Dentists in Zhengzhou (China, too)

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  Zhengzhou, Henan, China
Thursday, April 28, 2011

Like many things regarding secondary type healthcare, I've said I would wait till I got to China to take care of this. I said this with glasses (well, I said this in 2005, it wasn't until October 2010 that I got new ones) and I said this with going to the dentist. In Qiqihar I realized that a quality dentist was going to be hard to find, so I did nothing. However, Zhengzhou is a different story.

In ZZ there are several western styled dentists. As far as I know, all of them even speak English. Since it had been way too long since I saw one I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity before I go home and save a bit for the service.

The dentistry business in China is not booming. People don't care about oral health. Remember my stories from Qiqihar about me reaching for children's chins to put their mouth in the right place to make a phoneme? Yeah, mouthfuls of green and black teeth. For some people this is no exaggeration. A foreigner I met long ago in Huairou had a story of a trip to a night club. He saw a smoking hot woman and they both approached each other on the dance floor. He said hi to her. She said hi back, but along with the sounds also came a stench so strong from her mouth that it could almost be seen (that's how he tells the story. I believe him). I had a coworker who had breath so bad even my Chinese coworkers complained about it behind his back. I confronted him and he went to the dentist to get it taken care of (wait till you understand what 'taken care of' means). He came back the next day telling me the tooth was fine and not rotten. I told him again that all he needed to do was just brush his teeth more often and brush his tongue, too. The dentist added to these stories. Most Chinese people just wait until their teeth hurt beyond what they can handle before going to the dentist. When they do finally go they don't ask the dentist to save the tooth, they just demand that the problem tooth get removed. They don't care how many teeth get pulled. Just that the pain is gone.

In other words, business is very bad for a western styled dentist. The work I got done was very simple. I had a cleaning and a permanent retainer removed from my lower teeth. The cost for both was only 600yuan (about $90). However, most Chinese people are not willing to spend this type of money. I've never seen another Chinese person in her office. Then again, I've never seen anyone else in her office besides the friend who brought me there. Her work is very good and her equipment is newer than any other dentist's I've gone to. She survives on word of mouth and when I told her I needed more business cards because I had already given the one she gave me away she was ecstatic. She gave me a small stack of cards and a small stack of brochures to hand out to other people.

Since I know some Zhengzhou people read this I'll post her information here. Her name is Maria Liu and her practice is called J&D Dental Practice. Phone number 0371-63885519 and 13838008336. She can also be reached by e-mail at jddental@yahoo.cn. Her office is located inside the Zhengzhou Daxue Gongxue Hotel （郑州大学工学院宾馆） on Wenhua Lu.

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