes to sterile equipment. Miss Pi offered to take me, and since my dental vocabulary in Mandarin at the time consisted solely of "tooth" and "ache," it seemed like a good idea to bring along a translator.

You don't make appointments with dentists in China. You show up and wait your turn. Therefore, we got an early start one Saturday morning. "We," in this instance, being not just Miss Pi and me; it was a whole dental brigade! Miss Pi's mother and best friend also needed dental care, and there's nothing the Chinese like better than a group activity.

We comrades in pain arrived at a small storefront with two rooms. The first, where the chief dentist worked, contained a patient's chair, a stool for x-rays, a bench crowded with waiting patients, and a small desk where the cashier sat. This was all in a space not more than ten by ten feet. In the back room, two more dentists worked. As I lay in the reclining chair, my gaping mouth was not one meter from the open door where passerbys gawked at the sight of a foreigner having her tooth drilled.

Miss Pi is already familiar with foreigners' deep fears about blood-borne diseases, so she wasn't surprised I'd brought along my own syringe. As it happened, there was no novocain, so I didn't need the syringe. Noting my paranoia, the dentist offered to sell me my personal set of dental tools at the wholesale price of 5 yuan (60 cents). In fact, for me, he even put on one disposable plastic glove--all special treatment none of the locals received.

Even with these precautions, I couldn't help being uneasy. The drills weren't sterilized between patients. For heaven's sake, they weren't even washed. And while the place wasn't filthy by a long stretch, my manicurist in Cambridge maintains a much cleaner workspace. Yet the dentist, aged 75 but appearing barely 60, seemed competent and kind, and there was a pleasant friendliness to the place. How so, you wonder? Well, since there is no significant distance between the bench of waiting patients and the dental chair itself, everyone feels free to offer opinions and observations. New patients walk in and explain their problems to the dentist while he probes the teeth of the person in the chair. It's all very chatty. The assistant even keeps her ungloved finger in your mouth--pretty friendly, I'd say--while x-rays are taken. That distracted me from the lack of a lead body shield.

The x-rays revealed that there was some problem. Decay? Miss Pi was uncertain about the word. Whatever it was, it had to be fixed before we could launch into replacing the broken part of my tooth. Of course, this involved drilling. I will spare you the details and just say that I've come to realize how easily I would succumb to torture. Novocain has now replaced caffeine as my most highly prized drug.

One of the habits that has served me well in China is steadfastly believing that "different" doesn't necessarily equal "worse." Life is not a math test with one right answer, I tell myself. The American way isn't the only way. Therefore, the fact that this dentist seemed to be using Chinese medicine instead of anything I recognized to treat my cavity didn't bother me. I kind of liked the way the oil of clove tasted.

The dentist and I seemed to understand each other reasonably well, so Miss Pi did not offer to accompany me on subsequent visits. On the next two occasions, it seemed to me that small, wickedly sharp nails (*not* acupuncture needles I ascertained) painlessly entered my tooth, medicine was applied, and a white substance sealed the cavity.

For my fourth visit, I took along Swallow, my Chinese tutor, because I wanted a clearer understanding of what was going on and when my tooth might actually be rebuilt. With Swallow listening to make sure I was speaking coherently, I told the dentist that all had been fine until two nights ago when I suddenly began to taste the medicine he had put in my tooth the previous week; since then it didn't exactly hurt, but was a little uncomfortable.

From what I could tell, what he did that day was file the adjacent tooth and swab some medicine around that whole side. I asked Swallow to inquire when he was going to rebuild my tooth and it seemed that as soon as the tooth no longer hurt, he could do that.

I also mentioned that a tooth on the other side of my mouth was now occasionally hurting, so could he take a look at it? He tapped the tops of the teeth there, but did not call for any X-rays. Instead, he filed the top surface of the teeth on that side and announced, "Keyi le!" (Sort of "all set!")

Was that National Teeth Filing Day? Since when does filing reduce pain?

It was on this visit that my faith in the kindly Kunming dentist started to waver. I began to think that even if American dentists are not necessarily the only competent ones in the world, it really might be fair to rank every dentist practicing in Cambridge somewhat higher than my Kunming dentist. I wondered: as long as it no longer hurt and there was plenty of chewing surface left, did I really need a molar rebuilt anyway?

The upshot of all this is that I am coming home with my personal dental tool set, a broken molar, and an August 6th appointment with an American dentist.