Holy Protection Chinese Orthodox Church - the last functioning Orthodox church in Harbin - in the first snow of winter.
20 December 2016
A Tale of Two Dentists
I had the great misfortune to break a tooth while eating at what used to be one of my favorite restaurants here, Casanova Turkish Restaurant on Xuanli Street. (They also have a second restaurant down at one of the malls on Xuefu Road - I wouldn't recommend going to either location as they don't buy high quality meat, unless your definition of "high quality" includes big chunks of bone where there oughtn't be any.) Going to the dentist is rarely a pleasant experience anywhere, but as I found it can be fraught with unexpected frustrations in Harbin.
My work strongly recommended I go to a dentist they had a discount arrangement with, Sunkiss/圣琪 on Xidazhi Street (pictured right). In addition to being the only dentist I knew of in Harbin - I generally avoid subjecting myself to any sort of medical "professionals" here due to past experiences here with going to local doctors for pneumonia and sinus infections - Sunkiss was further
commended by an English-speaking secretary named Betty, who was billed as being able to translate for foreigners with limited Chinese (me!) and generally make one's experience better than it would be elsewhere.
Boy was that a load and a half! Which really shouldn't surprise me given who it was recommending Sunkiss to me, but hindsight and all of that. I went in the morning after I'd broken the tooth and was subjected to more rudeness than usual, with any objection or question I had about what the dentist proposed to do being met by Betty with 'I have thousands (yes, thousands) of foreign friends and they all say this is the normal way to do this' and the dentist himself and his staff making fun of me in Chinese for being (A) unable to speak Chinese fluently, (B) fat, and (C) wanting anesthetic for the incredibly painful procedure they ended up doing.
Which would all have been fair enough - it's Harbin, not Vancouver or Chicago after all - if the dentist had been competent at his job. But he was not. I repeatedly explained that North Americans use a lot of anesthetic even for minor dental procedures and that if he was going to begin a root canal treatment that I wanted a lot (by local standards) of anesthetic and was more than willing to pay for it. What I got was about a quarter of what one would get for a far less invasive procedure in North America. I've been quite lucky in not having experienced any major traumas, so the pain of that quack drilling into my tooth to deposit some "medicine" (more on that in a moment) was incredible.
After inspecting my tooth the dentist informed me that I needed a root canal (which I did) and a crown, which altogether would take him a month and a half or two months to finish. Now I'm no dentist, but I'm no fool either and I could not believe a root canal would take THAT long anywhere, even in Harbin. But I was desperate and unaware of anywhere else to go, so I let the dentist begin the whole process as I contemplated the thought of being on a soup diet for two months. It wasn't until after I left and asked around that I discovered that I had been struck by the witchdoctor nonsense billed as "traditional Chinese medicine" (TCM) again. (For the first big time checkout my encounter with penumonia my first winter here.)
Apparently it's standard for dentists here - supposedly professionally trained medical personnel, right? - to use some herbal nonsense to gradually kill the nerve in the tooth needing a root canal, week after week scraping a bit more of the nerve out and then applying more of their witchdoctor concoctions to keep at it until the nerve is finally all gone. That's why a root canal here is such a long, drawn out, torturous process. And I'm not going to lie, when I found out that I'd gone to yet another supposed medical professional and again been treated with herbal nonsense instead of real medicine I wanted to break something.
Thankfully, my luck turned shortly thereafter. I couldn't face the thought of going back to the first quack I'd been to at Sunkiss - especially after finding out he was treating me with TCM nonsense - so I followed the recommendation of a couple of friends who have lived in Harbin quite some time and went to Shine Dental/圣安 on Dongdazhi Street for a consultation. And I am so, so glad that I did! Shine was the opposite of Sunkiss in every way - professional, polite, helpful, responsive. After Sunkiss I had a lot of questions about what exactly the dentist at Shine was planning on doing, and he very patiently answered all of my questions. I could let him witchdoctor me with TCM or have a proper root canal done - I'll let you guess which I opted for - and while the cost was high for here, the kindness, professionalism, and use of real medicine were more than worth it.
The root canal itself was awkward, but painless. Plenty of anesthetic was used and the dentist was properly sterile. The procedure was done in one day. I had a second appointment to mold my inlay, and then a third to actually finish the whole process. The dentist at Sunkiss wanted me eating soft food for months. The dentist at Shine had me eating normally again in less than two weeks. So if you ever find yourself facing dental issues in Harbin - or even just in need of a cleaning - I would strongly recommend you pay a little extra and go to Shine rather than the quacks elsewhere here! It may feel like you're paying a lot, but when you know what can happen elsewhere and compare the cost to North American dental work (where I would have paid four times what I did here) it's well worth it!
Update (20/1/2017): My inlay fell out on 17 January - just over a month after it was put in - not while I was eating hard candy or a tough steak, but pancakes. (Yes, the soft, fluffy Western kind.) In all fairness to Shine they're fixing it for free (there's a year's warranty), but I guess I'll have to go to the dentist the next time I'm in North America to make sure this second fix (assuming it lasts more than a month) is a good one...
My work strongly recommended I go to a dentist they had a discount arrangement with, Sunkiss/圣琪 on Xidazhi Street (pictured right). In addition to being the only dentist I knew of in Harbin - I generally avoid subjecting myself to any sort of medical "professionals" here due to past experiences here with going to local doctors for pneumonia and sinus infections - Sunkiss was further
Boy was that a load and a half! Which really shouldn't surprise me given who it was recommending Sunkiss to me, but hindsight and all of that. I went in the morning after I'd broken the tooth and was subjected to more rudeness than usual, with any objection or question I had about what the dentist proposed to do being met by Betty with 'I have thousands (yes, thousands) of foreign friends and they all say this is the normal way to do this' and the dentist himself and his staff making fun of me in Chinese for being (A) unable to speak Chinese fluently, (B) fat, and (C) wanting anesthetic for the incredibly painful procedure they ended up doing.
Which would all have been fair enough - it's Harbin, not Vancouver or Chicago after all - if the dentist had been competent at his job. But he was not. I repeatedly explained that North Americans use a lot of anesthetic even for minor dental procedures and that if he was going to begin a root canal treatment that I wanted a lot (by local standards) of anesthetic and was more than willing to pay for it. What I got was about a quarter of what one would get for a far less invasive procedure in North America. I've been quite lucky in not having experienced any major traumas, so the pain of that quack drilling into my tooth to deposit some "medicine" (more on that in a moment) was incredible.
After inspecting my tooth the dentist informed me that I needed a root canal (which I did) and a crown, which altogether would take him a month and a half or two months to finish. Now I'm no dentist, but I'm no fool either and I could not believe a root canal would take THAT long anywhere, even in Harbin. But I was desperate and unaware of anywhere else to go, so I let the dentist begin the whole process as I contemplated the thought of being on a soup diet for two months. It wasn't until after I left and asked around that I discovered that I had been struck by the witchdoctor nonsense billed as "traditional Chinese medicine" (TCM) again. (For the first big time checkout my encounter with penumonia my first winter here.)
Apparently it's standard for dentists here - supposedly professionally trained medical personnel, right? - to use some herbal nonsense to gradually kill the nerve in the tooth needing a root canal, week after week scraping a bit more of the nerve out and then applying more of their witchdoctor concoctions to keep at it until the nerve is finally all gone. That's why a root canal here is such a long, drawn out, torturous process. And I'm not going to lie, when I found out that I'd gone to yet another supposed medical professional and again been treated with herbal nonsense instead of real medicine I wanted to break something.
Thankfully, my luck turned shortly thereafter. I couldn't face the thought of going back to the first quack I'd been to at Sunkiss - especially after finding out he was treating me with TCM nonsense - so I followed the recommendation of a couple of friends who have lived in Harbin quite some time and went to Shine Dental/圣安 on Dongdazhi Street for a consultation. And I am so, so glad that I did! Shine was the opposite of Sunkiss in every way - professional, polite, helpful, responsive. After Sunkiss I had a lot of questions about what exactly the dentist at Shine was planning on doing, and he very patiently answered all of my questions. I could let him witchdoctor me with TCM or have a proper root canal done - I'll let you guess which I opted for - and while the cost was high for here, the kindness, professionalism, and use of real medicine were more than worth it.The root canal itself was awkward, but painless. Plenty of anesthetic was used and the dentist was properly sterile. The procedure was done in one day. I had a second appointment to mold my inlay, and then a third to actually finish the whole process. The dentist at Sunkiss wanted me eating soft food for months. The dentist at Shine had me eating normally again in less than two weeks. So if you ever find yourself facing dental issues in Harbin - or even just in need of a cleaning - I would strongly recommend you pay a little extra and go to Shine rather than the quacks elsewhere here! It may feel like you're paying a lot, but when you know what can happen elsewhere and compare the cost to North American dental work (where I would have paid four times what I did here) it's well worth it!
Update (20/1/2017): My inlay fell out on 17 January - just over a month after it was put in - not while I was eating hard candy or a tough steak, but pancakes. (Yes, the soft, fluffy Western kind.) In all fairness to Shine they're fixing it for free (there's a year's warranty), but I guess I'll have to go to the dentist the next time I'm in North America to make sure this second fix (assuming it lasts more than a month) is a good one...
15 December 2016
Sunrise Over Nangang
Another gorgeous, pollution-enhanced sunrise. (I know I should love them, but I do!) I live in Daoli District, but the sun rises over Nangang just to the east of my apartment complex.
A closer look (from another morning) at the plumes of coal smoke rising over the city...
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