We were scheduled to work a full week at the Little White Rabbit Hospital in Baoji. We hopped on the bus at 8am and got to the clinic about 20 minutes later. It was amazing, they literally rolled out the red carpet for us. There were TV cameras and a host straight out of the Price is Right to great us. There was a 30 minute ceremony right at the beginning and we got some group photos. They explained how the Little White Rabbit Hospital has grown and it currently is up to 17 locations, with a goal to be at 30 locations by the end of this year or the next. That sign behind my head says something along the lines of, "Grand meeting of Chinese and American dental professionals gathering together to share ideas and methods and treat those who are in need." The Head of the hospital came in and spoke, as well as Karl Koerner, the leader of this trip. His non-profit is called "Help the Children" and this is the 16th or 17th trip he has done. Pretty neat guy. Amazing surgeon as well as he speaks Chinese!
Introductions
Picture of the head of the hospital and Dr. Koerner along with some children we'd be seeing this week.
Dr. David Blanco of Salt Lake City, Dr. Koerner, and Tyler. We'd go have lunch each day across the street at the hospital cafeteria. Which is really just a third floor apartment.
The hospital arranged fun activities each day at lunch for us. This was calligraphy day. There was also a paper cutting day, a tour of the museum, a day to make pot stickers.
One of the cute kids I got to see.
Group photo of pretty much everyone there. I think we had 7 dentist, a hygienst, and then some daughters and sons.
The walk to lunch each day
Here's Su Jiang-Tao teaching Tyler and me how to roll up pot stickers.
Our awesome lunch chef for the week:
Here's a bunch of shots of Tyler entertaining the kids while they are waiting to get treatment.
Each day a portion of our group would go on a field trip outside the hospital to tour a school or orphanage. On the day that I went, we went to a school for children with hearing disabilities. These children were screened by the government when they were young and many were given very expensive cochlear implants. This school's purpose is to get them ready to integrate into regular society. We did a little performance of "Once there was a Snowman", toothbrushing instructions, and then chatted with them in small groups. They did some little songs and dances for us as well as gave us pictures they had colored for us.
At the end of our week, we had a chance to say goodbye to the great friends we had made at Rabbit Hospital. They had a presentation where they gave us a certificate and some small gifts. Once again, we took a lot of selfies.
Tyler and I got pretty good at dancing with these robots
There were opportunities throughout the week to lecture to the dentist. Here, Christina, an endo resident from Tufts University is lecturing about tooth reabsorption. It was pretty fascinating listening to the lecture in english, then translated into mandarin.
This is Dr. Hao Bai. He is now a facebook friend of mine. In China you have to use a VPN if you want to access google or facebook. Everyone there uses an app called WeChat which is amazing and I think it might take over facebook and instagram and venmo. It combines all those apps into one and it is good for donating to beggars on the street, renting a bicycle, sending a picture... everything.
This here is Tai Bin. He rocks. He spent one of the evenings walking around with Tyler and Me and was just concerned for all of our safety. Good guy.
They didn't want Tyler to leave.
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