Thane's sole Chinese dentist family celebrates New Year after 2 long yrs

At the Bhiwandi clinic where his grandfather used to fill tooth cavities with a foot-operated dental drill, Dr Tien Lung Yi now sees manual drilling of a different kind.

- Sharmila Ganesan

Thane: “Aapka gaon kaunsa hai?” patients often wonder on greeting him. The 33-year-old dentist's cool reply opens their mouths wider: “Thana.”

Just like his freshly-retired dentist father Dr Tse Yun Yi— who was subjected to chants of ‘Cheena’ as a schoolboy, Dr Tien Lung Yi—the survivor of playground taunts including the politically-and-geographically-incorrect “Do you know Karate?”— has never been to China.

The father and son are among the made-in-India products of Thane's only Chinese dentist household of three generations whose nerve centre is 85-year-old former dentist Dr Chung Chiang Yi for whom “Cheena doctor” was a term of endearment in 1960’s Thane.

The veteran was 21 when he started practising dentistry in Bhiwandi a little while before the Indo-China war of 1962 when many unsuspecting Chinese residents in India found themselves shunted off to Rajasthan's prison camps.