My friend’s grandparents moved in to his Beijing apartment to avail of a cheaper dentist

It was to be a night different from all other nights because for the first time in the couple of years I have known him, my tight-fisted artist friend Song was going to pay for dinner. He had just sold a large painting for a good price and when he made the offer on the spur of the moment, naming a decent pizza place, I thought it was best that we meet the following day.He was on alert from the moment we sat down and I could feel the tension rise as I turned the pages of the menu, past the pizza and pasta on to the meat and fish dishes that were twice the price. But the atmosphere eased after we agreed to share a pizza and a salad and when the waiter came to ask if I would like a second drink, Song shooed him away.He had more than the picture sale to celebrate because a few days earlier, he had persuaded the landlord to cut his rent by 25 per cent, the third big reduction he has extracted from him in as many years.“He had a brain haemorrhage and he was in hospital so he could only type short answers to my texts. In the end, he just said yes,” he said.READ MOREThe landlord also said yes when Song asked if his mother, his grandmother and his grandfather could register temporarily at his address. The three of them had arrived from his hometown in northeast China a couple of weeks earlier and they were planning to stay for a while.His grandparents, both in their mid-80s, had been talking for almost a year about coming to Beijing for dental treatment, which is better in the capital than in the down-at-heel rust belt they come from. But the hukou, or household registration, usually limits Chinese citizens’ access to services like public healthcare to their own province or city.By shifting their hukou temporarily to Beijing, Song’s grandparents could see a dentist in Beijing for a quarter of the price they would pay if they were still registered outside the city. But when his grandfather had his first examination, the dentist delivered a stark verdict.“Do you know how many teeth he has to have out? 27,” Song said.That was more or less all of them but the dentist showed the X-rays to the grandfather, the grandmother, Song and his mother and said none of the teeth had much chance of salvation. They all agreed there was nothing for it and decided to schedule the first extraction for the following day.Song’s grandfather is not unusual in China where over-65s on average have less than a quarter of their natural teeth and those that remain don’t work very well. Nearly one in 20 have no teeth at all, according to official statistics and more than a third with missing teeth receive no restorative treatment.The first extraction went so well that Song’s grandfather insisted on scheduling the second for the next day. But pride comes before a fall and the procedure floored him so they moved on to a more reasonable schedule of having one tooth out a week.The original idea had been that both grandparents would get their teeth seen to at the same time but Song’s grandmother has been hanging back, going with her husband to the dental hospital but making no move to see a dentist herself.“She doesn’t like hospitals. The last time she went to one was in the 1980s,” Song said.The four of them have settled into a routine at home with Song sleeping in the room he uses as his studio while the others occupy the rest of the flat. His mother opens her laptop every morning and works all day as a day trader, buying and selling shares in Chinese companies.“She works out all the mathematical calculations and she has a system. She’s good at it,” Song said. His grandfather has so many teeth still to go that Song expects them to stay with him until next spring, and he doesn’t seem unhappy about it. They visited a few dentists for a second opinion but they all agreed that there was no point in holding on to the teeth, although one said that the grandfather could keep two if he really wanted to.One of the dentists was highly sought after and they had to wait a long time to get an appointment but when the day came, one of his interns performed the examination instead. When Song’s mother complained, the sought-after dentist said it was a teaching hospital and that this was the only way to train his juniors.Song was not satisfied and after the examination, he asked the hospital for a refund of the fee they had paid. The hospital pointed out that his grandfather had received the treatment he had booked.“I said yes, but not from the right dentist,” Song said.“They gave me the refund.”