Meet Dr. Chan….

“Dr. Chan and Mrs. Geng eased out of their chairs in the waiting room using their matching wooden canes, the kind distributed by the hospital, free of charge. At 89, Dr. Chan was stooped and frail, his body paper-thin. He seemed as though he might topple over from the breeze generated by the opening and closing of the clinic door. A translucent red plastic shopping bag from a Chinatown market dangled, as always, from one wrist.”

“Dr. Chan once told me that his English teacher in China taught only Shakespeare, and his German teacher only Goethe. “Not… very… practical,” he observed, in his studiously parsed syllables…” Read the full chapter about Dr. Chan in “Medicine in Translation.”