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 banners shutting out our view of the sky-when the multitude of views exceeds the sum total of all the teeth of the world population by who knows how many times-in such a world, at such a time, I felt the real dilemma of choice.
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…
President Shi's eloquence flowed on; he was conversant with all the famous examples of toothache as well as all pertinent theories and schools of thought, from ancient to modern, native and foreign. From the fifth left upper molar of Napoléon to the auction of the dentures of Hitler's mistress, Eva; from the front teeth of the newly excavated female mummy of the Eastern Han dynasty to the qualities of the Buddha's tooth and its efficacy on various occasions-he was conversant with them all. Then he went on to the great controversy between the conservative and the radical schools in treating toothache, which has been raging for centuries. Just as he was at the height of his eloquence, I screamed, "It's killing me!" and fainted dead away.
President Shi was most apologetic. He was also modest. He declared that he was only the president of the Toothology Society and was not a practicing doctor at a dental clinic. He explained that the society was an academic organization and then proceeded to inform rne that all dentists at the county level were supervised by the Handicrafts Management Office of the county government and that their licenses were issued by Agricultural Market Control officers. He kindly pointed out to me that my toothache was too down-to-earth, too mundane for his own interests. He offered me the use of his collection, including The Toothache Encyclopedia, The Complete Guide to Toothache, Suggestions for Tooth Protection, and other reference books. As the ancient saying goes, The master points the way; the key to the cure is in your own hands. How could I have doubted it? I was reluctant to wear out my welcome. So, restraining myself according to the ancient rites, I picked up two volumes and left.
Reading those books plunged me into the depths of confusion. I realized with pain that teeth are mortal but knowledge boundless. In the act of pulling, the teeth are there, but after the act teeth are nonexistent. Lost in boundless despair in a toothless, boundless world, I woke up and found myself a modern man.
My wife's elder brother, who had just returned from research and study abroad, scolded me roundly for my ignorance and condemned President Shi for wallowing in useless words. He pointed out that fleeing the hospital with an aching tooth held hostage in my jaws was like Ah Q hiding from his own baldness. [2] He said that if Ah Q had taken steps earlier to treat his baldness, like taking vitamins and applying hair lotions, he might now be flaunting a mop of hair down to his waist. My brother-in-law warned that a toothache, if unattended, may develop from a single infected tooth to periodontal disease, to pulpitis, to osteomyelitis, to bone tuberculosis, and from there with one quick leap to cancer of the spinal marrow. Then if you're lucky, it's amputation. If not, you're a dead man. Examples were legion. In A.D. 1635, 5,488 people died of tooth disease in Europe alone. He pointed out with great perspicacity that there was no such branch of science as toothology, that none of the developed countries recognize it as such. He would recommend that a group of oral surgeons form a team to investigate the feasibility of toothology as a branch of dental science. I mildly objected to his way of setting up the non-native rhinoceros, metaphorically speaking, as a measure of all things. But I thanked him for his advice. The truth grates on the ears, as the saying goes. He had pointed out the stern effects of my dilatoriness in dealing with my tooth. As I did not want to lose a limb, much less my life, on account of one bad tooth, I decided to act.
I geared myself up for another pulling. That there might be anything else in that particular dental clinic apart from pulling teeth was beyond my wildest imagination. The chairman of the department where I teach told me that extraction is the fastest, the most pleasant, the most sanitary, and the most thorough way of dealing with a bad tooth and that drilling, filing, or filling is a much more painful process, with no end in sight. My colleagues at the department admonished me to make sure that I got hold of a male doctor for the operation, because tooth extraction is heavy labor. According to them, the grain allotment of dentists should be on a par with that of dockworkers. I took in everything gratefully, keeping to myself the fact that it was precisely a male doctor who had nearly killed me with his pulling. Friends and colleagues poured out their own experiences, lessons to be drawn, warnings for the future, tricks for an easy way out, rules to stick by, and so on, all relating to the art of dealing with the aching tooth. As the sayings go, The scholar offers words, the rascal offers gifts, and Birds of a feather flock together. Thus it may be deduced that both I and my community fell into the category of scholars. Alas for my scholarly tooth.