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Wang Meng – A String of Choices
It all began with that toothache of mine. In the begi
Believing is acting. Never doubting science, I had bestirred myself and sallied forth the night before to stand in line at the you-know-where. Umbrella over my head, galoshes on my feet, and raincoat wrapped around my shoulders, I stood in the line. I don't remember whether it was a starry night or a drizzling night or if it was pouring bucketfuls. The stronger shock to the nerves always drowns out the weaker. (You'll know what I mean if you keep on reading.) That particular dental clinic was famed far and wide for constructing removable root canals under your cavities. It had been written up in the papers for "exemplary performance," and since then the long lines outside its gates had grown even longer. A mountain-climber friend whom I had always admired offered me his tent and suggested that I install myself outside the registry office, right under its little window slot. He also made me a present of compressed biscuits fortified with vitamins and iron.
A formidable lady doctor, despite the fact that she did not seem to weigh over one hundred pounds, took custody of me and jabbed a needleful of Novocain into my upper jaw without wasting time on preliminaries. She vanished before I had time to make out if her eyes were double lidded. Following on her heels, a creature whom I deduced to be an intern shoved a coldly glistening pair of pliers into my mouth. From the viewpoint of patients, I would propound the view that interns are the fountainhead of all our woes. On this assumption, I deduced with dead certainty that that particular ultra-efficient muscle-rippling athlete was none other than a blasted intern. "Do you feel anything?" he asked.
I nodded. Would it be toothache if I didn't? Wasn't it on account of this particular feeling that I had undertaken to quarter myself in front of the registry office? Would anyone be spiritual enough to do it just for the sake of the experience? All living creatures are in possession of the senses, so who among the living would own to being so bereft? And anyway, when a formidable medical personage puts such an awesome question to you, what can you do but nod? One of the golden precepts of life is that nodding your head is always better than shaking it. To be more precise, taking into account all aspects of the problem, I might add that if the question hanging in the balance is whether or not to chop off a head, then shake your head by all means, and let the other head stay on. But as a general principle, I'd say that nodding is always better than shaking.
And thus he proceeded to pull out my tooth. He pulled at my chin, he pulled at my neck, he pulled at my head, he crashed through my cavities. And why not? It is not for nothing that dentistry here is formally categorized as surgery. It refuses to be designated as tooth extraction but must puff itself up as surgery. Under such a heading, it is transformed into something profound, refined, erudite. The pliers of surgery pulled my soul out of its internal sockets into the external light of day. I broke into a cold sweat, I saw sparks, I fainted.
What a sissy!
As I was gasping for breath, I thought to myself that I should bring in a piece of self-criticism within three days at the latest. Being a sissy was no laughing matter. It was a serious lapse. The proletariat are all offspring of the legendary Guan Yu, otherwise known as Yun Chang, who had his flesh cut open and his bones scraped of a poisonous infection while he played chess.
It was only on the bus on my way back that I felt the area where the pliers had attacked suddenly turn to wood. Praise be to anesthetics, fruit of science. The workers and businessmen who have brought you into the world have not stinted on the ingredients of the recipe, after all. After the dissemination of extreme pain, I then experienced the transcendence of numbness. God help my jaw!
Now you understand why I, a professor living in the twentieth century, squarely facing the problems of modernization, would cringe at the thought of tooth extraction. You now see why I look on the various branches of dentistry as the torture chambers of the Japanese military police, why I look on all dental clinics as versions of purgatory. Teeth, for the last dozen years, have been my supreme concern. To protect my teeth, to protect my wife, to protect my honor-the three-protect principle reaches tragic dimensions, tugging at my heartstrings. In compliance with this principle, I brush my teeth five times a day, once in the morning, once in the evening, and once after each of my three daily meals. I have tried countless brands of toothpaste. My monthly expenditure on toothpaste far exceeds my spending on cigarettes and wine put together. I have become a collector of toothbrushes: long handles, short handles, long bristles, short bristles, stiff bristles, soft bristles, a bristling little tuft. I never touch cold or underdone food; I gave up sweet-and-sour; I avoid hot soup and sticky porridge and everything hard on the teeth. I not only quit cracking melon seeds, I even keep away from roasted peanuts!
But, disaster of all disasters-one day, the toothache struck again! Oh the avenging heavens!
Now you can easily understand why with this new toothache, I moped about, dragging out my days. Should I go to the hospital? I just couldn't muster the courage. I was faced with a paradox. Why go to a hospital? Because of the ache. What, then, if you go to a hospital? It will ache a hundredfold, a thousandfold. But after the ache, there will be some relief. The power of medicine lies in the fact that it will concentrate your lifetime of suffering into twenty-five seconds of agony. Which is better? A mind-racking question. It all depends on the value system you live by. With the world as it is-beauty and ugliness mixed in a medley, old and new side by side, ideas scintillating, concepts chasing one another, east confronting west, north in dialogue with south, schools and trends as numerous as trees in a forest, a sea of flapping ba
History raises a question only when the solution itself has ripened. Just as I was suffering unspeakable agonies from a toothache and the perplexity of indecision, the president of a certain tooth-ology association moved into our apartment building. We shook hands on the landing, and the wings of freedom fluttered on his back as if he were the archangel himself. He gave me his card: THE INTERNATIONAL TOOTHOLOGY SOCIETY CHINA CENTER. SHI XUEYA, PRESIDENT. ADDRESS: RUNNING IN PLACE. TELEPHONE: OOOOOOO.
Oh heaven-sent succor! Toothache, thy days are numbered! Armed with two packs of the famous ginseng and deer-antler kidney-enhancement mixture, I called upon President Shi. President Shi refused the gift offering with evident delight and then accepted most reluctantly. Then he proceeded to enlighten me. The aching tooth, he said, is divided into five categories, each category subdivided into five species. Five fives, that makes twenty-five. They are all but interplay of the elements: gold, wood, water, and fire. Or variations of inflammation, decay, heat, or cold. Or imbalance of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium. Encompassing medicine and surgery, braces and orthopedics, dentistry as a field of medicine is divided into three schools, which in turn are subdivided into nine branches. West of Mount Tai, it forks out into two main schools, European and American. Busily pulling, drilling, and filling in deadly competition, stopping up with cement, substituting with glass beads, pouring in mercury, tinkering from inside and capping from outside, they are all out to enhance the beauty of youth. Ancient Chinese medical practice, he went on, traces the complaint to its source and then removes the manifestations. All forms of toothache, according to Chinese medicine, begin with heat syndrome: liver inflammation, stomach inflammation, heart inflammation, kidney inflammation, lung inflammation, and spleen inflammation. Inflammation rises from irritation. Water quells fire, but evil fires are resistant. The quelling of inflammation is an art, and one must seek a doctor. North, south, east, west-there are four famous practitioners. There are also folk prescriptions, which have their special folk flavor. Curing toothaches by the art of qi gong is to work through control of the vital energy and other paranormal functions. When teeth are pulled out by qi gong, new ones will sprout that can withstand heat or cold…