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Millwoods Acupuncture Center
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Edmonton AB,   Canada

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Chinese medicine:
its past, present and future

Author: Ai Ning (China)

Contents

Chapter 1: My mother 7

Chapter 2: Birth deliver in a hospital 9

Chapter 3: Multiple therapies by Chinese. 11

Chapter 4: Refused by mother 13

Chapter 5: Mother’s master 15

Chapter 6: Moral problem or physical problem?. 17

Chapter 7: The Dross is not a dross?. 20

Chapter 8: My prescription. 22

Chapter 9: Heart disease. 25

Chapter 10: Save a “dead”. 28

Chapter 11: Treat myself. 30

Chapter 12: Blood infusion to daughter 34

Chapter 13: Attitude to death. 37

Chapter 14: Kidney disease: healing from Spleen. 40

Chapter 15: Consultation in hotels. 43

Chapter 16: Healthcare for girl 46

Chapter 17: My daughter’s way to Chinese medicine. 49

Chapter 18: Health concept 52

Chapter 19: Fear of death. 55

Chapter 20: Combination of Chinese medicine and western medicine. 59

Chapter 21: Barefoot doctor 62

Chapter 22: Annual health check, fear of death. 65

Chapter 23: Reasons for happy does not mean really happy. 68

Chapter 24: Menopause and early date. 71

Chapter 25: Reasons for happy and happy feeling. 75

Chapter 26: Mental disorder or normal people. 78

Chapter 27: Jewels and bread. 81

Chapter 28: Herbs or poisons. 84

Chapter 29: Degenerated Chinese medicine. 87

Chapter 30: My daughter 91

Chapter 31: Practice Chinese medicine by a pure heart 94

Chapter 32: Explanation for Chinese medicine. 97

Chapter 33: Chinese medicine styles. 100

Chapter 34: Rule vs No rule. 103

Chapter 35: Yin-Yang, Five-element, and Five-yun-six-qi theories. 106

Chapter 36: Chinese calendar 110

Chapter 37: Use hen as a therapy. 113

Chapter 38: Cooking dumpling. 116

Chapter 39: Art or technique. 119

Chapter 40: Lifespan or Life quality?. 121

Chapter 41: Logic mind or image mind?. 124

Chapter 42: High blood pressure and overweight 128

Chapter 43: Arsenic, poison or medication?. 131

Chapter 44: Dead chrysanthemum.. 133

Chapter 45: Chinese: grass animal 135

Chapter 46: Skill brings to death. 138

Chapter 47: Chinese medicine and go. 141

Chapter 48: Chinese medicine will die when the human became a machine. 144

Chapter 49: Caesarean section. 147

Chapter 50: My grandaunt 149

Chapter 51:  2+3 = candle. 152

Chapter 52: Patient human being?. 155

Chapter 53: Nature power in healing. 158

Chapter 54: Suicide, medical or emotional disorder?. 161

Chapter 55: You are not only yourself. 164

Chapter 56: Solve the “disease” without seeing the “disease.”. 167

Chapter 57: Nature of water 171

Chapter 58: Pseudo-boxing. 174

Chapter 59: Woman movement 177

Chapter 60: Healthcare reform.. 180

Chapter 61: Chinese medicine: poor people need it 184

Chapter 62: Patient = experimental sample. 187

Chapter 63: A psychology doctor 190

Chapter 64: Meaning of a dream.. 194

Chapter 65: Find the reason of disease by yourself. 197

Chapter 66: No wonder in Chinese medicine. 200

Chapter 67: Woman and witch. 203

Chapter 68: “Earth-born Aliens”. 206

Chapter 69: Witch. 209

Chapter 70: Ant-ball in flood. 212

Chapter 71: Type A person. 215

Chapter 72: Woman’s generations. 217

Chapter 73: Old ladies. 220

Chapter 74: Peanut 223

Chapter 75: Coat 226

Chapter 76: Prisoner 229

Chapter 77: Liquor 233

Chapter 78: Mr. Hawking. 236

Chapter 79: My uncle: doctor but not a doctor 240

Chapter 80: Plane and train. 243

Chapter 81: Baby in a warm cabinet 247

Chapter 82: Mineral radio. 251

Chapter 83: Male doctor in gynecology. 254

Chapter 84: “Small” skill in Chinese medicine. 258

Chapter 85: Sun Wukong. 262

Chapter 86: Five-element: democracy. 263

Chapter 87: Escape of courage. 265

Chapter 88: “Lazy” Chinese. 269

Chapter 89: Influence by gene. 272

Chapter 90: Son with a sour throat 276

Chapter 91: Addition vs. subtraction. 279

Chapter 92: Pulse feeling. 283

Chapter 93: Earthquake. 287

Chapter 94: Renew of western medicine. 291

 

 

 


 

 


p290 - 191

 

Author: Ai Ning (China)

 

Chapter 1: My mother

My mother is a doctor in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

From the time I can remember, my mother was around by many patients. They came and sat down in front of her, speaking nothing, stretching out their arm to her – they wanted her to feel their pulses and tell what was wrong with them. So, she felt their pulse. She felt the left hand, the right one, and looked at their tongues……

It looks like a test. Yes. It is. I guess in the whole world, only the patients in China can dominate the whole medical diagnosis course, though they are the ones who came to seek the help, and they are the ones who tested the ability and skill of the doctor first.

These patients might know nothing about the medicine, but they are the General, or the Master examiner in the whole course because they knew what is wrong with their body, and they knew the answer to the test.

After the assessment, it was the time for my mother to answer the tests. She told out, one by one, the symptom, the patients’ feeling, the reason, the pathological mechanism… The patients listened carefully, smiled along with my mother’s talking, and finally said, “Very good, that’s right, you are so good at the pulse feeling! So good! You are my doctor from now. Let's continue with the treatment, please.”

It is no wonder that Chinese medicine is regarded as a kind of witchcraft by some people in the western world. For western medicine, the doctor asks symptom pretty briefly. He needs more lab tests, X-ray tests, and so on for a diagnosis. Sometimes, they need to cut some tissue from the body to have a biopsy test. Alternatively, they need to cut and open the abdomen to have a look what’s wrong there. They need to clearly “see” the “disease” before they start any treatment. They regard this is a scientific way, a clear course in medicine, a “right” way to treat a disease. 

For a doctor in Chinese medicine, they will be asked, from the western medicine point of view, did you see the “disease”? This “disease” refers to an exact diseased location, the lesion, the virus, the bacteria, e.g., a concrete mass. To them, the “disease” can be seen, can be taken out, and can be tested. If the Chinese medicine cannot ‘see” the disease, the doctor is regarded to “guess” the disease. However, my mother can guess it precisely. She can not only guess the disease by feeling the pulse but also guess when and what disease will happen in nearly future. On spring, my mother wrote a prescription based on her perception to the weather, the Qi in nature at that time. She then asked me to prepare the herbs, to prepare the herbal products (the pills, the tablets, the powder, etc.), to make everything ready before the real coming of the disease. She said: it would be too late if we prepare it when the disease real comes. 

On one spring, my mother pushed me to do the same thing. However, in my deep memory is what she told me, that there would be lots of kids ill in that spring. The kids would have fever and asthma. They would have a high fever so that their face would be very red on one side of the face but pale on another side. I cannot believe:  how could the kids have one side of their face red and another pale? I never noticed such a phenomenon. My mother pointed one herb ingredient in her formula and told me that one was the spirit and key herb in the formula.

Before the patients arrived, she wrote out another herbal formula and asked me to prepare. She said, once the disease started to spread, some would come to see the Chinese medicine, some would go to the hospital. The kids who eventually left the hospital would be pale and blue with purple tints in their small face, weak, dislike food, no willing to eat, scaring at night… Some of them would eventually come to Chinese medicine. This formula was prepared for them.

When I prepared the second formula, the first group of sick kids came. To my great surprise, every kid had a high fever with asthma, and one side of their face was red, and another side was pale!  The numbers of the sick kids were so much that I became a pharmacological technician, busy to distribute the herbs. Pretty soon, the herbs were used up. I had to hurry up to prepare more herbs. At this time, the kids who had visited hospital now came to our clinic. They cried and cried, with pale faces. I started to distribute the second herb formula. After finished all the herbs, that spring went away. 

For the current Chinese medicine, they no longer work in the same way as my mother to treat a series of patients. The current diseases, the infectious diseases, the plague disease, all are the diseases that my mother must know and be able to perception before they come. In clinic work, my mother was almost a General in a war, knowing where is the main battlefield, where is secondary field…  She not only treated patient individually but also in groups, so to be able to control the overall trends of the disease. However, from the so-called scientific point of view, what is the logic and what is the reason for my mother to do so? Is this not a way to “guess” disease? The current doctor works to consult each patient, one by one. They believe this is the way of science. My mother not only knew the trends of a disease but also was able to predict a future disease based on the person’s lifestyle. She knew who will get what kind of disease, so to make the herbs ready to wait for them.

In autumn, my mother was ready for the herbs, the movement the patient came. When some patients asked why he or she got that disease, my mother said: “You is rich with a good living condition, and you prepared for the winter too early. You closed window when it was only on October 1 and started the fire warming to the rooms so early…” The patient surprised: “how do you know this? It is true. We closed the windows very early last year.”

Chapter 2: Birth deliver in a hospital

When seeing a patient, my mother could not only speak out the patient’s symptoms, but also his lifestyle, diet habit, and temple pattern. Besides, she again told the patient, if he refused to change his lifestyle, to change emotion, but only depended on the medicine to maintain the previous lifestyle, she would refuse to treat him. Nowadays, many people on one side to take lots of medication, and on another side eat lots and drink lots, drink lots of liquor. My mother hated all of these. She thought that such a lifestyle is very harmful.

Many people came to my mother for help. Many of them respected her to a very high level, nearly to a superstition. However, when I was young, I myself did not have such wondering feeling to her. I respected and believed science. This was due to the influence of my father. He respected and believed science very much. My father was a fan of the science. He always paid attention to the advance of science and felt exciting to that achievement. I was wondered by the picture that my father described to me, believing science could solve, without limitation, all problems in human life. If some problems had not been solved, it was only a problem of time. Western medicine is the super representative of science in the medical society. 

My father told me: before the development of Penicillin, there were lots of dead kids who were thrown away in the field in the spring season. Their number was much more than the grass piles in the field. Now, look at the high, increasing population, it is the results of the protection of western medicine. Before, a man worried more about the “before the car and behind the horse” and a woman worried more about “before the birth delivery and after the delivery”.  Now, western medicine solved this problem faster and more effective than Traditional Chinese Medicine. I agreed with my father.

When I was free, I liked to stroll around a hospital, as strolled around a shopping center. The hospital is exactly a scientific technology exhibition center. It is fantastic to see the super testing and examination techniques there. I saw some machine called what muscle electric detection, what big radiation machine, in a provincial hospital. However, when I went to a hospital in Beijing, the doctors there shaved their hands: “Have a gene test.” There were no any Chinese characters on the examination report sheet, but all thickly dotted English letters, Arabic fingers, symbols, attached with colorful gene picture. I knew nothing about it, but I looked it for a pretty long time. I was strongly shacked and wondered by this super technology of science. How could I not prevent myself from shifting from Chinese medicine? The hospital of western medicine was so beautiful, huge, and bright. No matter if the disease could be solved or not in such a heaven place, there should have no any pity to die there after being checked one by one by such beautiful machines. Because this is the course of disease “treatment”, and all of the reports are now in your own hands, you know the “results”, you “know” what it is in your body, you can even “see” the tumors from the X-ray films, or computer screens. Can Chinese medicine do the same way? What machine your Chinese medicine has? All the Chinese medicine has is the three fingers. My mother said: “Travel around the world with three fingers”. My mother just saw patients at home. Later when she was sick, she felt the pulse of patients (to make a diagnosis) when she lied down on the bed.

The therapies in western medicine are much marvelous. I have had been in a waiting room of a hospital waiting for a specialist. The nurse told me, he “makes a hole”. After a while, she came out and told me: “He is making a channel.”. Then, “He is setting up a bridge.” I felt that this specialist was an engineer. He was building a new railway stem road. On the other side, it is not over-stated to comment that Chinese medicine is very primitive. The technique used in acupuncture is simply acupuncture needle, Guasha plate, and cupping cups. Many other Chinese medicine doctors even do not use these, but herbs. One of the local herbalists told me that the herbs growing in the local area are enough to cure most kinds of diseases in that area. If I was very sick and I was given the herb tea that was cooked from the herbs that grow in front of my door, how could I feel that I got a very serious disease and felt that I was helped by a “treatment”?

I had a friend. She told me her experience in Australia to give a birth deliver.  Her story made me stunned, and I felt that the baby delivery was not at all a natural course, but a high science technique to launch an aircraft to Mars.  She first described the exam before the delivery. I said: “Well, you cannot escape from surgical operation there.”  She said: “Yes, but they said the surgery IS needed.”

The western medicine doctor also consider your human need, so they only cut the skin on your lower abdomen, and the cutting is a curving shape, not a linear shape so that you could still wear the Bikini later. She said: the room temperature in the operation room was very low so to reduce the chance for a bacterial infection. Moreover, she was given a cold water shower.

I said: “Well, you must have a fever then.”

She said: “But they said this is also a NEEDED procedure.”

Her answer makes me complain incessantly. Who said that a baby delivery must have a fever to follow? The doctors give her an intravenous infusion before she has a fever, so to prevent any possible fever that may cause death.

After listening to her about the way to use the medication and the diet, I said: “My God, you must have no any breast milk.”

She said: “They said, this is also NORMAL.”

Thanks for the facility in western medicine in which everything has been considered, so it is not a big problem to feed a baby. If the mother has no breast milk, there is milk formula for the baby. I told her, she indeed enjoyed the scientific technology serves of western medicine. However, she did not get any benefit besides so many non-necessary “treatments”.  I believe and respect science, however, I have not come to the extent to enjoy the high science technology, so to hand myself, by my own will, to a doctor to “manage.” 

Chapter 3: Multiple therapies by Chinese

Nowadays, people develop addictive to the “treatment” by medicine. The believing in science makes people no longer able to “be the boss of my own body.”  Every year, upon the movement of an annual physical check, there will be a peak in medical treatment, since there is no one “without a health problem”. One of my colleagues has her uterus removed according to the suggestion of doctor; has her appendix cut; has her gallbladder cut; has her tonsil, her tooth decay… Her doctor told her, she should have all the moles in her skin cut, to prevent skin cancer.

The doctor appears idiom, shaking my exam report sheet. I said: what else medical detection instrument you have? Whatever disease your machine can detect, I will have that disease. The extent of my disease is parallel to the capacity of your machine. According to the doctor, they need to treat me so that every parameter detected should be at an average level of all people. 

The scientific technology in western medicine is so advanced that the treatment by western medicine is a kind of exhibition of science technology. However, when looking from the primitive and less advanced Traditional Chinese medicine point of view, western medicine is pretty childish as stupid.

There is the newest science report from the USA. It reported that scientists found that the survival rate of a premature baby is very low when they are kept in heated incubation chamber, but much higher if they are kept attaching with the skin of human body. This news makes me pretty dizzy and cannot prevent from laugh. In China, the survival rate for a seven-month premature baby is always high. In the past, people wear loose and thin pants. The mother holds the baby in and against her skin in her abdomen area. The baby is held and fold with the cotton pants. Naturally, in this way, the baby survived. Now, this is what the US scientist found? Is it a scientific new founding?

My mother never struggles against western medicine but did not pending from Traditional Chinese medicine either. On the day at which time the Chinese medicine has been heavily attacked, many Chinese medicine doctors shifted to learn western medicine. However, one of my mother’s classmates told her, this is a time of a historical elimination. The remaining ones are the best and the most valuable part of Chinese medicine. 

Thanks for the fact that, once with an illness, Chinese will try various means to cure their disease of the core of the disease, not satisfied to merely the release of a symptom. They will try lots of medicine: western medicine, Chinese medicine and may use even witchcraft. I know one witchcraft practitioner, who knows every ward district and the chief doctors of every hospital in her city.

Many Chinese people take comprehensive therapies. They stay in the hospital of western medicine, taking Chinese herbs and having witchcraft symbol under his bed. His family members may, besides, to go to a temple… This might be one of the most significant Chinese features? Whenever the various means of western medicine have been explored without any improvement, the doctor may try to divert the attention of the patients, by suggesting the use of Chinese herbal therapy. If all of these do not work, in some small cities, they may imply “Do you believe in something?” Trust or not, such a way works sometimes. It can sometimes have a life-saving effect. One cannot prevent from admiring the flexibility of Chinese to reach what they want. 

Quite often, my mother is invited by the relatives of a patient to steal into the hospital, to apply herbs to the patient who had a brain infection, to use acupuncture to the patient who had post-stroke syndrome; and to feel a pulse on patients who are declared to die…  She does not admit any difference between what she is doing and the witchcraft. Before, I believe that this is because the limitation of my mother to separate a royal medical doctor and witchcraft. If it were me, I would have felt shame and changed to learn western medicine. My mother is a simple woman, so simple you can see the bottom of her emotion lake.  Her mind is full of her patients. She does not feel what’s wrong to sneak into a hospital at night to see patients. 

My mother had an education in western medicine too. She knew the ways in western medicine in the diagnosis and treatment and knew how to practice it. She also has several chances to shift to practice western medicine, but she refused with a smile. She sticks to her Traditional Chinese medicine without any hesitation in mind. Her skill in Traditional Chinese medicine convinced the people around her, and no one can attack her easily. Even if for the person around and close to her, such as me and my father, have to admire that she often saved the life of patients who have been declared to die by western medicine. Just because I was close to her, I did not feel mysterious to her, though others felt so. When I was young, I only felt marvelous to western medicine. Look, the X-ray, the lab tests, and the surgical operations – it is those that should be termed the “medicine”. However, I knew, this medicine does not always succeed.

Quite often, a baby of only several days was brought to my mother. The baby has either spasm, high fever, or was to die. When western medicine faces such a small baby, it is difficult for it to use a knife or a claw, and hard to do anything for the small baby (at that time). My mother uses a needle, punched on the small hands, small feet, abdomen, then smear little herb on his little mouth lips, and the head. Later, the baby was survived.   

So, I got an idea of stealing adultery trickery. I thought western medicine can be learned. After learning it, I can practice it. On the other side, Chinese medicine is not so easy to learn, it is so mysterious. If my mother would agree to teach me her tricks in Chinese medicine, it should be much faster and more comfortable for me to learn Chinese medicine. I told my mother how I thought. I imaged that she would be very glad to teach me her skill, due to my willingness to learn Chinese medicine. However, to my surprise, she said that she would bring her skill to the tomb, instead to teach me.   

Chapter 4: Refused by mother

My mother brought out lots of books to me, as much and as high as my body height. She said she wants me to read and remember all of the books before teaching me. She did not pay much to the way to teach. I thought that she should teach a student, as for a child, with great patience and lure. For me at that time, what I am interested was the science and the “Communist theory”. How could I accept the Yin and Yang; and the Five-element theory? I thought modern science must be better than the Yin-Yang theory, than the Five-element theory, to provide the best reference parameter, so to explore a more overall pre-operative assessment to nature. Yin-Yang and the Five-element theory is primitive dialectical materialism. They are established by old Chinese without measurement of nature and by no other choice. Primitive means simple and modern science will and can eventually replace the old theory. I believe, no one can use the Yin-Yang and the Five-element theory to explore the disease in the lung when he or she sees a hole in the X-ray film of a lung. No one is to balance so-called Yin-Yang, but to use antibiotics if he or she have already known that the disease is caused by tuberculosis.

At that time, I believed, along with the fast development of the science, the place of Traditional Chinese medicine will be occupied by western medicine. If I spent the time, which is used to recite the books in Chinese Medicine, now to learn science, I should gain much more. Also, I cannot study the Yin-Yang and the Five-element theory before deeply study modern science. Though there has had no saying “the development is the final word” at that time, I believed that science could eventually solve all problems. So we should pay more attention and spend more effort to develop science. I have had remembered some books that my mother gave to me, for the herbal nature, the formula, the diagnosis of the Traditional Chinese Medicine. I thought that is enough. However, she said that I had better knowing nothing about Chinese Medicine than know so much. The fact that I did not learn the Traditional Chinese Medicine might be due to my too rationalism.

Before the Cultural Revolution, there was a young man who was to die, and my mother saved his life. He felt that Traditional Chinese Medicine was so mysterious. So he followed my mother to learn Chinese Medicine. He was an outstanding student. He read and recited all the books that my mother asked him to remember. He was smart, competent, and ambitions. However, he did not become a good Chinese medicine doctor for whole his life. Later, he became a manager of a big government-owned manufactory company. At night, when he was at home, many people were waiting for him for treatment. However, he has no prescription right. I myself have neither a rout to be a doctor. I don’t want to be the same result as that plant manager. This is not as to repair a machine. Everyone can open a repairing shop if he has that skill. Be a doctor, you need not only a skill but also the authorization from the government for a license. At that time, I had no hope to be a doctor. I have had a chance indeed, I catch it, but my mother forced me to give it up. 

I graduated from middle school when I was 17 years of old. At that time, Zhalong (the name of a small village) is an unknown bleak place. In winter of a year, an old woman living in a center island of the lake got acute sick. There was no any doctor hundreds of miles around. People have to ride a horse to a military horse farm tens of miles away to ask a veteran. The young veteran hurried there and saved the critical condition of the old woman by using the medicine and syringe that is for a horse. Later, the veteran came to my mother. My mother gave him some medicine, and with that medicine, he cured the illness of that old woman and other many people in that small village. At that movement, the people in that village warmly invited me myself to their village working as a “bare-feet” doctor. I considered for a while and finally agreed.

However, my mother strongly disagreed to my decision. That is a very far away village. No any bus or car can go there, and no electric line there. What I am interested is just the far away paradise, with birds singing and flower everywhere blooming with sweet scent smell. It is ideal heaven isolated from society and a fantasy world. This is a very good and valuable chance for me to be a doctor again, but my mother blocked me. The chance past.

Though also a doctor, my mother was physically very weak too. She really cannot live without my care. At that years, as an individual, there is no worry about the living, and no need to worry about no job do as nowadays. If there were really worry about living at that time, I would have learned the Chinese Medicine[1][1]. At that time, everyone listened to Chairman Mao, wished to be a useful man to the society. As for people needed to learn some other skills, I indeed learned some skill in medicine. Beside the acupuncture, I learned how to measure blood pressure, to make a vein infusion or muscle injection, as well as kind of ways to use a stethoscope.

Mother is not good at talking. She cannot convince me to learn Chinese Medicine but argued against me to learn Chinese medicine as only a skill. I cannot understand what she was arguing against actually, at that time, or what she really meant. Jus at that time, I had no willingness to learn the Chinese Medicine. I thought I would rather read lots of new books than to read lots of old books. I thought I might not be able to learn something from an old book, but I definitely could learn knowledge from new books.

Strictly speaking, my mother is neither a typical doctor in Traditional Chinese Medicine. At the time she was working, she cannot prevent from influenced by the thinking of the western medicine. She was weak in body condition that is due to her original weakness condition plus later life exhausting condition. On her teenage, she could not even cross a little high banner. She would fail away after several steps of walking. She had lost her vision for some time. Since she had a stepmother at home, her situation was not good at all at home. It might be due to the nature of living, she crawled to a famous local doctor in Traditional Chinese Medicine, bent to the floor,  nibbled three sounds, swear to learn Traditional Chinese Medicine from him. From then she came into the medicine. It is the Traditional Chinese Medicine that saved her life and gave her a way of earning life too.   

Chapter 5: Mother’s master

When learning Chinese medicine, she got up at 3 o’clock in the morning, preparing breakfast and reciting lesions. She indeed recited all the books that her coach asked her to remember. At that time, she had no chance to meet the modern science, but she either had time to consider other philosophy. Such a one-to-one teaching course set up a substantial base for her later knowledge in Traditional Chinese Medicine. This is what I and my daughter missed. Therefore from some point of view, now, there is no any more proper environment for learning Chinese medicine. The mountain peak of western medicine and western philosophy and more others now blocks between people and Chinese medicine. Nowadays, people have to turn a vast curve and spend extended time, even a whole generation, to reach the Chinese medicine, as what I experienced.

The way of knowledge transfer from a master to a student in the Chinese medicine makes it unable to educate a large number of students at the same time. To educate Chinese medicine students in school destroys, rather than helps them to learn. First of all, lots of learning courses in the western medicine subjects in the school, occupy the time of the students. Second, the way in the teaching, the books organized and edited scientifically has blocked the students from the thinking ways that Chinese medicine needed. Nowadays, students do not need to recite the lesions in Traditional Chinese medicine books and literature. I read some of the textbooks that translated from the old and original version into the current version. The translation per se is twisting the critical meaning of the Chinese medicine and makes the content tints to western medicine.

My mother recited the old version in Chinese medicine and got an education from her master, so she had very solid believing in Traditional Chinese medicine. Her later life was precisely the passing of her master’s spiritual wealth. I did not meet her master. My mother, because of not good at talking, could not describe to me her master either. However, from my mother’s way in clinic work, I can recognize her master, as well as the ancient roads that Chinese medicine people walked for thousands of years.

My mother was influenced by her master instantly. I have had believed that my mother does not know her master well since she cannot answer many of my questions about her master when I asked. Her master did not stick to money. For his clinic expertise, it is not difficult for him to be rich at all. But his family, with all eleven persons, lived in a very simple style. This influenced my mother very deeply. She believed it was a wrong thing for a doctor to become rich from helping patients.

Whenever an infectious disease is spreading, my mother and her master distributed herbs to people passing the street but charged nothing. My mother told me, one year there was a spread of cholera, her master set up a big pot in the street, cooked herbs in it. They also set up lines of wood bed in the street. Once people were walking near with a rolling, they helped him to lie down on the bed – using Guasha therapy, poured the herbs over his body, then gave him a bowl of herbs to drink, so to save a life. All of the family members were there to help … everyone got so tired to death.  

It is impossible and unbelievable for a doctor as my mother’s master, to earn money when patients are in extreme danger in life or when the country is at risk. I guess, her master learned from his own master? Is this a tradition of the Chinese doctors? From my mother’s talk, I did not find any activity from the government at that time when the cholera was spreading. All are done by doctors by themselves, acting the duty of a doctor in saving patient’s life. In the old time, the license of a doctor was not needed to be issued by the government, and there was no healthcare system at that time either. According to my daughter, that the Chinese medicine did not develop in the old time is due to the lack of support by the government. I thought, the Chinese medicine doctor, without the support form the government, took the responsibility to maintain the healthcare of the people, if it was not due to their strong spiritual energy, it would be due to what else?

I feel that my mother’s master is very great. In the old time, he accepted a girl to be his student. He gave all his books and herb cabinets, half to my mother and half to his son. My mother kept all of these things in her life. When I was young, I always used the grinder left from her master. 

My mother, who has had such master-educated experience, started to practice Chinese medicine from village to village by walking when she was only twenty years of old. After revolution (the year 1949), she went to medical school in western medicine and had medical education. Therefore, when practiced in western medicine, she looked pretty much as every western medicine doctor who had such education in western medicine. She had stereoscope in her neck, used western medicine tablets, and knew how to make the injection. However, in her bone, is the Chinese medicine build by her master. This old-style Chinese medicine is very different from the current Chinese medicine. When we recall all of these today, there are many valuable implications in it.

In the year 50’, my mother was a doctor in a hospital. She earned more than 90 dollars in the hospital per month. At that time, ordinary labor earned only about 30 dollars per month. Even a technician of eight degrees earned only about 60 dollars. However, the hospital was not suitable for her. Alternatively, in other words, the western medicine hospital model was not suitable for her. The way of her practicing medicine is the same way she learned from her master. It is a workshop manner. As I said earlier, she worked according to the weather movement and development. She prepared the herbs ready before an infectious disease starts to spread. However, the hospital did not allow her to do so. She used lots and various kinds of herbs, but the hospital only buys limited kinds and amounts of herbs for a doctor to use. Many of the herbs that my mother used belong to the toxic herb. Hospital scared to have them, even though the herbs were distributed through a regular channel and allowed by healthcare authority. Also, the separation of diseases into different medical departments in a hospital limited her much furthermore, because she worked comprehensively. It almost means that her hands and feet were tied up in working in a hospital. For all of these reasons, my mother resigned from the hospital and back home to practice in her family-clinic manner.    

 

 

Chapter 6: Moral problem or physical problem?

 

 

In my mother’s family workshop, under her guidance, I prepared herbal pills, decoction, powder, paste, herbal wine…..

 

At that time, I disliked the odors on my body. I felt disappointed for the herbal odor in the whole of my body since most people do not like the herbal odor. I did not expect that, after many years, now every time the movement I go to a Chinese medicine hospital or pass a herbal shop, I will breathe the smell of the herbs deeply, just as the people in current time go to an oxygen bar, to breath oxygen. The herb smells could open the cells in the whole of my body, which might be due to the “toxic” from the herbs in the old days. So I am still addictive to that “toxic”.

 

My mother was very flexible in her clinic work. It was really not suitable for her to work in a hospital. Whenever a middle-aged woman brought her sick-look daughter to the clinic, after feeling the pulse, my mother could pull the woman aside and told her: “You are so careless to your daughter, you need to find a boyfriend for her, don’t delay until something happen…”.

 

To be honest, my mother was not at suitable to be a matchmaker, but she did not do less in matching for people. Later, I heritage her tradition, matching for people too, science I know well that many girls may make big mistakes and wrong things when they are young. The mistakes may make them regret whole life. This is not related to their moral at all. If we could help them little, it will help them for whole life. When I read the novel of << Loves >> or another novel << My mother and father >> by Zhang Yimu, what I see is not the love, but estrus, since it is exactly what I saw in my mother’s clinic. When I was very young, I looked the so-called love from the medical point of view, and later, from philosophy, from psychology…

There was a girl named Xiao Zhen. Her sexual reaction was very strong.  My mother and I took much care in heart for her. Her mother had not any other means but beat her. Her reaction and desire to sex are so strong that she cannot manage with her any new boyfriend. There has been a nice body. She brought him to our home but feared to have her mother known him. To help them to be together, my mother left them eating in our home, and I accompanied this boy by playing chess. The girl, Xiao Zhen, did not help my mother in cook, but came again and again and stuck her body on the body of the boy. At that time, I was only 12 or 13 years of old, and I gnashed my teeth in hatred to her.

 

After lunch, they went out for a walk out of the town. She brought the boy to a coin field, which scared the body away and he then never came back to see her any more. The more she was refused, the more mad she was. People all but my mother laughed at her. Finally, there was look-sick boy, who had had surgical operation before, had no mother or father, and no money at all. He did not run away from her. He was brought to bed by her eventually. This bed was in the girl apartment in a manufactory farm. The other girls, waited upon the proper time when the girl and her body friend were doing that sexual thing, brought the security men of the manufactory, broke the door, blocked them in the room. This girl who was experimented by the God went mad for half of her life. Later, she became a Buddhism nun.  

 

There were other women, they are frivolous and dissolute. They stared the green light from their eyes when they saw a man. There was such one, who came to see my mother in our home. She said she had dream every night having sex with ghost. One day, my mother was describe herbal formula to her, and there she, saw my father ling down on bed reading a book in inside room, went to my father and wanted to lie down with him. I felt very angry but mother just kept thinking the herb formula, careless of what she was doing.  

 

Mother does not look at the woman’s behavior from the moral point of view. This influenced me. There is no end of estrus for a  woman and a man. There is no department of Psychology in Chinese medicine, but she, during her whole life of medical practice, never excluded such psychological and spiritual diseases from her medicine scope. She did not learn psychology or philosophy. She dealt such clinic problems according to Chinese medicine theory. 

 

My mother’s view and attitude to such emotional problems are entirely different from those of western medicine. I paid lots of attention to the development of western medicine in the study of such emotional and psychological problems. My mother has died for 30 years, during which time, the development of the study in the emotional and psychology is dramatic. However, I noticed, whatever the achievement by them does not exceed what the Chinese medicine reorganization, which my mother practiced.

 

For the girl Xiao Zhen, my mother knew what happened. For other women, mother knew what’s their problem too.

 

My mother was very famous in the treatment of infertility. Many people came to her. One day she felt the pulse of a woman, did not write any prescription to her, but only kept talking and chatting with her. At that time, I was not interested to the course of my mother, so I kept reading a book on side. At that time, there is no such concept of a psychological doctor, nor a means of treatment by psychology. The patient was a master of a middle school. She was very elegant. On the chatting, I was scared by her sudden cry with fuss. She clap her hands and cried: “My God, now I understand. The problem for the women with so called moral problem is due to their physiological need?” At that time, there is no concept of “cold sex” yet. My mother found it by feeling the pulse and she is just explaining to her, inducing her. Now the master just understood.  

 

There was another woman with infertility. Her husband fall love with another woman and wanted to devoice with her. She disagreed, so she was beat by her husband to have three ribs broken. She cried to death. I felt very angry to him. I told my mother this situation. But my mother said, quietly, that that was good to been beaten. They would have baby at the end of the year. Just as my mother said, they had a baby of good health. The couple was very happy and always smiled.   

 

 

Chapter 7: The Dross is not a dross?

 

When I was young, I did not pay much attention to my mother’s understanding of human nature. I thought it was common sense. After I live for some many years, I realized that the current science has no such realization yet. My mother stands on the point of Chinese medicine, her view of point for the human of spirit and human of the physical body is not all behind, but more exceeds the current science. There are many things that the current science cannot still explain.

 

Influenced by my mother, later when I work as a representative for women right or lawyer and when I need to defense for women right and royalty, I would not stand on the current women right and law regulation, but mix with the traditional Chinese culture that is well represented by the Traditional Chinese medicine. The Chinese medicine trained my mother a life attitude of the following nature and an easy heart mode. I thought that is also an influence from her master in Chinese medicine. 

 

Mother said one day, after his 60 years birthday, mother’s master gave her a fly swatter and said: “Don’t let fly falling on my body”. He then lied down on the bed, refused to eat for seven days and died. I asked my mother: “Why he has chosen to die? Did he get sick? Did he get tired of living?” Oh, it was because he believed in some religion? Mother said none of those. Her master said, it is enough for a human being to live for 60 years. However, I do not believe this is reasonable. To a Chinese medicine doctor, 60 years of old is just the peak of the medical professional. The doctor at this age can do lots of good things in the clinic. How can we have a willingness to die? I always think that my mother was too woman (too obey). He gave you the fly swatter and asked you to repel the fly, you did it. He said he was to die, and you let him die?! Even if any other people would not mind, you should mind very much. He is YOUR master! You should push him to drink and to eat and you can pour rice soup to him. Mother said: that does not work. My master wants peace and not be interrupted. My mother was so obey. She just left and allowed her master to die in such a peaceful way. Later, when I see my mother’s peace attitude toward death, I know that she had accepted her master’s attitude to death.  

 

For all of his life, her master did not struggle for rich or reputation, even not for long life. My mother was the same as her master. The believing system of western medicine may not influence his professional work, but that of Chinese medicine can influence his medical technique and skills very much.  If my mother stuck to a long life, youth, and reputation, how could she, during her clinical work, follow the natural human needs, adjusted the Yin and Yang, adjust the Blood and the Qi, work for the patients but her self? A Devil can be a western medicine doctor, but he cannot be a Chinese medicine doctor. Chinese medicine is not only a technique, but it is also a life attitude and philosophy. It is a way of life. It is a pity that I did not, and couldn’t understand this when I was young. Just for mother’s such attitude to life, she is a real Chinese medicine man. In a hospital, in which the Traditional Chinese medicine would not be able to work as it is needed, she did not worry her salary, her reputation, or her social position. What she worried is that Chinese medicine cannot be practiced properly. 

 

Hospital is suitable for western medicine, but it is hard to match the need of Chinese medicine. Even the science is hard to limit mother’s Chinese medicine practice. However, my mother believed that she was along with the science. She studied the western medicine drugs, then classify them into Cold, or Hot, or five tastes, according to patient’s body reaction. She always tried to include the patients who have had the western medicine into the full Chinese medicine consideration.

My mother was, however, living in the scientific age. She could not avoid strong influence by the science. For the Traditional Chinese medicine, she, according to the principle of “pick up the essence, and remove the dross” of the policy of new Chinese medicine, separate the knowledge and materials left from her master, according to what she could understand and could not understand, into the essence and waste, the two parts.

 

One time, a patient with late-stage cancer was brought by her husband on his back to my mother. Mother, of course, could not help. But the husband could not accept this reality and bent, begged and entreated to my mother to a hardly understandable level. No any way to do, my mother had to give him a herbal formula for her disease. It is an old Chinese formula that needs the patient to eat old mother pork. The man bought from a countryside farm an old mother pig that had lost the ability to pregnancy. He killed the pig and let his wife eat the meat. The woman had very strong will to live, in addition to her superstition to my mother, ate the meat very hard. Upon the date that western medicine sentenced her to die, she did not die! After she finished the eating of the whole pig, the whole winter passed. She was unexpectedly recovered! The couple came to thank my mother. My mother wondered very much and spoke to herself again and again: “The Dross is not dross?”

 

There was a labor worker who worked in a train to add coal into the oven of the train. Due to a very casual lifestyle, he got severe pain in the stomach. He continued the work, so the medicine did not work at all for him. My mother smiled and told him that there is a “dross” formula to solve his problem. It is asked to prepare seven big vats. Burn straw into ash. Add the ash into the vats. Add water into the vats. There will be precipitations at the bottom of the vats. Collect it, and it could have one bowl of it. Drink the white color precipitates. The stomach pain will stop. After hearing this formula, I agreed again with Lu Xun (a novel author, who dislikes Chinese medicine) about Chinese medicine. I felt that the effective formula used in Chinese medicine come just from such ridiculous trying by chance. 

 

Chapter 8: My prescription

 

This labor worker felt the pain to die. He met an old lady one day. She mixed a bowl of soda and let him drink. He was so surprised how people can drink so much soda once? However, he was so painful and also that lady encouraged him again and again. He any way followed. To his great surprise, his pain stop! He repeated twice, and it had never come later. My mother listened to this story and chattered again and again with great wonder and wanted to repeat that seven big vats to see what it was that precipitation. I believe, along with the richness in the clinic work, my mother’s disregard for the “dross” is shaking.

 

When I was young and lived with my mother, I felt everything with her natural. She did everything in the clinic for any kinds of illnesses, except for surgery or Chinese Bone-manipulation technique. Nowadays, if people want to solve psoriasis and aplastic anemia, they have to go to a specialist. When I was young, I saw that such disease was among the common diseases treated by my mother. They are also an easily treated disease. Now, if we go to a specialist for psoriasis, he will tell us not drink or touch wine. I remembered that the way for my mother to treat such disease, what she used is the wine. The only difference is that the cost for the treatment of aplastic anemia is a little bit higher. I remembered one time, my mother convinced a mother again and again that the mother should not care too much for 12 dollars used for the treatment of her daughter’s disease. Later, the girl died. My mother felt strange. By asking, she knew that it was due to the girl’s mother who did not spend that 12 dollars for her daughter.

 

There are some diseases that my mother could not handle. There was a girl. She was tall, beautiful, and the round face looked very healthy. My mother felt her pulse, brought her aside and told her, she would not be able to cure her disease. Now I know it was leukemia. At that time, there was no chemotherapy or radiation therapy, or stem cell transplantation technique. It is no cure for either western medicine or Chinese medicine at that time.

 

The understanding of Chinese medicine to organic disease in the body is not rigid, such as for heart disease.

 

Mother herself had heart disease. Once she suffered from heart disease, she would not take any medicine. My mother had the most effective medicine in her own hands, called Su Xiao Jiu Xin Wan, which is also rare even in the western countries at that time. It was her brother who brought it to her from western countries. For this, I complained my uncle: “You know your sister’s temple. How you give the medicine to her but me? You should leave it to me!” Mother did not use any pill, neither told me that she had such pill in hands. I thought, for the attitude to the life and its meaning, she must be influenced by her master. When she was ill, she refused to eat medicine tablets or pills, but practice Qigong to adjust heart rhythm. She had been in paralysis on the bed for three years. I help her and conduct her treatment schedule, she could later stand up. She had proved miracle in medicine by herself again and again.

 

One of my father’s friends had heart disease. His organic disease was very severe. My mother said there was no medicine could help. I was not willing to refuse. I gave him a herb to try since I felt grateful to him. During the Cultural Revolution in China, my father escaped into a thick forest. My mother, who was very seriously ill at that time was saved out by a man whom she had saved his life before. My grandmother was forced by the Military management council at that time to take part in a “training class”. I went to the “cow farm” to find this my father’s friend. At that time, he was like a prison, with a Yin-Yang hair (one side with hair, another side no any hair), and sat there to chop hemp rope and make strings…. Now I remember and think, how he could share several pounds of rice for me? He had his own eight children to grow! When I saw him, I doubt the correction (reasoning) of my father’s escape. 

 

Newly born calves are not afraid of tigers. I prepared a big herb formula called “Maihua Dian She Dan”. I spent lots of time and efforts and used up my mother’s storing herbs. I prepared every single ingredient, ground them, made them into pills, then gave them to the patient. To my surprise, he was not grateful to my Maihua Dian She Dan (梅花点舌丹) and got upset to me, and blamed me being Do things that were not possible. He said: Why you do not think that I cannot eat even soup, how can you let me drink herb with wine and with onion green as herbal guider? How they could work? I would have liked to tell him I even had Shexiang (麝香), Xiongdan (熊胆), and Niuhuang (牛黄) (all are costly herbal ingredients in Chinese medicine). Even the less expensive one was Chantu (蟾酥) and Zhenzhu (珍珠). However, I dared not to tell him out. If I did, he might ask: will the Shexiang suites to me, the Zhenzhu suites to me? The Chantu, such toxic herb, you cared to include them in? How could I explain to him? I know that these herbs can expand the blood vesicle, to improve the body condition, and to use the toxic to solve another toxic. All in all, I melted my love feeling into the herbs, felt that I have input the herbs a spirit, that can follow my guide… He told my father this behind me, saying that I foolish him. That is right. Who could believe a youth being able to prescribe a useful herbal formula? I got that herbs back after he died. My mother used it as An Gong Wan (安宫丸) or Zai Zao Wan (再造丸). The herbs are good. They are useful herbs, no doubt. I did not complain about my father’s friend, only complained that Chinese medicine has no injection technique as western medicine. How can we say that Chinese medicine does not need such an injection technique?

 

 

 

My mother died of heart disease too. However, my father lived longer though he also had heart disease. When his relatives who died before him due to heart disease, and had no any signs of the heart disease, my father’s heart disease was already so severe that he needed others’ care. Now my father had celebrated his eighty year’s birthday. He told me, person’s feeling to the body is not that each additional year is worse than the previous year along the age. He felt much better than ten years ago. Indeed, my father now walks as quickly as a wind. He looks as much stronger than he was forty years of old.

 

Chapter 9: Heart disease

 

Last year, my father talked about his heart disease. I think that he was lucky he was not treated by modern medicine. I told him, for heart disease as his, it would be heart pacemaker installed, as did two of my colleagues. Age of forty is the life peak of a man but once installed with the pacemaker, they became the ones who need my care very much when going out. I have to bring shopping bags and cases for them. I asked my father: “If they installed pacemaker for you at your forty, would you live to current eighty? You are lucky that the pacemaker was not available at that time. ”

 

In fact, either my father’s friend or my mother, it does not mean they could not survive longer. If they would not have been so strong in mind, not asked the body to be a higher healthy level, they should be able to live in a semidormancy status and live longer. But my mother did not want to live like that. She said, what is the meaning and what is the usefulness to live like that? So, after her death, when I cleared her stuff, I found that bottle of heart pill. That made me upset to my uncle. On the other side, my father followed the ability of his heart. Along with his age, and the reduction in his body condition, his heart and body condition matched each other. His symptoms disappeared, and he lived however longer.

 

My daughter’s grandfather also had heart disease, and it was so difficult to treat. He also worried it a lot, so he had increased high blood pressure. He could not convince himself not to worry so much. Later he developed bleeding in the brain and became plant human (vegetative state). When he was a plant-human, he could not continue to worry of course. For this, his blood pressure reduced by itself and the heart disease disappeared too. Every day in the morning, he opened his eyes, enjoyed the sky, keep the schedule to eat and to go to bed, no worry and no upset. For the next tens of years, he did not have even once the onset of the heart disease and neither increase in the blood pressure. 

 

At previous years, I noticed that my mother treated several patients with heart disease. One is a girl of 16 years of old. She has congenital heart disease. However, she was forced to go to the countryside to take part in labor work. She fell loss of consciousness again and again. After checked and certified by a provincial hospital, she went back to the city. She was allocated as an accountant in a farm dealing with the collection of waste material. I dared not to follow her invitation to have a bath together since it was common that she might fall into conscienceless again in the bathing pool. Everyone knew that there might be a day when she might fall into conscienceless and never wake up. She went to my mother for the treatment.

 

One day, after felt her pulse, my mother said, it should be better, but how it became worse again? She told my mother, there was a boy who wanted to have a love relationship with her, but her parents did not want her to go to date. So she was worry and not happy about this. After heard this, my mother prepared four kinds of gifts and went to the home of the girl’s parents. The girl’s parents were very flustered since they have to give my mother face. They agreed to allow the boy and the girl to date without any more rejection. I was young at that time, but I also had my own opinion. I felt that my mother was wrong to do so. The girl was only 16 years of old, and that boy was only 17. At that time, it was not at all simply a puppy love. I remembered, when the girl brought that boy to my mother, mother told them: “You should behavior well for your aunt. Don’t do wrong things……” The girl and boy nodded again and again. They kept the date for ten years and got married after ten years after they went to the proper ages for marrage. They had a daughter. The mother and the daughter were both well. Now the movement I recall this story, I feel fear. How can my mother trust the promise of the two youth? If there was a pregnancy before marriage, had an abortion, would not the girl lose her life? Just because the girl was happy, her so severe heart disease did not prevent her from ordinary life.

 

Another case was a girl of 23 years of old, who also had heart disease and the disease is very sever. Though she was young, she had to live in a hospital several times a year. It is impossible for her to get married. Her family had to support her life forever. She also went to my mother for treatment. Something happened surprisingly with her, though she could only lie down at home. She lived in a big residential compound. There was a man whose wife died. He had a son of eight years of old. No one knew how the man and the girl fall into love. You should know that it was an outrageous thing at that time too. The girl swore to marry him. This made the girl's parents very angry to die. People beat the man heavily. However, if refusing the girl to marry, she would die. The girl’s parent came to my mother for help. My mother supported the girl to get married. She supported to prepare a marry party for them. She called that man for something to tell. Mother told him, he should not let the girl get pregnant. Otherwise, the girl’s heart might not be able to handle the stress to the pregnancy….

 

After marriage, the man went out every Sunday for hunting, hunting fox. In our local city, it is taboo to hunt fox. Fox is Fox fairy. The hunter would get punishment for hunting the Fox fairy. He hunted fox, not for the valuable fur, but the heart of the fox. It is said in Chinese medicine: some part of the animal body cab nourish that part of the human body. So, to eat fox heart will nourish the heart of the body. My mother also enfolded herbs in the heart of a pig to let her patient eat (to treat heart disease). He heard that the healing effect of the fox heart is more powerful. Every week he made a fox heart for his wife to eat. After eating tens of fox heart, a mysterious thing happened. The symptoms of his wife’s heart disease almost disappeared. She got pregnant and had a healthy son. My mother felt surprised, the effect of a fox heart is so powerful?

 

Even if with western medicine in the treatment of heart disease, miracles happen from time to time.

 

I had a friend in a business relationship. He had severe heart disease. He was not at forty years of old yet. One day, he “died”. He was brought to a hospital without a heartbeat at all — no any signs for life. Doctors did electric shock to save his life: Cha, Cha, Cha. They repeated the electric shock three times. The man was still dead. It was said that over three times of the electric beats could even rather make a normal heart into heart disease. So it is forbidden to have more than three times of such electric shock. However, a doctor said to the death: “Who makes us friends? I have to show a special favor for my friend.”  So, Cha, Cha, Cha, he repeated another three times. The dead man became alive!

 

 

Chapter 10: Save a “dead”

 

When I met him at a street, he lifted his clothes and showed me his ribs. It looked as roasted meat, all as burned and scorched. It was too horrible to look. He said that he had even no one minute feel peaceful. His heart always Chaotic tremors. The heart was beating without order. However, he had to thank the doctor friend for saving him. After one year, his condition became better. He was almost not a sick person.

 

There was a report. There were several young doctors in an emergency department. They were enthusiastic in the heart. Once there was a “dead” come, they will save it for a long time. They eventually saved one "dead" with heart stop for a beat for four hours.

 

There was a driver who falls into sudden death in a car and was sent to an emergency center. The manager of the center diagnosed him as with cardiac infarction. It needed a melt of blockage in his coronary artery. However, his heart stopped to beat; there was no blood circulation any longer in his body so that the medication would not travel to the diseased artery. So, they applied artificial massage on the chest. These several young doctors stood on a wood stool in turn to press the heart. After one hour, there was no meaningful sign from his heart. The manager said that the lung was blocked too. The block melting therapy was needed again. The heart had to be pressed again. The young doctors had their own boyfriends or girlfriends who mostly were medical staff too. They stood in a line to do the same job. They, in turn, repeated the press of the heart massage. After another hour, the manager did not see any alive signal either. He went away to another room. However, his assistants did not give up. They continued. At that movement, there was an automatic heartbeat. A small nurse run and told the manager about this. The manager said it was nonsense. He said: no way to save the “dead”. But the assistants insisted that if his heart could beat once, it was worthwhile to see if it would be able to beat twice. After another two hours, they indeed saved the man! On the second day, the driver waked up and told his wife that he felt thirst and wanted to eat watermelon. He was even very stingy that he only needed half of a watermelon. The doctors looked at him and laughed. He even did not know what happened!

 

Later, a specialist commented on this case. He said in this case, it could have not happened in theory. The young doctors were brave, and their way of saving the “dead” was far more beyond ordinary manner. The manager was once asked: as a doctor, to save such a man without breath or heartbeat, was it short of sense or was it a foolish? The manager answered very simply: we spent one hour and saved a man whose heart stop beat for half hours. The second time, we will spend two hours to save the life, and the third time we will spend three hours. Once ever there are successful cases, we should have no reason not to prolong the time to save a life. Because those of patients whom we have successfully rescued their life did not have a so long time of heartbeat stop, so we did not pay attention to them.

 

There are many such cases. All of these stories implies to me: the flexibility of heart disease is very large. Even if it is an organic disease, it does not mean that it is impossible to reverse. The so-called heart disease is sometimes a mismatch between the heart and the physical body need. The heart disease happens during the youth growing is such example. The heart diseases of my father and my daughter’s grandfather are such examples. So, I do not pay too much attention to the curve in the cardiogram chart. An over-exhausting physical exercise may cause death for a good athletics. But an old lady with heart disease, who sat in warm under sunshine peacefully and year around, could live longer. I think, that people had heart disease and died is because they refuse to adjust their lifestyle to the ability of their heart. My mother was such a person. She said she could not live with compensation. If so, she would rather not live. She did not die from heart disease. She got virus diarrhea on purpose. When I sent her to a hospital, she threw away covering and tried to fall down the wheelchair.

 

 

Chapter 11: Treat myself

 

There was another patient. My mother failed to cure his disease. The reason for his disease is very simple: he did not escape away in time in an activity to transfer a tomb into a different place. In Chinese culture, it is said that there is miasma in old coffin. When the coffin was opened, the man should have protected himself upon opening the coffin. However, this man did not. The miasma from that coffin, therefore, attacked him. The man is withered in spirit and appeared as losses of spirit. Faced to him, my mother felt no way to go. This case impressed me very much. It should be stated that my mother is too scientific. If she would have handled this case to a witch, it should not be a big problem for the witch to solve.

My mother combated superstition very much. She believed she was very scientific. She was very cautious about folk prescriptions and local ways of treatments. Compared with her master, my mother was not a pure Chinese medicine doctor anymore. At that time when science rejected Traditional Chinese medicine, and when western medicine and Traditional Chinese medicine were tried to integrate, she had kept the nature of Chinese medicine to a large extent. I thought this is due to her simplicity. When she was sick and hard to get up, the people who wanted her treatment stood as a line waiting for her. I felt strange: why people got superstition to her? How can a human who cannot treat/cure his/her own disease can treat/cure other's disease?

 

My grandmother never got superstition to my mother. I have eleven aunts. They all got superstition to my mother, however. My grandmother scolded them no backbone. My grandmother’s backbone showed as she refused my mother to do any treatment to us, four brothers and sisters. Once we got sick, mother had to behave as an underground spy if she wanted to give us medicine to take. Several times I was sick to die, my mother was rejected away with crying by my grandmother. My mother was upset and said she would no longer have this girl. My young brother had a fever, and my grandmother did not want my mother to feed medicine to him. So my mother used a syringe and gave an injection by grabbing a chance. This made the children cry the movement they saw my mother. My grandmother brought her grandson out, not for a hospital, but ice cream. My mother held her head, thinking if she no longer wanted to have this son either. After eating ice cream, the fever went away, and this made my grandmother triumphant. Mother looked at us children surprisingly. It seemed that we all are strange things. 

 

But my grandmother would not deny the achievement of my mother. I remembered that it was a time when the Culture Revolution (in China) was in high peak, the class struggle movement was unlimited high. In our big yard (compound) where we lived, someone died, some escaped, and some others came into jail. The political environment was entirely out of order. My family was in critical live-or-die status. My grandmother stood in the middle of the yard, had a very arrogant speech. There were thirty homes in our yard. My grandmother blamed and scolded these families one by one. She scolded: “When you gave birth and had difficulty in delivery for three days and nights, did you not come for help from my daughter-in-law? If it were not her, you must have had suffocated to die!” Then she kicked a child of ten years of old: “Where is your chance to come to have a revolution to me, your grandmother?!”, Then another one: “You had measles, and the skin rashes could not get out completely. You lied on the bed for forty days. Who finally saved your life? Today, you are a revolutionary soldier. Whose life do you want to revolution against?”. “You one by one, think things from your heart, which family does not own my daughter-in-law?” When my grandmother did so, I worried very much for her. The human being is so fragile at that time. Once they are aggregated, the result could not be imaged. However, the people in the whole yard stood there, listened to my grandmother. All admitted that my mother had high skill in medicine and had good moral in medicine. No even one person would find any mistake from my mother. 

 

My grandmother's reproach broke these persons’ revolution passion and saved our family. When I was young, I did not have more chance to stay with my mother, nor stay with her for a long time. Besides, I had no strong interest in Chinese medicine, even hated to have lots of people in our house the whole of the day with lots of noise. I neither paid much attention to what mother did. Even so, if mother was absent for some days, and if the people who came to my mother but could not find her, they would stick to me. They did not test my ability for pulse diagnosis but told me lots of their symptoms with the hope that I would be able to help them. No matter how I explained to them that I could not, they would not believe. They all said: “the son of the king of the sea would be able to play in the water.” No way, I had to feel their pulse, with the aim to make a simple diagnosis, to distinguish surface or inside of disease, cold or fever of the disease, so to avoid significant and principle mistake in the treatment. Then I opened mother’s kit, where there were several tens of herbs ready for use. The herbs were mother’s formula, I bought and prepared them. When mother was in the clinic, I was the one who worked as a pharmacological technician, to fold herbs and told people how to take it. So anyway I could find some ways to help them. Besides, I recited several books on Traditional Chinese Medicine. I am not new to Chinese medicine at all. So, in special cases, I gave people herbs too. When mother came back, she did not blame me.

 

When I was in middle school, I followed Chairman Mao’s teaching and learned useful knowledge and practical skill. I learned medicine and followed the medical team to the countryside and villages. The skill that I had for treatment was acupuncture. Probably mother thought my skill was too simple. She pointed a kit to me, asked me to take some herbs. So I did. I, like my mother, distribute herbs to poor people in the villages. If mother would have not thought that I could make simple diagnosis and treatment, she would have not given me the herbs. However, I did not think this way. Now, when I recall this experience, probably because I did not catch big mistakes, so after mother’s death, patients came to me again and again continuously. Whenever I cannot refuse them, I would give them herbs. For a baby who cannot take the herbs, I used acupuncture, if I really wouldn’t be able to refuse the parents. So, I distributed all the herbs from mother. I also did acupuncture on the babies.

 

It might be that my mother’s dead spirit prevented me. The baby was only several pounds; the small body is white and purple. If they were lifted against the sunshine, their body was half transparent. One day, I suddenly thought, if I insert the needle, so deep, where will be the needle? Think from an anatomy point of view, it would go into the liver, or into the kidney. So I felt scared. Later if there was a baby when the folding clothes were open, I would feel scared from the heart, so my hands would shake. No matter how I wanted to keep calm, no way. Later, I chose to escape. 

 

After mother’s death, I fall into sick. People said that it was the exhaust of body energy. I didn’t know how to treat. I felt very much pain in my chest like a knife cut. For such a severe disease, I thought mild herb would not work, but my body would not be able to stand for a strong herb medicine. My mother told me before that I should not use these herbs for myself. I thought, why the herbs that suit for others but not for me? It might be a miracle to treat my illness by using them? So, I set up a formula for myself and tried it. The results were terrible. I caught a very big mistake for myself. There was no pain in the chest; however, the chest felt like an iron plate. I felt so hard to have a breath. The organs in my body all fixed into one unite. I could not eat or have a breath. My life was in extreme danger. So I had to use toxic to treat toxic. I prepared another formula using the herbs that mother told me not use to me. I believed, without such herbs, no any other herbs would work to solve my problem. After taking the second herbs, the iron plate was broken. The big pain returned again to my chest. Later, I dared not to use herbs so carelessly. 

 

Later I went to a university in a big city. I went to a big hospital. I visited both western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine. None could help me. The medicine they gave to me repeat my previous mistakes. So I had to solve my problem by myself. I carefully used only three herbs each time, added them into a teacup. Add water in. Drink them as green tea. I continued for four years during which I was in the university. The disease went half away. I could, therefore, feel easier to endure the remaining half pain. At that time, I regretted that I did not learn Traditional Chinese medicine.

 

 

Chapter 12: Blood infusion to daughter

 

Several days after I started my study in University, I offended a female classmate. She got a very high score in the national exam to university, but just because she had heart disease, she was allocated in our university. We did not know that, and she did not tell us this fact either. Our university had a farm. We students went to harvest. She insisted on doing everything like us, so she got sick. There was no any doctor or hospital in or around the university farm. We all watched her short of breath, purple color in the face, but no any way to help. When I asked her, she told me she had heart disease. I asked others apart, so to grab her shoulder and made a meridian massage for her. She then got better. From then, she always followed me and consulted with me.

 

She said she had the heart diseased from very young. She had to live in the hospital when the disease got onset every time. It never got better so soon. She felt very comfortable when I did massage on her that day. She insisted, if I did massage for her every day, her disease would get cured. She noticed when our students needed to pass a repeated physical exam for going to university, and there was a classmate who had high blood pressure, I was the one who helped that classmate down her blood pressure by massage. I told her they were not the same thing, high blood pressure, and heart disease. The organic disease of heart would not be able to cure by just massage. What I did for her was emergency management, not a cure.

 

She did not believe me. She told her family. Her family sent her money, and she said she would like to pay me money. How could I cheat her for her money? So I did not follow her. For this, she hated me for many years. Now, I understand her eager feeling for a cure, understand her inside feeling. I also regretted my refuse to her. Now I thought, if I indeed would have had some massage for her, it would be anyway good for her, though we could not expect to cure her disease. Why should I be that stubborn? Probably I was scared and retreated by the strong hoping light from her eyes.

 

After mother’s death, I thought I would never have had any relationship with Traditional Chinese Medicine. But, I myself was also very weak congenitally in the physical body and weak during later life. Though I also participated in the physical exercise, maintained a surface healthy, but the child, I born was also weak congenitally. When my child was very young, and they would not be able to drink herbs, we were the regular guest in the hospital. It was quite common for us to live in hospital six to seven times a year. To my upset, my child’s disease became worse and worse along the treatment.

 

One time, my child was sick to die due to heart failure. She was given heart-supporting medication to support the heart. The manager of the pediatric department told me it was very hard to tell if the child could continue to live although every means from the western medicine had been tried, the child still might die.

 

I was in a hurry and told the doctor to give my baby my blood. Doctors laughed at me: “Your blood is not medication, it cannot cure the disease, no use!” I insisted on giving the infusion. The doctors had to follow me since they had no other means to help. I thought I had had so long time diseases. I recovered from the edge of the death several times. In my blood, there must be something that could struggle against the disease of my child. I wanted to help my child. My blood is an alive thing, which is hard to not follow my willing…

 

My child was so sick that it was even hard to find blood vessel on her body. It had been tried for nine times to insert in a needle to her blood vessel. The child was left to lie on the table with head dropped. She could even not be able to cry slightly. After infusion of my blood into her body for two hours, she started asking for something to eat.

 

The scaring experience this time made me no longer keep hope to the western medicine. I started to seek and consult Traditional Chinese Medicine. I planed a series of schedules for the prevention and treatment by Traditional Chinese Medicine. At the same time, I started also to train my child to drink herbal tea. I dared not to organize formula for my daughter, so I consulted with several TCM doctors, analyzed and compared their herbal formulas, then chose the one I felt safer, then tried to let my daughter drink. This made me regret again not learned the Traditional Chinese medicine. From then, whenever my daughter was sick, I always tried both western medicine and Traditional Chinese medicine. By both ways, the results were better than before.

 

Along with my age and experience of life, my respect for western medicine, as to the concept of advance, science, rich, also changed. I even thought that everyone would die, but it would be better to die peacefully and in calm, rather than the rich man dies after being heavily treated and managed by western medicine.

 

One of my colleagues got bronchiectasis. The provincial hospital asked to cut a piece of his lung. My boss asked me to go and have a look for him. I advanced him not to have that surgery. But he refused to listen to me and trusted the doctors. No way. I had to send a gift to the doctor the day before the surgery. I then consulted with the doctor. The doctor laughed at me: “No worry. For such surgery, we did as much as a train cabinet.” I asked, how high the failure rate? The doctor said the chance is as much as a meteorite falling from the sky on to your head. Heard this answer, I feel calm. No problem at all.

 

The surgical operation belongs to that kind of operation that needs an opening of the big area of the chest. The patient lied down inside the operating room to have his chest to cut open, and the Chief surgeon sat outside the room to read a newspaper. Upon a nurse came in to tell that the chest has been opened, the surgeon came into the room to continue operation. Less than 20 minutes, he brought a small basin out. I saw the lung there and talked to that surgeon: “I did not see human lung before, but I see the pig lung and dog lung a lot. If the patient’s lung has such severe disease and needs surgery, it should anyway turn its color to show kind of its degeneration. How could I not see any big problem with it?” The doctor was too angry to see me.

 

 

Chapter 13: Attitude to death

 

After another two hours, the man was sent out. He had a cut from front chest to the back of an opening of 50 to 60 cm long. Not to speak of to cut a piece of lung, even to cut the skin and muscle, saw away the ribs, open the chest, then sew the muscle and skin layer and layer, it would be very heavy stress and damage even for a strong young man. His chest has opened a hole with a tube inserted in, which is conducted with a tube. There was blood flowing from the chest out through the tube. The doctor said it is to drain the accumulated blood from the chest out. After less than one hour, the bottle that connected to the tube became full. I asked the doctor, was the amount of blood drained somehow too much? The doctor said it was the aim to drain the blood completely. After another one hour, another bottle was full. The doctor said no problem. It was ok. After another hour, the third bottle was full again. I found the doctor and asked, how many blood can a man allow to flow as such? He said it was not all the blood, it was the liquid from the chest. I became upset. Do you think that I can not identify the water liquid from blood?

 

Again, even if it was water liquid, how can we allow it to flow so much. I insisted him to have a look. He came. Then the fourth bottle was full too. Measured the blood pressure, it was 30 mmHg. Looked at the patient’s eye, the pupils were enlarged…. The doctors and nurses brought the patient to wheel bed, urgent to operation room! They threw me a kit, said: there was no a drop of blood in the operation room now, you can go to the blood station to get some blood! I run out from the room, and heard the doctor gave me another task behind: prepare for things for death!

 

I was so upset and extremely angry at them! Is this not the falling of a meteorite on my head? But I have even no time to be angry. I must be as soon as possible to get the blood! The movement I sent the blood to the operation room, I was exhausted to lose my consciousness. Due to the extravasation of blood from the operated trauma surface, to stop the bleeding, the whole of the lung on one side was cut! Because there was no preparation for such result, there was no any filling stuff ready to use. All done were to prevent the patient die on the operation bed. The whole man was so destroyed. 

 

I met another similar operation.

 

I was told that one of my friends came back from Beijing after a mouth operation. He refused to eat anything. I was asked to have a look. I felt very pain in heart for him. He is a rare good man. He always helped others without asking repayment back. He did not smoke, not drink alcohol, even not a tea. So it was hard to send him a gift if we wanted to. It would be very pity to allow him to die. But how could I advise him? It is not the question of advice. We have to do something else.

 

I got a folk herbal formula from an old lady who lived in the countryside. That was prepared with animal oil. I brought it to the patient. I told him this herb could work to stop the pain, and he should eat something… He looked at me. Seeing me a way of insisting on reaching my aim, he asked for pen and paper. He wrote three pages of paper. Later, his family kept the pages. That was his last writing. He did not write anything more after that. He wrote very clearly. He got cancer in the mouth. His family signed on the operation agreement sheet for the operation. His upper mouth ceiling was cut off. He could not speak, not swallow, very painful. So, how can a human live this way and what’s the meaning of life with this? …. He refused to eat for nine days and died.

From then on, whenever I met a patient who is in very severe condition to die, I stop to save them but help them to die soon if they are my best friends. I know the aim I do this is to prepare a road for my own in future. I have no reason to allow my friend to die sooner, while I myself try to live longer once that day comes to me. I hope, whenever it is time for me, my friends and my child can do the same thing to me. Help me to die calmly and easily.

 

When I saw the death of a very famous novel author, Mr. Ba Jin (巴金, China), I felt so complicated in feelings. How sensitive and deep in feeling Mr. Ba Jin was. How could he live enduring the bullying and torturing as such? Whatever he suffered before, the bullying or tortures, none of it could compare with those he suffered when he was sick, but he was not allowed to die. I felt no anymore terrible thing in the world than this to fool man. How did such a thing happen just to him, who is so sensitive to feel other’s feeling? More than ten years ago, when he was rescued again, he said the last word in his life helplessly: “I can live for all of you.” From that time, he refused to speak anything more. How grief it is! How could we, all of us live now, bear Mr. Ba Jin’s living in such a way for the aim of us?

 

Another famous author is Mrs. Bing Xin (冰心) . In her later years, she prepared a seal for herself. There was one word on it. It is thief. She said, Master Kongzi said that it would be a thief if one gets old but not going to die. The old man was not for showing his great. That he did so, must has his own life experience. The attitude to death by old generations is not as us nowadays who refuse death so much. When I was young, I saw old people, when they were just over 60 of years of age, started to sew sole for shoes, to buy clothes, calmly to prepare material for the use of their death. The well-made shrouds are often dried in the air, and they will be taken out and worn during the New year. How nice exercise for death? There was an old lady in my neighbors. She dressed the death dressing on her body at night. Next morning, when the family waked up, they found that the old lady had died at night for a long time with well dressed. There was a lady of eighty years of old who got sick. She pulled my hands crying: “save me, save me, please!” This is really a hard task for me. If your lifespan is over, how could I save you? How could a man live a long life not to die? Another old lady of eighty years of old refused to pass the door of the dead-hosting room of a hospital. She said it is an aversion. Could we say that death does not belong to her?

 

 

Chapter 14: Kidney disease: healing from Spleen

 

 

For a long time, I could not understand why my mother refused me to learn Chinese medicine. I thought the first thing to learn the Chinese medicine is to accumulate clinic experience, then apply the Yin-Yang and the Five-element theory to organize the experience. The relationship between the Yin-Yang and the Five-element theory and Chinese medicine is not that as the muscle and the bone. Chinese medicine uses such a theory since there is no other proper theory to explain Chinese medicine in the summary of the clinic experience. I thought, if I learned to feel the pulse and make pulse diagnosis, knew the conditions of disease, was able to use the herbal therapy, I should be a qualified TCM doctor of reasonable level. By this way, I needn’t use the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory, neither need to spend lots of time to read the medical Bibles. However, mother said, it will hurt people is I practice Chinese medicine in this way. Today, there were more and more doctors who seek the so-called corresponding herbs for each specific disease. The overall technique of Chinese medicine declined, the overall healing effect of TCM goes down. No more miracles. Many western medicine doctors in China could also use herbs, and they claimed it is the combination of western medicine and Chinese medicine. Is this not the way that current doctors walk that I wished to walk before but criticized by mother?

 

Nowadays, one of the things that I advise people not to do is not to take the Chinese medicine carelessly. Many of my relatives or friends, when getting sick, go to herb shop to buy herbs by themselves. They do not care the surface or inside nature, or a cold or a hot nature of the disease. This does hurt them than do any good. This is exactly the influence of western medicine on current people. Now, many herbs exported to the western world. The western people use Chinese herbs according to western medicine philosophy. It is not at all to develop the Chinese medicine but to destroy it to die.

 

When I explained to people, why the Chinese herb pills do nothing good to them than hurt, I had to use the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory, naturally, with no other choice, and absolutely. I paid attention to the philosophy and development of science. However, I could not find a way to replace the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory in understanding the health and disease conditions of the human body. It does not mean that along with the going of the time, the understanding of human on the various aspects of material mass would develop in parallel deeper. For the understanding of the body function, we did not exceed the ancient people two thousands of years ago. The understanding of the body structure by western medicine does not bring future more understanding of the overall body functions. Western medicine did not adopt Chinese medicine in philosophy yet. Currently, I would not see any hope that western medicine could integrate with other medical systems in the world, which I have had expected. I even feel that we would not be able to walk from the road of western medicine to the road of Chinese Medicine.

 

The mother of one of my colleagues got nephrotic syndrome. The mother’s son and son’s wife were also doctors in another city. They brought her to that city for the treatment. The result was that it became worse and worse. The hospital had given them a notice for probable death. They had also prepared death-dress. Then, my colleague lost trust to her brother and the brother’s wife. She called me for help. I invited a local young Chinese medicine doctor, took our company’s car, drove for six to seven hours to that city. I thought, if the Chinese medicine doctor found the patient had lost consciousness, with blood pressure only 30 mmHg, he would refuse to treat and would turn back. I so made a call to my colleague, asked her to prepare the mind for such a consequence.

 

After arrival, the doctor did not feel surprised. He felt the pulse and wrote a prescription. My colleague bought the herbs and cooked it ready. She called me, that the patient did not open eyes for several days, had none of rice or water, how to let her drink the herbal tea? I asked her to use a small spoon, pour the herbal tea along with her mother’s corner of the mouth, slowly and drop by drop. Let the herb come into the mouth little by little. It would be better than nothing. So my colleague followed. Upon that night, she called and told me that her mother opened the eyes, and said she was hungry.

 

I thought in my heart, it must be bad since it must be a pre-death sign for her mother. My colleague asked me, should we give her eat? She did not eat anything for several days. I said, give her to eat. I thought in mind again: it is the last meal, let her eat. My colleague fed her mother some soup, then some herb too. The next morning, she called me again, her mother was hungry again. I felt pleased, felt relax and calm much more now and told her to feed her. I said to her, congratulation, your mother had hope now. I surprised how this young Chinese doctor saved the life of this old lady. What means “hand comes, disease leaves.” It is! I asked my colleague to bring that formula to me. I would like to see what good herbs he used.

 

The herbs were very common. No any special or rarely used ingredients. Even there were no any herbs that supposed to treat the kidney disease. It was only a commonly used herb formula to support and nourish Spleen system. How could such an ordinary formula save a life?

 

I felt very strange and found a chance to consult this young Chinese medicine doctor. He said he organized the herbal formula according to the Five-element theory. The kidney disease with swelling means the Water is overwhelming, so the Soil (the Spleen) is weak in the body. The five elements were in imbalance, so the Yin and Yang… for the treatment, we should first to keep and nourish the Soil, to raise the Yang Qi, to suppress the overwhelming side but support the weaken side…. From now, I realized why my mother did not want me to learn the Chinese Medicine as the way to learn the western medicine and why she said if I practice Chinese medicine as the way of western medicine, the Chinese medicine would be no longer a Chinese medicine. It would be doing a wrong thing to people. An herbal formula, which could save a life, can be so usual and ordinary, and its miracle reflected in its theory and its usage. 

This is just as the white and black pieces in the Go. In the same net, in the hands of different people, there would have different potential energy in the go field. The power of one chess piece in a given spot is also related to the position and the power of other chess pieces. This makes any single piece not single or straightforward. The nature of Chinese medicine is just like the go chess. It does not like western medicine to develop a more new technique or new drugs to treat disease but to increase the understanding of the nature of the disease. It is just as the increase in the level of the Chess player. If there is no background culture behind, to practice the Chinese medicine according to clinical experience and to use hundreds of herbs, the Chinese medicine will become only a technique so that western medicine could write an herbal formula.

 

 

Chapter 15: Consultation in hotels

 

Of course, I hope there would be a better theory to replace the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory so that we could have better medical consideration. However, looking at the whole world, I could not find anyone, so Traditional Chinese Medicine has to use the old and primitive thinking manner.

 

One time I went out for business with another colleague, and we lived in a hotel. When I had a chat with her, another roommate came back and lied down on the bed crying. She cried so heavy that we could not continue our talk. My colleague was very angry. I said, well, anyway we cannot chat, so I turned to that woman, asked why she was crying. She said she was to die. She got cancer. She just came back from a hospital, and the doctor just finished a colon endoscopic checkup for her. I asked: did he find cancer? She said no, but the doctor said her symptom as such means cancer since her intestine lost function. No matter what she eats, even drink a cup of water, it would be drained out very quickly. She has tried lots of means but failed. The doctor said no cure anymore.

 

Heard this, I felt very strange. Did not find cancer means it is cancer? I did a simple Chinese medicine assessment, and I diagnosed that her condition was due to Yang Qi shrink. Generally speaking, for women got the Yang Qi shrunk, the common symptom is the falling of uterus or heavy bleeding during circle. I asked her if she had such symptoms. She said she had uterus prolapse for several years. I felt angry and said, why you do not mention this symptom to your doctor? She said the doctor did not ask her for this. Again, even if she told, the doctor would say they are two separate things. The uterus prolapse belongs to gynecology, and she should go to doctors there. I said how we could regard them two separated things? They are the same problem! The hospital and doctor can divide different departments, but the disease in the body of a patient is the same thing. The reason for the disease is the same. However, to western medicine, they are two separated things! One belongs to the digestive system, and another belongs to gynecology. Even for those of Chinese medicine doctors who tend to link the symptoms with the herbs directly, they are also two things.

 

I suggested her to find a good Chinese medicine doctor. Before she could find any, try to take some herb pills. I wrote an herb name for her. My colleague was aside. She asked me if I could explain the Yang Qi. I said, I do not know what it is, but I know its function. If the Yang Qi is sufficient, the person would have no leakage in the urine or the stool, no constant bleeding after menstruation, no prolapse in anus or uterus. Upon a person dies, there is no power from the Yang Qi to hold the uterus or anus, the dead person usually has a leakage of the stool and the urine. If the Yang Qi is damaged or exhausted, the person would also have similar symptoms. This woman has many times of birth-giving and abortion, and her body is weak, the Yang Qi is exhausted, so she had not only the symptom in the reproductive system but also the digestive system. The principle in the treatment is therefore to raise the Yang Qi….

 

The disease of this woman was a small, ordinary and easily solved disease in the eyes of Chinese medicine. How it became a hopeless and hard-to-treat disease in western medicine? Indeed, western medicine has high technology, but the way to use it, and the result of the use of the technology appeared so immature sometimes?

 

When we traveled out and lived in a hotel, we could meet many people seeking medical help. Highly stress and heavy emotional pressure, usually made them no more mind to care for others. One day, I got up in the middle night, turned up the light, told another woman in the same room: “Please get up, anyway, you are not letting me sleep, I will not sleep, tell me, what happened to you?” She said she was going to have a surgical operation the next day. She feared very much. I forgot what disease she had, but anyway, after she told her disease, I said it might not need surgery for her disease. I also forget what herbal formula I gave to her to try. The second day, we separated and forgot this thing. After several months, she sent a letter and told me that she followed my receipt and her disease has recovered. She was pleased, so to let me know. She said I was her valuable person, but I could not remember what is what.

 

I used Chinese medicine therapy only from time to time. Along with the growing up of my daughter and her body condition became stronger, I did not pay more attention to Chinese medicine again. However, when my daughter came into the teenager, the spirit of the Chinese medicine came into my mind again and again.

 

In current times, girls do not know how to care themselves. The lifestyle and the thinking manner of the western world have a very bad impact on Chinese girls. 

 

The girls in our company always came to me if they had a headache or fever. They also felt very strange and hard to understand my explanations to their illness: “I had stomach pain, but you tell me to get more dress, but I did not feel any cold?” or “I feel tired, but you recommend me not eat watermelon”…

 

There was a woman who had infertility. We chatted. I said: “I dare to say, you did not wear cotton pants in winter.” She said: “Yes, that is right. I did not. How do you know?” I said, so you could not get pregnant. For those of women who dressed very little in the freezing weather, I said to them: “You can enjoy your beauty now, there would be the time when you would cry.”

One such a woman who had infertility told me: it is good not to have a baby. It saves me lots of time and mind. I said it would be nice if life is so simple. I brought her to a medical specialist. After consultation with the specialist, she cried and cried, felt deep regret from the heart.

 

Chapter 16: Healthcare for girl

 

The specialist told her, along with the development of her condition, it would be a disorder of endocrine systems, there would be less estrogen hormone, lack of stimulation to the pituitary glands, change of body ship, face looking, then high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, and early death. The solution is to try to have a pregnancy, so to adjust the body function in a new way. However, the quality of the child cannot be ensured. The adjustment for the mother can only reach to some level, not back to a normal woman. During her menopause period, there might be more problems. In all, this life is not a smooth or peaceful life. She never thought that the things would be so severe, now she became nervous.

 

For women who tend to stay in the cold and an air-conditioned room during peak summer; not to let themselves have sweat; who eat and drink cold or ice beverages during menstruation, and not listened to me, I could only warn them they would have lots of trouble in later of their lives.

 

Mother told me, it would be easier for a woman’s disease to treat if she had no disease in the Blood system. Therefore, she asked women to take care well of their daughters. Once the girl had a disease in the blood system, she always blamed the mother of the girl not being a qualified mother: how could you allow your daughter to have rained on the body during menstruation? How can you let her eat and drink cold after baby delivery?

 

I tried to protect my daughter, but she did not know how to protect herself, and she defended that everyone did the same way, especially the foreigners. Her words make me feel like a fire burning in the heart. How could I make her know that the body constitution is a difference between the Chinese and the western people and how to let her know that the western lifestyle also caused problems for the western people? How could I make her know the healthy lifestyle and learn to protect herself? This talk makes me remember the traditional Chinese culture and traditional medicine – Chinese medicine.

 

I do not want to argue with youth, neither to use theory as a weapon to struggle against them. I could agree with the Girl Muzimai (note: Muzimei is the editor of a magazine in China. She was famous in a description of sex in her books). About twenty years of old, with a yellow and blue face, not smooth face, even current modern beauty technique would not be able to change her withered looking. Look at her naked photo, withered like an old lady. Without a pulse feeling, it can be diagnosed as a disorder of the Yin and Yang in the body, which was also hard to solve, since if she did not change her lifestyle, not change her life theory, but only depending on the drugs to maintain her lifestyle, nothing will work to return her an indeed beauty.

 

Now that so many youths walk on the life road against nature, against the body law, I do not know how to protect my daughter. Not to speak she could not really understand me now, take my words as wind bloating passing the ears, even if she listens to some, what about after my death? Could she take care of herself? Does she know how? This makes me remember the Chinese medicine again.

 

Many western medicine students do not know how to prevent disease and keep healthy since western medicine is a scientific technique, not a theory or a believing about life. The scientific technique does not necessarily bring “Scientific” lifestyle, nor has any necessary relationship with the personal education, civilization. This can be proven by the fact that many specialists and professors believe bad or wrong religions. On the other side, Chinese medicine is a “Dao”. Its believing is useful to solve anxiety, irritable, depression… If I could hand my daughter to Chinese medicine, I should feel calm even if I died.

Chinese medicine, first of all, could supply my daughter an idea or a philosophy that is healthy for her body and mind. Secondly, it allows her to earn a living and help others. More, it gives her a lifelong career.

 

When I started to consider for my daughter, I became more and more admitting my mother’s lifestyle.

 

Now when I think more in detail, I realized that my mother loves her Chinese medicine very much. To be able to work as a real Chinese medicine doctor, she dared to leave a big hospital and opened her own small family clinic. She does not stick to money. She applied the Classic formulas (Jingfang). There were only several herb ingredients, but the formula still worked very well. Her formula was usually only one-fifth of a dollar.  When I folded the herbs for patients, they usually said: “Please give me more? Look the amount you give, so little as a small spoon to pick up ear cerumen. It is no more than what you spilled.” Or they would say: “Give me more pouch, the herbs start work slow, so I want to eat more.” One day, mother saw me grinding calcium particle. She asked me what I was doing. I said I am preparing some calcium powder so I could involve it in the herbal formula, to prevent them from complaining the amount of herb is too little. Mother said: The effectiveness of herbs does not depend on the amount of the herbs used, nor the time length to eat. It depends on if it is the right one or not to the disease. If the herb suits to the disease, even tiny amount could work and it works very quick, not at all slow. 

 

Even as a patient, who has the willingness to eat more herbs? For some children who felt hard to drink the herbal tea, my mother would use a paper roll with the herbal powder in it. She Inserted the paper roll into the mouth of the child, blew the powder into the mouth. The powder stuck in the tongue of the child, hard to spit it out. Just so little herbs, it worked.

 

Mother’s life was self-satisfied and happy. Sometimes, I saw mother felt pulse for a woman, appearing as enjoying something. Several times, she brought me to feel the pulse: “Feel, how happy, how nice, as the river water in spring, this is pregnancy pulse.” I felt, only felt that this patient had no heart disease, could not feel what she described the spring garden dance. Mother even inspired me: “The pulse feels as male, strong. It should be a boy…” Heard this, the woman smiled from the heart: “I get pregnancy, boy or girl?”. Mother felt pregnancy pulse, but she would not tell out if it was a boy or a girl. That she spoke it out is for me to learn the difference of the pulses. That I felt the pulse was for not wanting to reduce her happiness.

 

 

Chapter 17: My daughter’s way to Chinese medicine

 

Mother’s mind is calm and peace, no wrong lifestyle. Is this due to her career? When I was young, I thought it would be the common phenomenon for all women in later ages. But we can see that, currently more and more women, the older they are, the more mad and crazy. If they are not anxiety, they would be depression. It is hard to find a woman as my mother in such a peaceful mode, calm, tolerant and magnanimous. Now I realized, there was no natural relationship between the age and the kindness and wisdom. I now find that mother’s mode is so valuable. I more and more want my daughter like my mother to have support in emotion and in spirit.

 

I chatted to my daughter that I regret not learning Chinese medicine. Seeing that I denied myself, she was glad: “That is right. Look at you. No any achieve but busy all of the days by days. Nothing is a serious thing. How can you tell what you are doing is a career? Once you get retired, like other people have nothing to do, you would go to play mahjong or go dancing?”

 

I sighed: “If I learned Chinese medicine, I would be better than my mother. Where can you see a Chinese medicine doctor gets retired? The older the Chinese medicine doctor, the more valuable he is. If I would have started to be hurry to learn at this age…”

 

My daughter said, "if I were a doctor of Chinese medicine, I would be better than any of you. I would use a piece of rice paper with a vertical path, write a prescription with a running letter, and put a wire book in my study." My daughter falls in my trick.

 

My daughter’s thinking is a typical woman’s way of thinking. She first of all thought she could combine the Chinese medicine with her hobby of art, the Chinese violin playing, the chess playing, the writing art, the painting, and the old style study room. She thought that all can be combined into Chinese medicine art. She thought back and forth, then: “I really could not find if there is any other career that suits me.”

 

I felt both happy and anxiety for my daughter going to the Chinese medicine.

 

What I am happy: daughter became peace and calm after starting the Chinese medicine learning. She is different from those of girls who stick and struggle for early reputation and money and material interests. As a comparison, she is more “mature”, wearing cotton in winter and less in summer; getting up when the sun rises and goes to bed when the sun sets.

 

Although she is not a Chinese medicine doctor yet, the problems happened in the body of relatives and friends start to wave to her, needing her to give explanation and solution. This speeds up her learning in depth and broadness in Chinese medicine learning. Beside the scheduled class and lesions, she learned sexual disease knowledge, psychology, acupuncture and got corresponding licenses. She starts also worry the damages for the body and mind to the youth in current times due to their current lifestyle. 

 

What I worried about my daughter is: the traditional Chinese medicine faces very serious challenges. There would be a very long way for her to go, and it would be very difficult to have creation and new contribution to the Chinese medicine development.

 

Daughter does not stand together with her same-aged youth, but opposite quite often. She became the “minority”, the “different kind.” But daughter stands more and more firmly stand. She started to warn the danger of sexual disease among the youth, disseminated the life believing of the Chinese medicine, worried about the girls who have frequent pregnancy and abortion. She objected the no-limited smoke, drink alcohol, crazy nightlife. She was no longer like other girls crave for modern fashion, enjoyment, and richness. She could resist the temptation to live a life of debauchery. She could naturally seek the source of the Chinese culture. For this, I am very grateful to Chinese medicine. In today's world, where do I go to find something that can make my daughter calm down and has great connotations?

 

I went a huge winding course to recognize such a simple fact that Chinese medicine and western medicine are entirely different thinking ways, and they are quite different medical systems. My daughter, however, recognizes this right away. She comforted me, that is because the time I was living is special. The winding course that I went in recognizing the Chinese medicine can be regarded as a payment for the mistakes. Without any mistakes that I took, there would have no her right decision and recognition to Chinese medicine. So, whatever the winding course I went is for her straight way to go.

 

What my daughter learned is the clinic work of western medicine and Chinese medicine. This is still a new way, a not-yet-result way. But this search for the road is necessary. In the time my daughter lives, it is impossible to throw away the western medicine but only talk the Chinese medicine. However, how can we combine western medicine and Chinese medicine? The task in front of the generation of my daughter is very formidable.

 

My mother did not reject western medicine. Some Chinese medicine doctors reject the use of western medicine, but my mother not. One reason is that western medicine can sometimes work for some disease conditions that Chinese herbs cannot. Mother did not think that the intervention of western medicine would be a purely adverse effect. When she was in the clinic, she considered the use of western medicine as one of the possible reasons for disease. She would think how to find a peak, a fulcrum, to achieve greater success with less cost. When meeting a problematic and stubborn case, she would also use western medicine to change the status of the disease, then try different means in Chinese medicine again.

 

Western medicine could only use the technique of Chinese medicine, but not its theory, so it is anyway not Chinese medicine in their combination project. However, could it be less difficult to combine western medicine by a Chinese medicine doctor be easier? My daughter said, no way. There is a block in the way of thinking. Upon seeing a diseased location, as western medicine sees cancer in a film, the doctor’s eyes are attracted by the diseased mass. The thinking would be hard to shift to Chinese medicine as a holistic assessment way. What she said is understandable, but not absolutely.

 

Chapter 18: Health concept

 

That my mother left the hospital and was away from the mainstream of the society, made her relatively kept some style of the Chinese medicine tradition in the clinic. This helped me to compare the vast difference between the current Chinese medicine and Traditional Chinese medicine. Strictly speaking, current Chinese medicine went far away from the Chinese medicine road. It could not be regarded as a TRADITIONAL Chinese medicine. Many graduates from Chinese medical university, when they face the patients, in their mind is the biologic and anatomic human being, not a Yin-Yang and Five-element man. Therefore, they are western medicine doctor who uses the herbs, not at all a traditional Chinese medicine doctor.

 

The already western-modified Chinese medicine doctors, of course, have no way to dominate western medicine. They are not to combine western medicine with Chinese medicine. They are like western medicine doctors to use herbs. So, they feel self-abased upon using herbs, since the herbs are not so new, unique or fast in effect, not as the western medicine to be able to develop and synthesize new and surprisingly good drugs. Because those Chinese medicine doctors cannot use herbs in the higher level, they use herbs as a low-level chess player. They could not create marvelous chess potential by using the simple just white and black piece.

 

If the Chinese medicine doctor has Chinese medicine mind and thinking, even if he sees the mass of cancer, the cancer mass would not be able to attract his eyes all into the mass per se. My daughter said if it is a junior level surgeon when he sees a cancer mass, would he, first of all, think how to cut it down? As a highly skillful thief, when he is in short of money, would he not pay attention to the chance to steal? When you have an easy and simple way to do something, would you first to consider the commonly believed old, heavy and clumsy ways? This is the environment and situation that has to be faced by the current Chinese medicine.

 

Why there is little surgical therapy in Chinese medicine? If the development of Chinese medicine would necessarily ask the occurrence of surgical therapy, why based on the clever of Chinese, there is no surgical therapy in Chinese medicine? Isn’t it true that we Chinese also learn western medicine very well? Which hospital has no “Li knife”, “Zhang knife”, or “Zhao knife”? [1]

 

The point is: Chinese medicine does not regard the disease as a “disease”. It does not try to find it by any means, to cut it away, or to “kill” it. As Chinese in the evaluation of a person, they do not evaluate the person according to a standard parameter, to tell what his merit is and what his defect is. They evaluate the person’s overall behavior and inside nature, good, in harmony, or out of harmony in each part of the body. I usually would not be able to tell out the merit or defect of my friends, but I know them. I know what they would say and act in an environment or a special condition. I could not imagine if taking the “defect” out from their personality, what would be left and what they would be.

 

The western way of thinking causes a big problem in verbal communication in Chinese medicine practice. Patients ask the Chinese medicine doctor to answer their questions like they ask a western medicine doctor. This is hard for Chinese medicine doctor since this is improper to treatment first. This is like a man, who believes that he would be a perfect man if he corrects all his mistakes or defects. It should be known that to correct the defect and be a perfect man are different things. Therefore, the believing that after removal of “disease” the patient would be a healthy man does not stand. Such a connection does not exist even according to logical reasoning.

 

What Chinese medicine pays attention to is not the “disease”, but indeed on the healthy anyway. With this "health" concept, Chinese medicine even allows the “disease” coexist within the body. Therefore, the body of the Chinese is usually not pure. Their body has “disease”, “virus”, “bacteria”. Strictly speaking, Chinese medicine is not to cut off “disease” or to kill “disease”, but to introduce a virus. Use the “a disease status” to solve “another disease status”; applying the nourish, the combat, the prevention, the resolution; to support the weak side and to suppress the overwhelming side; and to enhance the body energy level and to nourish and increase the inside potential, etc.

 

We anyway are Chinese. Our body constitution is different from western people. The length of our intestine is tens of centimeters longer than the western people. The black death that caused the destruction of the Westerners was passed from China. This disease happened in Chinese history from time to time, never caused disaster death in China. This is very much related to the Chinese way of life and of health concept.

 

I worry very much about the health concept of western medicine. By look, the western people are as their cows and trees, tall, strong, white, pure, high energetic. Compared with them, we are “sick”. Some of the “sick” Chinese want to remove their “sick” completely, so their body would be as pure as the western people. German worry their forests. To maintain a forest that has no worm in the trees would need the regular spray of chemicals since the forest would not be able to bear any worm disaster. The pure cow also needs antibiotic to maintain the pure. People in the western world clear their body of any possible bad things by using western medicine. There is such a woman who boasted to me that she had removed her tonsil, gallbladder, appendix, uterus, decayed tooth…… She said: “they are useless.” She was also going to listen to the doctor, to remove the moles in the body completely. Pure body means healthy?

 

Traditional Chinese medicine evaluates the health according to the balance of the Yin and Yang in the body. The body can co-exist with a disease. Due to the individual difference, it is impossible to set a clear line for health standard. If we separate the body constitution according to the Five-element theory, the healthy condition for a Metal body would be a disease condition for a Wood constitution. The point is not to remove the “disease” but to keep every part of the body in balance.

 

For the clinic treatment, my mother liked to use as less as possible the herbs. Usually, after taking one dose of the herbs, the patient came again with great joy. They said: “Much better, much better. It would be completely well if we continue for one or two doses.” At this time, mother would refuse to give them more herbs. She would say: I only treat the disease about 30% to change the trend of the disease development. If you want to get better, what you need to do is to stop taking any medicine but adjust your emotion, keep regular lifestyle….

 

 

Chapter 19: Fear of death

 

Mother said, no any medication could replace the adjusting ability of the body itself. The medication like the herbs, could help, but not replace the body ability. The herbs should not be left in the body to cause new troubles after solving the previous troubles. After support of the body defense ability to a higher level, everything would develop to a balanced and a healthy condition.

 

Sometimes when I go to a hospital, my mind is very complicated and confused. The man who does not fear death would fear death after a visit to a hospital. The death is so painful: the abdomen was cut open, the heart beaten by electronic beat machine, as well as the use of artificial breathing machine, the chemotherapy, the radiation therapy… even the terrible tortures used by Guoming Party in Chongqing city before the year 1949 to the members of the Communist Party are not so scarring.

I had a rooster and a hen at home. They got sick. The disease was brought home by the rooster. I told the rooster, tapping on the head of the rooster: “You are very strong, you should go on and insist. I will bring medicine home to save you.” When I came home and am going to have injection the rooster, I found that it had died peacefully. I then gave the injection to the hen. It was repeated once every four hours for totally three days. The drug is a good drug, such as the cephalosporin.  The hen was tortured a lot so much so that I myself was going to freak out.. She died anyway later. If I would not have interrupted her but left her to die naturally, she would not need to die so painfully. The fear of death is due to the intervention by the medicine.

 

I told my daughter if I am unable to live, don’t bring me to the hospital, don’t interfere with my death course. I want to die naturally. I believe that natural death is not as painful as die in hospital. Whoever wants to be the weapon to struggle against the Death, let him do it, but not me.

 

It does not mean that if it is the western medicine doctor, he would not fear such struggle. We have a primary leader in a western medicine hospital. He was young and energetic, with powerful ability in the medical career and with a powerful spirit to challenging. The overstress in work caused him a liver cancer. I feel very strange how he could get sick to such a later stage that is hard to treat?  For him, when he checks the disease for a patient, he could do the B ultrasound test and the CT scan by himself. His friends and classmates are all the specialist and backbone of the big and famous hospitals in China. They all decided: have liver transplantation!

 

It is almost an impossible thing for us ordinary people, but they did the preparations in a very efficient manner. Everything is ready. He lied down on the operation bed. I believed that they are a group of surgical doctors with the highest character in China. The miracle would happen in their hands. When the operation knife just touched the abdomen, an incident occurred. The patient died! He died of a surprising broken of the blood vessel in the brain stem. No way to stop it and to save his life! How strong the stress to him? Had it broken the main blood vessel in the brain stem? He is the main leader of the western medicine hospital and who believes the science!

 

How strong nerves a man needs to bear the diagnosis and treatment by the western medicine?

 

I have a colleague who got leukemia. She survived since she got stem cell transplantation. For her strong spirit, she was awarded a national labor medal. Nine patients were admitted to the aseptic warehouse with her, and they passed away at a rate of no more than five months. The last one died not from leukemia but jump down the building, since she would not be able to bear the fear to recurrence, so her spirit corrupted.

 

I followed her to the chief doctor for her transplantation. The doctor told out frankly: after I finish the operation, I could do nothing to you anymore. I could not prevent the possible recurrence of the disease. He said frankly: go to Chinese medicine, see if they could help you in some way. 

 

Western medicine is indeed great, no doubt. We could not avoid western medicine. We really wish it could develop fast, be able to solve more medical problems. However, western medicine is also problematic. It solves one problem but creates a new problem, just as the knife could not cut its handle. What western medicine needs are just what Chinese medicine has.

 

However, western medicine cannot dominate Chinese medicine. When western medicine could not find anything wrong in the B ultrasound, or anything wrong in the lab tests, it would not admit the liver Qi stagnation. When it indeed finds something not normal in the B ultrasound or something wrong in the lab tests, it is eager to kill the diseased spot. If the “disease” cannot be cut, it will try replacement (transplantation).

 

When mentioning the transplantation, it is not easy for the operation, neither to speak about the high cost, my that colleague blamed me so readily: “I fall into your trick. You said the survival rate is 48%, but now, you see, how many people are alive? You see how I am now?” Of course what she said is not correct. No matter how she is now, she IS alive. If a person has no money or strong spirit, he has already died. She is strong in emotion, so her strong emotion allowed her to be alive.

 

So, I have a wild and burning ambition. Could we use Chinese medicine to dominate western medicine? The young Chinese medicine doctor I mentioned above is exciting. When he felt pulse for patients, I felt funny and laugh. He told the patient: “You have inflammation in the gallbladder, stone in kidney, fibrosis in uterus…” The patient doubted. He would then prescribe a B ultrasound detection. To my surprise, the Chinese medicine could develop in such a way! Yes, nowadays, many patients come to Chinese medicine doctor with lots of report sheets from western medicine. Compared with this exam reports, the Chinese medicine pulse diagnosis develops along with western medicine detection technology. When this Chinese medicine doctor treats kidney disease, he also applies the western medicine detections, uses the precise tests of the western medicine to compare with the pulse feeling, the dose of herbs and the nature of the herbs. This made him recognize the disease more clear and precise than previous Chinese medicine doctors. It also enables him to correct his pulse diagnosis and herbal therapy.

 

Chinese medicine treats the human and his disease as a whole, but it does not refuse technique stools. So-called wholistic thinking is to consider all the factors together, of course including western medicine detection techniques. 

 

 

Chapter 20: Combination of Chinese medicine and western medicine

 

 

There was a Chinese medicine doctor in Hongkong city who treats hepatic ascites. He knew that according to Chinese medicine principle in the treatment, a depletion therapy (Diuretic therapy or bowel-cleansing therapy) should be used, for fear of depletion of the body liquid. However, according to Chinese medicine book, it is forbidden to use such therapy to a patient in severe stage. He bravely used the depletion therapy again and again and cured many of such patients. He said: I do not fear the depletion of the body liquid. I used vein infusion for liquid, blood, so solved the challenge met by Chinese medicine doctors in old time.

 

Traditional Chinese medicine can absorb various techniques, using one toxic to solve another toxic, creating one “disease” to solve another disease. It uses acupuncture, moxibustion, Guasha, cupping, massage, Tuina, …every means you can see in the clinic. Ruxiang and Moyao were the herbal medicine imported from foreign countries to China, which are now the common ingredients in the Chinese herbal therapy. Chinese medicine does not worry the number of the healing technique. My mother used western medicine as a toxic, to solve another toxic that is difficult to treat with conventional therapies.

 

A disease can stick in an obstinate illness status, resulted in an imbalance of all the five organ elements, extreme overwhelming or short condition, and no Chinese medicine could help. In such a case, why not we could use western medicine as a toxic to change the adherence status of the five elements, and create a new chance for Chinese medicine to rebalance it?

 

I know one Chinese medicine doctor specialized in the treatment for children. He felt envy to the western medicine clinic for earning more money. He then opened a western medicine clinic too. He was very quick to learn the western medicine ways in pediatrics. To my fun, the same western medicine drug works much better in his hands than in conventional western medicine clinic. Many patients came to him. I previously felt regret that he changed into a western medicine doctor. Now I would have to admire that he did very well for the combination. Western drugs can sell high price. If his healing effect is better than western medicine, there is no doubt that there will have lots of clients. If he used only Chinese medicine herbs, he would not be able to earn lots of money even if he has lots of clients. In the pediatric, there are many acute cases, and it is, of course, better to use the combination of the western medicine and the Chinese medicine, as a pediatric doctor, since it would be much quick and easy to solve the child’s problem.

Contrary to the willing to capture the Chinese medicine by the western medicine, Chinese medicine never refuses other medical technique. Chinese medicine is not in a combating status, but a tolerating, holding and accepting status.

 

The nature of guess and prediction of the Chinese medicine makes people feel as Chinese medicine has no science nature. If you talk with an old Chinese medicine doctor about his experience or his feeling about clinic events, it could make the scientist confused sometimes. The old Chinese medicine doctor himself could not give a scientific explanation either. However, the feeling of Chinese medicine is foolish? When we get known of something very well, knowing its rule and law of development, could we not predict its future and result, so do something ahead of it? Is it not quite normal? Based on the personality of a man, we could predict what he is to say and to do under some environment. We could also predict his overall life pattern. Based on the person’s body constitution and his lifestyle, we could predict the possible diseases he might get in future. If we do not stick and adhere to the sciencism, we would not only be able to capture the world by the science but also capture more space and world.

 

In fact, the way of old Chinese to understand the world is not a linear manner but an imagination. (This is just as a driver, who does not tell out the technology and data for the production of the car, but he could tell how good or bad of the car in some driving conditions.) For example, when we describe a person’s difficult position, we say: “An old and broken house meets a continuous raining; leaking boat meets a front wind”. So, without any concrete explanation or data, we can still understand what happens and what condition it is for the man.

 

Upon touching the pulse by a Chinese medicine doctor, a vivid medical meaning image appears in his mind. It is hard for one who is not a Chinese medicine doctor to understand. If this doctor has enough experience to manage and analyze this image, he should be able to know the trend of the disease. The problem is: our mind might not have gotten used to such change from western medicine mind to Chinese medicine mind, or from Chinese medicine mind then the western medicine mind.

I feel that, rather than to say that the competition between the western medicine and Chinese medicine is the conflict between the western culture and eastern culture, I would instead say it is a challenge to the development of human being brain. I believe that there have several times of such similar brain revolutions during the development from ape to a human being. In math, it is the abstract to the figures. In language, it is the definition of feelings, concepts…Nowadays, many people think it is impossible to consider a human as both biological human and a human classified according to the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory. They said that, if we regard the human biologically, it cannot be regarded as a human from the Yin-Yang and Five-element point of view.

 

Is it true that the conflict between western medicine and Chinese medicine as that between fire and water? Is it impossible to unite the imagination thinking and the logical reasoning? Is this question touches the extreme of our brain function?

 

My daughter also realized that what she is facing is terrible. As a modern doctor, she must master the western medicine clinic work. I said, when you face a patient who needs your urgent help, you cannot tell him because you are a Chinese medicine doctor and you could not give him an emergency solution. You cannot either tell a patient that you cannot help him anyway because you are not in a hospital and you have no access at that movement to the X-ray, the CT, the various lab tests…. You should not either refuse to give a patient a combined western medicine and Chinese medicine treatment, with the excuse that they are different thinking system. I believe, the failure in the combination of western medicine and the Chinese medicine for the past hundred years, does not mean this is not a road to go. Whether or not Chinese culture could continue to develop in the current world, I bear the hope here in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

 

 

Chapter 21: Barefoot doctor

 

Reviewing human history, the development of human society always starts with a light burden. No matter how good the eastern culture, if it is no any practical usage in current times, no support by a practical technique, it would not survive. Therefore I believe that it is wasting effort by some people who strongly advise to restore the Confucianism and to restore the traditional culture. Not to mention that it is useless to advocate traditional culture, that is, to promote democracy and freedom in the West by administrative means, is not it also a waste of effort? Chinese traditional culture has been cleaned up almost because of its poor practicability, only traditional Chinese medicine is still in the place of immortality because of its actual curative effect. The practical usage of the traditional Chinese culture is less and less; only Traditional Chinese medicine is alive due to its practical usage. History is a realist. So, no use to talk again and again about the eastern culture, but better to practice Traditional Chinese medicine, showing the best healing result. If Chinese medicine does not die, the Chinese culture will not die either. Chinese medicine is the last fortress of the Chinese culture.

 

The existence and development of traditional Chinese medicine have great rationality in the world today, can be said to have a good opportunity.

 

Chinese medicine will not die in China. One of the reasons is that the Chinese are still very poor. We cannot afford the expensive western medicine. I always feel strange for Chairman Mao. He is also youth in the “May fourth movement”. There was little youth in that time who did not want to throw away the Chinese medicine. I never find any documents showing that he had had contact with Chinese medicine. How could he support Chinese medicine? If he, the great old man, opposed the Chinese medicine, would the Chinese medicine live to today? The action of “break old and establish the new” had cleared off many things in Chinese culture in China, but only this Chinese medicine remained. 

 

Chairman Mao established in the countryside of China very broadly covered and very tightly organized medicine system. This system is the combined western medicine and Chinese medicine network. It is impossible at that time to establish a pure western medicine system from the financial cost point of view. No people believed possible to wait until there is money to set up such a system in the countryside. At that time, there was one clinic in each village with one to two “Barefoot doctor”. They walked home by home, in the field, surveyed the health conditions for the residents. It is a very great comfort to people when seeing them frequently here and there.

 

“Barefoot doctor” had stethoscope and syringe in their clinic. But they used herbal therapy and acupuncture. Almost every kind of grasses in the local field is herb in their hands. It is not difficult for them to collect tens or even hundreds of herbs in the local area. Plus some kinds of herbs planted by themselves, such a clinic could deal with most of the common diseases. The herbs and the disinfectant reached smell combination between the western medicine and the Chinese medicine. The combination of western medicine and Chinese medicine was so simple, economy, easy to use, and effective that it is impossible for Chairman Mao not to promote it.

 

Nowadays, some people admire the tolerance of western culture. They say that western medicine can accept the Chinese acupuncture. I said to my daughter, it was Chairman Mao who promoted the development of acupuncture out of China. Acupuncture anesthesia and acupuncture for the treatment of deaf and mute was the conservative program that Chairman Mao show to foreigner visitors. The patient lied on the operation bed, the doctor cut open his abdomen and intestine, without any use of anesthesia, and the doctor manipulated and twisted the acupuncture needles slightly, at the same time the patient smiled and greeted to the visitors. It made the foreigners stunned.

 

Now, the western medicine hospital is the last place ordinary people would like to go, especially for farmers. The high medical cost is far beyond the affordability of ordinary people. Even in the developed western countries, the medical cost is also a heavy burden of their governments. This is the main reason that the Chinese medicine could not be combat down by the scientism in China. It is also one of the reasons that western countries pay attention to Chinese medicine.

 

Ordinary people are very realistic. They choose whatever medicine system that could solve their disease. Fortunately, in China, people have two medical systems to choose. The choice of ordinary people in China determines the way of existence and the trend of TCM in China. Generally speaking, people like to seek western medicine. Everyone wants to know precisely what happened in his body. B ultrasound detection and CT could tell them there is the disease, allows them to see it – they have right to know it. In this point, western medicine can give patients an answer. That way of first going to western medicine to have an examination, later to Chinese medicine doctor for treatment, has become the model of healthcare of some people. If I get sick, I do the same way. For example, if people have pain in the stomach, they will go to a hospital to have a B ultrasound check, if it is appendix inflammation and it is to broke, you need surgery, no more use to go to a Chinese medicine doctor. If you did not find any organic disease location, there is no more use to continue the western medicine, you need to go to a Chinese medicine doctor.

 

Now, Chinese medicine also develops dependent on western medicine. If you have acute abdomen pain, Chinese medicine doctor will consider if you have an organic disease. He will also ask you to go to X-ray, or lab tests. This is right. However, just as you get used to knowing people by face, you would tend to omit and become slow to the body shape and other body aspects. Over-dependence on western medicine tends to think things in medicine in western medicine.

 

The overall healing effects of Chinese medicine are not as good as western medicine, generally speaking.  I support the Chinese medicine, because western medicine solves many diseases, but also creates many diseases. On one side it is good, and on another side, it is not good. It is a character of modern science. Though we cannot say that the gain from the western medicine is less than our loss from it, the loss is so high and so difficult to accept even if the gain is significant. Take the example of surgical therapy. If a disease can be cured without a surgical operation, no one wants to enjoy that high technique. The most important, the superstition to science and the western healthy maintenance ways created a massive burden to the current medicine.

 

With the western medical system, a disease that could be cured with simple way but is given complex therapy; that could cure by itself, but treated; that could co-exist with the body, but dealt with medical intervention. A patient who could die naturally, but he was made alive after heavy and painful therapies one by one for a long time. A human who could live with little or no disease with a healthy lifestyle, however, the body condition is maintained by a robust western medical system to balance an unhealthy lifestyle. None of these are associated with Chinese medicine.

 

 

Chapter 22: Annual health check, fear of death

 

Western medicine finds the “disease”, which can be “seen”, and the evidence for which is concrete, simple, and clear. This makes people feel satisfied and relaxed after it is removed. It creates the dependence of human on the medical technique. Medicine develops a protecting shell for the human being to live. Western medicine solves some diseases that are hard to solve by Chinese medicine due to the lack of associated techniques. However, western medicine also at the same time supplies more sources of patients for Chinese medicine.

 

Due to the promotion for the competition, consumption and so-called high-quality life, many people arrange their life to allow the body to “enjoy” and the spirit to “be happy”. They do not know that they are torturing their body and spirit. This is just as to eat “high quality” food may not mean it is good to the stomach. People chose mainly a not good lifestyle. For such diseases due to the wrong lifestyle, western medicine maintains it and repairs it regularly. For such a lifestyle that needs the maintenance by high technology, we should not predict it would last forever just because it is currently maintainable.

 

For annual health check, people understand it as the annual check and maintenance for a machine. Once it has detected something wrong, even a mild disease would get significant treatment. Treatment of disease becomes a project. During the annual examination, even a person feels nothing wrong. The person may be detected stone, fat liver, mass, or something similar. I have a kind of fear of such an annual examination. Once it is the examination time, I beg to let “disease” found in my body, not in the body of my friends. People around me laugh and ask me why. I said: you all are going to start a “surgery” project. Some of my friends just try to find a disease even if they feel nothing wrong. Once they find one, they try to treat it. The treatment causes new disease. They then treat the new disease again. It becomes a circle and an important content of their life.

 

I got to pick my lab test report. I saw a woman crying with lab test report in hands. She said it detected cancer. I handed my report to her. The report was the same. We all know that we are going to die, but are we going to cry every day? We seem unable to accept the natural death. We regard the death a terrible thing, hardly acceptable thing. It seems that death is out of the body nature, is a robber who comes to seize and to rape us. This makes us, when we go to the hospital to visit patient, seem to draw clear line from class enemy. Especially when we go to see a later-life stage patient, we either could not face reality, or express our sad without any restriction. This makes me also remember my friend whose upper ceiling part in the mouth has been cut off, who then died by himself by refusing to eat. He wrote to me: “Let me die quietly”. This also makes me remember my mother’s master, tens of family members, everyone continued whatever they supposed to do, my mother repel mosquito for her master, let her master died in quiet and in peace. Compared with Novel author Ba Jing, how happy my master is.

 

Many alive people talk about death. The death that a healthy person talks is not a death. Alive and death is two opposite and different exists and concept. One of my previous leaders liked to bring the members of the leader committee to a public tomb garden to have a meeting. In the beginning, the effects are pretty good. Sitting in and among the tomb plates, the relationship between people became pure right away. No more argument between each other. Conflict disappeared. Problems were solved. However, later, he no longer brought the members to have a meeting there. He said: no use. The movement finished the meeting and drove home to the company, the questions and conflicts that have been laden down came back to the car again as your pet. The questions and problems in the alive cannot be solved by death.

One of my colleagues died of liver cancer. I thought he is a hero. He is a very careful person in daily life. Even a person who knows him nothing at all can blame and scold him. However, his attitude toward his disease was so peaceful and so quiet, which makes me respect him very much. We, several friends, invited him to drink a soup of dog meat that he liked very much usually. It was cooked by myself, a whole body of a dog. It is the last thing I want to do, but these friends said that for this case, I should not refuse. He said, he also feared to die. Upon middle night when everything is quiet, and when he himself faces the death, fear shaken him a lot and cry. However, when the sun rises, he knew this day he needed to continue to live. He needed to live the whole day as an alive. So, when he came to work, he regarded his pain as usual stomach pain, and he did his job with us as usual. He died. We all went to the crematory to send him off.

 

My another colleague caught lung cancer. He showed his diagnosis report to all of us. One colleague said: “Not bad”. He became angry: “Not bad? You can image, if the name on it is not mine but yours, how do you feel?” When it is the turn to me to have a look, I imaged the name on it is mine. I felt as the sheet is the sentence to exile me away. It was the morning of the last day of the year. It was near noon when we came back. All are hurry to go home. Soon I got the call from my manager. He said the wife of the died person cried in the funeral event. No people attended the event. Then I recalled there is to be such a funeral event. I hurried up to the funeral event, left aside everything that were needed for the new year night. I could not prevent from thinking: “It is so hassled to be alive.”

 

We never give ourselves a chance to feel, to experience, to understand and to adapt our lives. We hand our life to the doctor and allow them to handle. We did not reach every point for life in experience the life. What we own is the incomplete life. People in modern life give our life many reasons. However, these reasons that suppose to make us feel happy could not replace the life per se. The depression, anxiety, hopeless, sadness, forcing feelings of the people in the modern time is not only the reflection of a sick emotion but also a real loss of the meaning of life. It is a pity that people could not close the eyes upon death and they do not know what they lost. This is like a tiger, eagle, fox born in a zoo. It feels some calls from the unclear spirit space, but never know what the call means.  

 

Chapter 23: Reasons for happy does not mean really happy

 

Animals in the zoo can enjoy the results of the modern culture. They do not need to worry about the food, can avoid the natural enemy and can live as long as it can. In other words, we can find many reasons that they should feel happy. However, do they feel happy? To a human being, we create more and more reasons for a happy. However, the person with so many reasons for happy really feels happy? Reason can cheat the surface layer of the brain but not the life itself. This is as a moral could restrict the current time of the life but not the whole course of a person’s life.  Sol current people got a lot of modern “diseases”. People take it for granted that primitive status is the lower status, foolish status, as we believe that the living standard of an animal in the zoo is higher than those in a natural environment. The way for us to solve the depression, anxiety and hopeless is to find the “reason”. Such “reason”, in the hands of some psychologists, is a thing. Solve this “reason”, the emotional disorder would be solved. They did not think that such disorder is due to our lifestyle. The animals in the zoo show more and more troubles. People are trying to find various reasons for them, lack of calcium, iron, zinc, but failed. The life quality of animals in the zoo as a whole is regressing. If we pay attention to the whole environment, it is not so hard to find the reason for it.

 

When the time I gave the birth, I bought two books. One was written by a Japanese << Parenting encyclopedia >>, another one was written by an America << Childcare, whole aspects >>. I regarded them as East evil and the Western devil. I asked one of my friends who had the baby birth at the same time as: “Which book you are going to follow?” She took the one wrote by America: “I want to grow the baby according to science.” So, according to the book, she fed the baby every four hours the milk powder. In between, no matter how the baby cried, she would not give feeding or holding in chest anymore. She said it is to educate the child a habit to eat according to time. She let the baby sleep by herself, to grow her independence. Let the baby cry is to increase her lung volume… But in my book written by Japanese, it asks breastfeeding, continuous to hold the baby in the chest, fed the baby anytime, hold the baby to sleep, allows the baby to hold nipple in mouth…. as the animals in the << Animal world >>. When my child could eat, I changed the ways to let the child eat, according to the book. I have also consulted with my neighbors to support my development of diet for baby. My friend acted as western people, eat simple, but add addictions or supplements to the food of the child according to the book.

 

Two children grow up. My child is eastern from inside to outside. Her child does not appear as a western child in body shape and health. Now, her child gets nephrotic syndrome too. I felt hurry and urgent for her, so I found that Chinese medicine doctor who is very good in the clinic. However, my friend only believes in western medicine. She said, that no plus mark in the urine test should mean that the disease is already cured. I said that you are using so large dose of steroid medications to maintain, and it comes and goes with symptoms, how can you say it has been cured? We should use western medicine for emergency and use Chinese medicine for cure. However, she would not listen to me. She felt that finally, her child could replace a new kidney! That does not matter too much!

 

I really admire the current people who take the transplantation of a kidney as a small thing, so that hurt their body without limitation and do not worry the final results. I felt so pity for the child. But her mother thinks that this child is happy since she can give many reasons that this child is happy. However, my daughter understands me; she knows that the reasons for happiness have nothing related to the feeling of happiness.

 

Chattered here, we cannot avoid the mental diseases worldwide. Because we are searching the disease reason logically, solve the problem according to the symptoms. If there is a headache, we treat the headache, and if there is a pain on the feet, we treat the pain on the feet. We passively follow the disease. We seem to treat the mental disease, but actually, we create the disease.

Several years ago, my mother-in-law declared to her son and daughter: she had money, she will go to a nursing home for the elderly. The life there is most happy. After her several times of sayings, I told her surreptitiously not to say so later. I said, the filial piety also needs to nourish again and again as to nourish an adherence to a political party in society. If you always said that you do not need your children to help, they would have less concept for their duty. Later, if you do not go to the nursing home, they may not agree with you. In another side, is the nursing home for the elderly so nice? After getting old, who has no personality? The old people met without knowing each other before. Do you expect who will tolerate who? Is it impossible to get conflict and get upset each other? Even if you finally have some good friends there, all are old people. If one dies today, and another one might tomorrow. Who could suffer from such a feeling? The best place for old people is still the family. In a family with old and young, the family feeling is the best feeling for the elderly. After that, she never talked about going to the nursing home anymore.

 

I have a friend who is a lawyer. She is an open, outside, and cheerful lady. No one expected that her menopause syndrome could be so strong. She could cry anytime, with a massive tear. On the court, the chief justice has declared the start of the court, but she asked to wait for a movement. She would go out to the corridor to cry for a while. Then cleared tear and went back to the court. The wife of my co-worker also has menopause syndrome. She closed all the curtains in the house in daytime and sat there in the dark with an upset.

 

To help those women who are under such suffering, we tried a lot of means: eat medicine, various drugs, traveling, parties… After some time, I asked the lawyer friend: do you still cry? She said, no longer. I felt happy and said: all is over? She said, nothing is over! I want to jump down the building! This makes me remember Deng Yingchao. Her menopause syndrome was also very severe. Before, we said that a woman who got the strong menopause syndrome is due to her narrow spirit and less life experience, but lady Deng Yingchao is what a lady? She went the Long March in China! She is beside the Premier, what situation she did not see before? And, the medical conditions for her are the best in China. Therefore, the explanation does not stand.

 

 

Chapter 24: Menopause and early date

 

These two ladies with the menopause syndrome get better very quick without any treatment, though they make us have nothing to help them. They became a grandmother. Each one has a healthy grandson! They smiled, no any sign of the menopause syndrome. Due to the late marriage, many women did not see grandson upon their fifty years of age. Some lady used estrogen kind of steroid drugs to maintain their body and skin, to retard the speed of age. Therefore around me, some ladies are fifty years of old, seek a male partner, six to seven years younger than themselves. There is one who married a youth of thirty years of old. I have a colleague who is twenty-eight years of old. His mother-in-law found a new father-in-law who is the same old as him! People have already got used to this, feel that it is freedom, openness, and advance, and believe that people will live a more happy life. Is this true and is the thing so?

 

Some basic rationality in social life could last a long time without change because it has been corrected and tested again and again by life. The efforts trying to break it always show as a new, unique and special face. But they are again and again modified and corrected or became died. It means that one time of proof of something means nothing: history needs repeated confirm of it. When people were young, they swear not to be conservative when they get old and would be the power to push the running of the history. Now, people found that conservative is the natural job of elderly. They are the necessary brake of history. Now, the elderly also repeatedly pursue the psychological young age. How rare is it to be willing to be old, to enjoy old, and to pretend to be old?

 

In primitive tribes, so-called old people are the women in menopause and are the leaders. Their alert and doubts, and adamancy mind were the natural characters of a leader. When this leader role had no stage to play, the women expressed as the current menopause syndrome. Nowadays women in the menopause syndrome take medicine since the doctor said this is a disease. However, both my mother and my grandmother said it is due to the dislocation of the life role. A human develops as the plant, following the season of age. Human life cannot walk by thinking, but by living inside the life course. When the human is in it, he would feel it. This is the critical role of life in the thinking. Therefore, whenever there is something we cannot understand, we need action to deal with it, so to promote the thinking. To refuse to grow (to become old) would not be accepted by the natural law.

 

My mother-in-law still chatted and worried at home, but she absolutely stops mention going to the nursing home for the elderly. If I open a nursing home for elderly, I must also open a kindergarten, as in my hometown, people open a steel mill (most are male workers) but also a cotton mill (most are female workers). With the nursing home for elderly and the kindergarten together, it is better for both the elderly and the children. Let us have a look at the nursing home for the elderly in foreign countries. Old people sit on a wheelchair, line by line, having sunshine. All are with Alzheimer disease. Even if he is a healthy person, sitting as such would make him fool. How nice there would be a child running around! In China, not many elderly are with Alzheimer disease. The elderly who lives at home, who enjoys the family life, and who has rich feelings in life, do not get this disease easily. Therefore, the best way for the elderly is not a so-called scientific way of life, but a natural way.

 

I did not feel proud of my mother when I was young since father always criticizes mother from the scientific point of view. Nowadays the points criticizing Chinese medicine, to me, is too old since I have heard it from my father many years ago and again and again. I accepted my father’s point entirely, believed that mother was very fatuous. So many people advised her to change into a western medicine doctor, so excellent job, so good hospital, so bright future, but she refused. Is she not so fatuous?

 

I have felt shame to my mother. At that time, it was not common to see a patient who suffered from something as “early date” or  “brutality love”.  One such patient dared not to go to a hospital, came to my mother for help. Seeing my mother was helping them, I felt that mother was no idea of right and wrong, of white and black, of love and hate, and she was extremely foolish. The role of my mother in China made her work also like a priest. I saw that she let a not-married girl with a belt around the belly, with the aim the belly was not so big, as well as it would be easier to give birth later. At that years, the reputation of a girl was equal to life. If her reputation was damaged, her life would be over too. Mother tried her best to help the girls.

 

Mother seemed no moral feeling either. There was two bad youth. They were not only in early love but also had an early pregnancy. They gave birth without telling any people. They were not only spurned by the public but also refused out of the door by the parents. They found a broken shed to live. You can imagine how hard their hard life could be. Their baby always got sick. They have no money but crying. Mother treated the baby without asking any payment. She also found something for the baby to eat and to use.

 

Mother helped them and encouraged them to live along. I criticized my mother for what she was doing. You can imagine how the public spurned the young couple! I remember one year, they brought their baby and came to my home for new year greeting to my mother. Mother was the only one accepted them. The couple bought a “Dika” coat for the boy with the money they saved the whole of the year. The coat was pretty new, bright and hard, and It’s ridiculous to watch. The girl run around the boy, stretching the coat front and back, chattering urgently to my mother: aunt, you see, our life becomes better, you see, our life becomes better. The boy stood vertical, showing my mother their better life. I, of course, must have curled my lips at that time, though I feel very sorry to them now when I remember this. Mother stretched his coat slightly, said: good, so good, Just live this way, isn't this better and better?

 

However, my mother whom I thought had no moral feeling, refused to treat a patient one day.

 

There was a director of a community association in another community. She was forty years old. She saw a wrap in a public toilet. There was a baby frozen to death in it. She yelled loud and ran a house-to-house search. She then found out a girl who was blood in the whole body and lied on the bed, took out her to the street, Hang up the brand to the chest...  expressing shame penalty to her.

 

One day, this lady came to mother for treatment. Mother said you could go to find other doctors to help you. I could not help you. She asked the reason. Mother said: are you also a woman? Did you have baby birth before? How cruel your heart is to treat the girl that way? She met such a thing, and she dealt with this without telling any people. How difficult and how hard for her? You did not help her at all, but hurt her! Are you a human?

 

Though I opposed mother’s behavior very much, and I even thought it means her foolish, I was affected by her. When I was in high school, my classmates began to have spring of puppy love. I was among this wave. I saw these classmates as I saw the patients around my mother. If there was puppy love, the crowd all would attack him/her. The way of the attacking was so overwhelming that it showed that the crowd was with the same rude emotional status as the puppy love, but they did not know at all. The students of puppy love were isolated from the crowd. My classmates drew a clear line away from the students of puppy love. I remember one morning when I came into the classroom, there were some bad words to the student of puppy love on the blackboard. The crowd laughed, waiting to see the awkward of the students of puppy love. I went up to rub it off with rubber. Some classmates came and pulled me to stop doing so. The teacher came in when we were in such stretching each other.

 

 

Chapter 25: Reasons for happy and happy feeling

 

There was one of such an early dated girl. She did not come to school after attacked as such. There was something with her, so the teacher asked us to find her. No one wanted to go, because he or she had already drawn a clear line from her. Our teacher knew that I did not want to draw a clear line with anyone, so asked me to find her. My classmate told me that her mother knew she was in early dated, beaten her heavily and locked her in a storeroom.

 

I went to her home. She indeed was not at home. I found her in the dark corner of the storeroom. She was very sick. She suffered from kidney disease. Her quilt was with foul urine odor. I inherited from my mother the humanist spirit. No matter how bad her moral, she is now sick to die. I wanted to find her mother to argue, she stopped me. I said, is she your adopted mother? The people at that time, how unbelievable they were! How could they look their daughter in moral eyes? I cannot run away without helping her. I hold her up and sent her to my mother. After handing her to my mother, I left her body to my mother, but I tried to save her from spirit. I gave her books in philosophy, among which was the book of Plato <<Utopia >>. I was very strong in principle at that time. I would not keep a close relationship with such a people, though I did not draw a clear line from such people. Though she regarded me as her friend for I saved her life, and my classmates found that I helped her so thought that we were friends. They even had a meeting discussing if they needed to draw a clear line from me and also to isolate me. I remember that the cadres of the class talked to me. He said that the people are grouped together, things are also gathered together, and why I did not draw a clear line from her. I refused to explain to him. I still did what I did. I did not care what others looked at me and what they talked. Is this not due to the influence from mother, that made me look things beyond moral?

 

The moral and the science, compared with mother’s concept of nature, are a small concept. They are both accepted and tolerated by my mother. Compared to my father’s science, moral, and his theory, I feel more and more rational bias.

 

In the western culture, there is an extreme top and highest ability God who suppresses and dominates human being. Human, with primary guilty, is lamb who missed road. Human is low in status and foolish. On the other side in the eastern culture, the human and the god is a unit. Eastern people never isolate the God out of themselves. In fact, they did so. Why should we look down our feeling and ability of recognization? The life itself is mysterious. How can we say that there is no any truth in our feeling that developed from evolution? For our feeling, what we need to do is to recognize it, understand it, analyze it but not to throw it away or belittle it.

 

The development of the western “science” is always to open one road with the compensation to block nine other roads. For example, many people do not get used to married life; they can get many mental disorders even if they live in a “happy” married life. These people find many reasons for their being happy. They tried to convince him/her self they should feel happy, but the body and emotion do not listen to the convinces. Therefore, it happened that people live in the happy but do not feel that they are happy. When people do not live in the happy, they think that a rich life is happy. When they are really in a rich life, they found that what they own is the reasons for happiness, but not the happiness per se. Western culture is just to us the reasons for a happiness when we want happiness, or give us a string when we need music.

 

In fact, many hardly understandable people like to follow the feeling and to seek natural life. But the reasonable persons like to suppress themselves in the social life with reasons. Nowadays, in our life, if we get sick, we have a hospital, we have three meals or more every day; we have a warm coat and covering, but the sufferings by us are not less than those lived in primitive times. Do people need to live naturally even once? The question is: our life has not been natural, and it cannot be natural anymore. However, our feeling and our heart remain to seek the natural environment. This is like a tiger born in a zoon. It stares far away with hollow eyes. It feels unhappy but does not know the reasons for the unhappy. Even if it a wisdom tiger, what it could find is only the reason of happy. The tiger does not know that it needs to run in the field. It has never run, never seen running, and hard to image what is running.

 

Like this tiger, many of us feel empty, loneliness, lonely, but do not know what the opposite aspects of these feelings are, not know what we are lack and what we really need. So, people live with eating, drinking, playing to meet the need for an empty heart. Those of people who suffer from such emotional disorders are hard to evaluate if this eating, drinking, or playing is really the “medicine” to their emotional disorders. They do not know if such life is what they need and whether it could really fill up their empty.

 

People will not have negative emotions for no reason. Emotional disorder suggests us to pay attention to our lifestyle and to see if we need to change it. Reason does not solve all mental disorders. The western reason culture appears as humanity from the surface, pays attention to human rights, is human-focused, and deals with human also with reason. It regards the human as reason human being. It changes the human being into a non-human being. The neglect of feeling by science has caused many severe problems.

 

Chinese medicine makes a diagnosis by feeling. It appears not scientific. However, is the feeling really not valuable and very primitive? In the pulse diagnosis, the feeling is essential. The feeling is also essential in many jobs. That the robot cannot replace human being is because it cannot assemble a feeling, even if we input unlimited signals and information to it. One of the high-level products produced by our brain that is such a high-level computer is the feeling. We did not use it in full. Science makes our feeling regressed, and it regards our feeling no use. Possibly due to this, someone believes that Chinese medicine is witchcraft.

 

 

Chapter 26: Mental disorder or normal people

 

I thought my mother was foolish, not only because her moral feeling was not as strong as ordinary people. Even if when facing a patient with a mental disorder, she does not treat her like a madman, either. Mother stayed with them naturally, never felt fun with them. Mother gave them medicine, acupuncture, and chatted with them. Therefore I did not feel that the mental disorder was a specific disease. If my mother was very busy, she would let me chat with them. This made me also skillful to chat with people with mental disorder. Even upon now, I could chat very well with a room of patients with mental disorders. It is wrong if you think that I chat with them using skillful technique and cheat them. I chat with them the same way as I chat with any other people. They could find out if you do not chat with them in a normal way. They are not at all foolish.

 

Mother dealt with the mental disorder patients normally, not fussily. This is different from that way by western medicine does. Her such attitude also affected me. This makes me have also friends with mental disorders, besides many normal friends. Among people, those with absolute mental disorder are rare, and those with an absolute normal mental condition are also rare. Most people have a minor disorder. I know this, so I know how to talk to them and how to stay with them. When you understand what is the meaning for their mental disorder, at the same time you also know they are not different from ordinary people in nature, you simply chat with them according to their particular way of thinking, and you would not create conflict with them nor stimulate their disease status. In history, how many wise people, who were believed crazy men, got tortured. How many people who were tied on the pole to burn to death without being called mad or witches? Is such history really away from us now?

 

There is a boy. His mother had a mental disorder. This made this boy bear heavy emotional stress and worry that he himself might have a similar problem. The concern from others also implied to him very much. He then acted strangely, reaching the edge of the spirit broken. I have had an in-depth talk with him about what is a mental disease. I said the development of the human brain is not in a balanced matter. Therefore we have significant space to develop. The reason for human being is superior to animals, and human being is the top of the animal peak, is due to the imbalanced brain. In other words, the development of the human brain is due to the imbalance. Alternatively, it can be said that it is due to the mental disease that pushes the evolution of the human brain. Even those people with a mental disorder who lose their body and emotional control are entirely paying their costs for the development of whole human being.

 

We, as relatively normal people, should feel thanks to them. Same as a human being, they are created as hardly able to take care of themselves. So, the human being is not fair from birth. We, relatively normal people should take the responsibility to care them and love them. I said to my daughter: if you have more talent than others, it is not your credit to enjoy more material enjoyment than others, but that the God asked you to take more responsibility to care others. Showing your talent to others and boasting it and laughing at others is the prostitution to the talent. Do not feel upset for others not matching your need. The brain under development is an imbalance, and the social life that goes to diversity step by step, both already make people’s spirit in an extreme depression status. If you want to be a good doctor, you cannot only pay attention to their body but also their spirit and emotion. They cannot be separated away. My daughter also learned psychology. She has already realized the close relationship between the emotion, spirit and the disease.

 

No doubt, our thinking is scattered. Our spirit is in chaos. Because we lose our traditional thinking and believing, accepted only the science but not their religion of the western world, all make our life and emotion split and crashed, resulting in many problems.

 

Mother’s tolerance attitude influenced me. However, when I came into the society, I was not tolerated by others due to my similar generous and tolerance as my mother. Others did not blame Mother's tolerance, but I felt very heavy stress. If I do not express anger to so-called bad people, I would be regarded as bad people too. I would be “guilty” for my help to the bad and evildoer. Sometimes, I would have the even worse condition than these evildoers. I was worse than the evildoers since the evildoer do evil because they are evildoers, but I do the evil when people think that I am good people. So I prostituted their feeling. So I was worse than these evildoers. At this time, I found that not everyone can be a humanist as my mother. A priest can face evil, but ordinary people can only do pure good things. Reasonable people can only do good thing within a limited scope, not expand it unlimitedly. At this time, I regretted again not learn to be a Chinese medicine doctor.

 

The necessity for my daughter being a Chinese medicine doctor, is because I wanted to clear her mind, to correct her some wrong lifestyle. I wanted her to be able to take care of herself, to be independent in spirit, to have a personal skill, to be able to learn for life, to be able to do something even if she is old, to let her serve the people, to be quiet and mature, to have her own career, to let her moral recognized, and to let her love China. I have many considerations for her. All need her being a Chinese medicine doctor.

 

To talk in broadness, I hope China could pick the loss culture again. The way to follow the western is not a way. We have had a big winding course. We could not walk this detour but not learn some lessons. We should not repeat this long winding course again. The winding course I walked before in learning and understand Chinese medicine should be corrected back by my daughter. It is time now. We can be quiet down, think and consider carefully, in many aspects. I do not support or agree to restore the eastern Culture by restoring the Confucian. That does not work. My daughter also read the Confucian, but it is for her to understand the idea of the old generation about nature, to nourish her feeling. 

 

 

Chapter 27: Jewels and bread

 

Nowadays, many Chinese medicine doctors are unable to feel the pulse. I say from the internet that one Chinese medicine doctor said: why should feel the pulse? Feeling pulse is as doing the B ultrasound and CT. If we have the time to feel the pulse, we would rather let the patient have B ultrasound and CT, both of which are quick and precise. I know him right away that he is no longer a real Chinese medicine doctor.

 

Some doctors really want to learn the pulse diagnosis. They tried several years but still uncertain the results. They, therefore, doubt the scientific meaning and the reproducibility of the pulse diagnosis. My daughter learned very fast that makes a surprise for those who have practiced the pulse diagnosis for several years. I do not feel surprised. If one doubts the scientific truth of the feeling, uses science as a weapon to arm one’s mind, so suppresses one’s own feeling, makes the feeling lose it sharpness, how could the one master the pulse diagnosis? My daughter practiced understanding of nature by the traditional culture, which made her mind pure and quiet, so her feeling is sharp. Of course no wonder that she could feel the pulse quick and precise. She does not feel hard to learn Chinese medicine, instead she likes to learn. She feels the pulse is as not for feeling the organs, but for Yin-Yang and Five-elements, even the Ba Gua and Yun Qi. If we understand the pulse diagnosis as the B ultrasound and CT, we could, of course, use the B ultrasound and CT to replace the pulse diagnosis. Pulse feeling is not to feel which organ has cancer but to establish an image, similar to the electric mimic by the USA. How could the B ultrasound and CT replace the holistic thinking with image feel?

 

That Chinese medicine is Chinese medicine since nothing could replace its imaging thinking. Even if there would be a supercomputer as the “Deep Blue” with such high wisdom, what it would not be able to have, compared with the human brain, is the feeling. Its wisdom would not be able to develop into a feeling level. This is the aspect in Chinese medicine, which is impossible to be exceeded by a computer.

 

The feeling of Chinese medicine to thing is not based on void or empty. Its feeling is also very sharp.

 

Many people were coming to my daughter to feel their pulse. Sometimes, after feeling the pulse, she rubbed her hands and told me, the disease of this man was very severe and complicated. It is hard to treat. She felt cold feeling from her fingers up to the direction of the wrist. There was another patient. He waited until everyone left. Then he asked my daughter to feel his pulse. After feeling, my daughter said, uncle, you could go to my teacher. He was good at the male disease. The man asked the address of her master and said thanks again and again.

 

I told my daughter to protect her sense perception on purpose and to change the knowledge into wisdom, and change the wisdom into sense perception. This is a knife, knowledge is iron, and the wisdom is the steel, and the feeling is the sharp edge of the knife.

 

The traditional culture needs to be promoted, but the current way of the promotion, to me, does not work. We must depend on something useful in practice. Without practical usefulness, nothing would happen. Though the western culture has some weakness, it has practical usage to fulfill its reason to exist. Human evolution is to be lightly loaded. The value of a block of gold, to the human being who walked on a long trip, is not as valuable as a block of bread. History usually chose to throw jewels but chose to keep the bread. This is not a question need discuss. No need to ask why. Therefore, when I read from the internet that a young professor swears to restore the Confucian with his whole life, I felt sorry and sad. I told my daughter, don’t make the traditional culture as a jewel, it should be made into bread.

 

Science made the Chinese brain developed in part but regressed in whole. It is one of such mistakes to believing that the current generation is smart than the old. This is as the tiger in zoo looks at the tiger in the wild field. We hold and own much theory. The theory fills up our mind and life so that there is no space in it. When I was young, I met an old man of Faust. He closed himself in a small and dark room to study his theory. He behaved mad from time to time, tear books and beat broken ink bottles. I did not know what to do.

 

I sent a small fish tank on his table, with two fishes in it. I also put a basin of flower beside the fish basin. The flower bloomed bigger than the fish basin. I thought, he sat in front of the table, would he not be attracted by the fish and the flower? Would he not realize that he is alive, not in a tomb? Would he not think to go out, under the sunshine? One week later when I visited him, I found that my fishes and the flowers died in that dark small room. They stood there died. No longer later, he died too with not closed eyes. At that time, I realized that theory could kill alive things. It could tear away the whole thing in pieces and kill the alive.

 

Someone believes that it would not be science without abstracting things. However, for mathematics, the flower of the science, mathematics Tong Qiuchen studied it according to the Confucian. So, the eastern culture can tolerate, hold and include the highest fruit of the western culture.

Abstraction is not a superb synonym to excellent. That believing the science is super than the Yin-Yang , than the Five-elements, and believing that the jewel is better than the bread, is the result of evaluation from a science point of view. Even for those who advocate the Confucian is to prove that Confucian is a jewel, thought that people would throw away the bread but pick up their jewel. However, the first thing I support my daughter to learn is the acupuncture. I said, when you are together with the western medicine doctor, when you have no any conventional medicine in hands, have nothing to help for the treatment, you can still treat the disease, and you can still regard you being a doctor. This is the basic requirement for a doctor. Don’t expect to be an expert. So-called expert, out of university or hospital, is no longer an expert. They cannot even solve a small illness.

 

A doctor is not going to produce space shuttle . Most of the doctors need to treat illness for the ordinary people. Therefore, don’t make yourself as a jewel. Don’t let the Chinese people starve to death with a pile of diamonds in hands. It is necessary to change knowledge into ability to the greatest extent possible.

 

 

Chapter 28: Herbs or poisons

 

My mother gave patient herbs as gave them gold. She usually gave them only one dose, telling the patient not to continue it after three hours, since it is enough time to tell the effect of the herbs. If the herb does not work, it is needed to consider something else to try, so as not to delay the disease. It was rare for her to give patient for more than three doses. She never wrote big formula either. She used Jing Fang, (Note: here it means the formula from book Shanghan Lun), the amount of the herbs was also small. Patients always asked to increase the doses, saying that Chinese medicine works slow. Mother disagreed. She said, if the herb used is correct, it does not work slowly at all. Many times, she even did not use herbs. When I was sick, I ate herbs not often at all. To those who suffered from stomach pain, skin disease, and wind pain, mother usually did not hurry up to give them herbs but tried to understand their living conditions first, since these kinds of diseases are usually due to the stress in emotion. When human being tries to convince himself he is happy, his body does not admit it and shows rejection. Now, it is more essential to smooth the body and emotion than to give herbs. It needs the wisdom to point out the critical point of the problem for the patients. This is like the tiger grows up in a zoo, which never knows the reason for its depression.

 

Furthermore, personal heart nature is different. If we allocate person according to the Five-element theory, then not only the standard for health but also the ways for the treatment, as well as the psychological needs, should all be different. For example, I convince the Water person and the Wood person quiet and tolerance when meeting trouble, but not the Fire person or Metal person. If I convince the Fire person to tolerate, it would be worse. If he can really follow me, he would develop cancer in his abdomen. Therefore many people think that I have no principle. This is the point. For the same thing, when it comes to me, for someone, I recommend them to endure, but for others, I may convince them to release the emotion, all depending on the individual difference. A theory is a non-alive thing, but human is an alive thing. The non-alive thing should work for the alive human being. 

 

According to my mother’s principle of not take medicine and take less medicine, the current people’s way of the health maintenance would be rejected by her. Taking herbs for a long time to balance the Yin and Yang, so to set up a false balance, it would waste and regress the body ability to balance by itself. Once this false balance is hard to keep, the body would show a “toxic” syndrome. The way of my mother using herbs as using gold does not due to the theory that every herb bears toxic.

 

I met an herbalist on the internet. He recommended people do not take herb with too careless manner, since “any herb might be a poison”. I agree with him that the herb should not be taken with careless. It is wrong to take herbs as western medicine. Take herbs without Chinese medicine diagnosis usually makes the disease worse. If one takes the herbs with opposite effects or eats the not-matching herbs, or if the herbs are no longer needed but continue to take them, the herbs in these conditions are “poison”.

 

The same herb, if it matches the disease, it is not a toxicant. Chinese medicine uses so-called toxicant herbs quite often. Mother followed her three masters to learn Chinese medicine. Once she practiced the clinic for a while, she would start to learn from another master again for three years. Her last master, I saw him when I was young. His family name is Tian. I called him grandfather Tian. His clinic was full of patients. He used herbs like General orders the soldiers. I now understand why he had that self-satisfied feeling. Mother followed him, mostly to open the view and activate her thinking in medicine. She never dared to use herbs as brave as him. Grandfather Tian had an “arrogance” in using herbs. Badou (tiglium) and Pishuang (arsenic (trioxide)) were common herbs he used. Even if for the patients with massive bleeding from the uterus, he used “breaking out herbs”. He dared to let the opposite herbs to “opposite” in the body.

 

Mother also used toxic herbs of course, but the dose was much less than grandfather Tian. For a woman, it was so, lacking the arrogance, but still more than other Chinese medicine doctors. At the time when she worked in a hospital, there were some “toxic” herbs allowed from the higher authority committee to use there, but the herbal house of the hospital dared not to accept them. Mother said the herbal house should have them, but the herb house manager refused to have, saying that there was no use, because the hospital did not allow the Chinese medicine doctor to use the “toxicant or poison” herbs. Mother so went to the healthcare authority asking for the herbs. The authority thought she represented the hospital, so gave them to mother. Mother so prepared the herbal formula by using these herbs. The leader of the hospital heard this,  criticized my mother saying that she had no sense of organization and no sense of following rule of the hospital. They requested her to admit her wrong behavior. Mother could not understand where she was wrong, refused to do as they asked. Later it was my father who wrote a paper report on behalf of my mother, admitting the wrongdoing.

 

When I hold the certificate from the police station, bought the highly toxic herbs home, and prepared the herbs, I needed to wrap my head all over. I felt symptoms of poisoning from the herbs. However, when mother used these herbs to very sick patients, they did not show any signs of poisoning but got better soon. Where is the so-called toxicant or poison? They are poisons and toxicants to a healthy person, not to a sick person? This phenomenon cannot be explained by western medicine at all, but by the Chinese medicine can.

 

The herbs are used for balancing the Yin and Yang, e.g., we use the Yin or Yang of the herbs to correct the Yang or Yin status of the body. For a healthy body, its Yin and Yang are under balance. The use of the herbs broke the balance, so the body showed the poison reaction. For the body that needs the extreme Yang or Yin of the toxic herbs, the toxic herbs function in a way whatever common herbs can not. At this time, if you talk about the poison or toxicant to the sick body, it would be ridiculous. From this example, it reminds us that we should not take the herbs without care.

 

Furthermore, a herb is not toxicant if it is used matching the disease conditions. Therefore, there is no way to use the herbs correctly without understand the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory. It is ridiculous that western medicine wants to remove the “toxic” of the herbs away. It is a wrong comment that “every herb is a toxicant”. This is a common misunderstanding even by a Chinese medicine herbalist.

 

I saw one time in which my mother used the herbs like a General and with arrogance. I could remember it because it was something to do with me. At the time when I graduated, I had to go to the countryside to work and to live there, according to the political and social environment at that time. My mother, who was so behind of the social situation, did not want me to go. She wanted me to remain in the city. I laughed at mother wishful thinking. Mother, however, found the girl, whose adoptive father was the authoritarian leader who could make the decision. Mother said to her: “I know that your adoptive mother lying on the bed due to sickness years and years. You can tell your adoptive father, I promise to cure her disease within two months, under the condition not to let my daughter go to the countryside.” The manager did not believe that my mother could cure the disease of his wife so that agreed right away. Mother cured her disease. After two months, my mother made his wife walk as everyone. The manager was so happy. He not only helped me remained in the city but also allocated me to a state-owned farm to work. For this case, mother used all of the herbs that she saved in the bottom of her case and also used some of such “high-handed” herbs.

 

Chapter 29: Degenerated Chinese medicine

 

 

There is no such saying that a given herb cures a specific symptom. Some people regard the herbs as anti-flu medicine. Once they catch a common cold or flu, they drink the herbal tea. I oppose such way to use herbs. For the common cold, they might not be the same, when it occurs in different seasons or different years. Though the common cold belongs to the surface condition in Chinese medicine, and it can be treated with surface depletion therapy, the depletion therapies again are different: there are at least two kinds of the surface depletion formula to choose. The treatment also depends on the geographic zone, so the herbs used are also different. It is forbidden in Chinese medicine to use herbs without Chinese medicine diagnosis and assessment. However, how to make the assessment and diagnosis? How many of the Chinese medicine doctors know the pulse feeling? Currently, Chinese medicine also depends on the symptoms and current technique detection. It is hard for the Chinese medicine doctor to create an image of the body condition in their mind, so to perform a treatment that is quite different from western medicine. Overall, the decline of Chinese medicine is comprehensive.

 

The Chinese medicine education and training need the one-to-one model between the student and the Great Master (teacher), not the large lecture room model as used in the western medical education system. The current classroom and textbook education system do not suit the Chinese medicine. The textbook used in the school is translated in vernacular, not the old Chinese expression. Translation from old Chinese to the current colloquial language distorted the original meaning. The imaging thinking became furthermore weak after filtered by the logical thinking. Think, what is the result? After five years of education in the medical school or university, the graduates look blank in the heart.

 

Chinese medicine looks no longer original Chinese medicine, but western medicine does not look as western medicine either. For western medicine, if you want to learn, you can master its knowledge, and you can practice it. In Chinese medicine, there is no “knowledge”. Without organized according to the Yin-Yang and Five-element, what the students learn in the school is a heap of garbage. It is impossible to learn Chinese medicine one technique by one technique, as in the western medicine. Chinese medicine is not a technique since you cannot measure it or quantify it. It is so big that there is no edge. It is also too small to have a core. Where can you find its corresponsive mass, and to what can be used as a parameter to measure it? This is the reason that my mother opposed me since I do not want to recite the Chinese medicine bible books, but only want to know which herb is used for what disease and that she refused to teach me Chinese medicine. Knowing which herb works for which disease is only the surface of Chinese medicine, not its real power. However, even for graduates from Chinese medicine universities in China, they cannot master which disease symptom needs which herbs, not to speak of the Chinese medicine believing. So they tend to change to western medicine.

 

As a western medicine doctor, basically it is enough to learn what you learned. But as Chinese medicine doctor, you cannot be a good Chinese medicine doctor, if you cannot exceed the moral limitation, cannot exceed the environment in which we are living, cannot exceed our current time, have no natural believing for the meaning of life and the world, cannot master the meaning of the world where we are living in a holistic view. If so, you cannot start your diagnosis and set up any treatment schedule. You would feel complicated and hard to master the core in learning Chinese medicine, and don’t know where to go, how to learn and how to practice. From this point, Chinese medicine is indeed hard to learn, especially in the current time when the science is dominated.

During the previous years, the reason that I did not get an education from my mother is that the government did not accept the model of Great master education in Chinese medicine. It accepts the western medicine education model. Without a certificate of education in school, there would have no qualification to participate in the license examination. The certificate could only be gotten from the Chinese medicine university. The students who go to the university are those youth who have their brains washed for twelve years by the “science” and those who are successfully washed. They have refusing and rejecting mind when they meet the Yin-Yang and Five-element that are entirely different from what they have learned before. They would naturally deal with the Chinese medicine theory as with western medicine. Also, the classroom education system separate diseases into different departments and into the disease classifications, in the Chinese medical universities. This broken Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine was handed to the students as a generalized, scientifically formatted, and life-destroyed matter. I thought, if my mother did not get an education from her masters, but got it from a classroom, what she would then be?

 

It is ridiculous that so many professors in medical university, especially those in the Chinese medicine universities, cannot treat diseases, but only stand in front of a blackboard of the classroom. It is also a ridiculous thing that current Chinese medicine separated diseases into different departments. The doctors in each department have no communication with each other in the clinic!

 

My daughter started to learn clinic work from a Great Master and started clinic study when she finished the second year education in a Chinese medicine university. She decided firmly, when she gets graduated, to be able to practice Chinese medicine, able to have the pulse diagnosis and treat patients with herbal formulas. For this, I have nothing to say. It is up to her to try.

 

The hospital model does not suit the Chinese medicine, based on the experience of my mother’s practice. Dividing the Chinese medicine into different department, only allowing the herbs prepared in the herbal station, not allowing doctor to prepare his own herbs, and not allowing prepare the herbs in ahead, all are the reasons for this comment.

 

Real Chinese medicine is actually restricted in the hospital like their hands and feet tied. Now I understand why my mother decided to leave the hospital and chosen to work by her self. It is not only due to her personality but also to the Chinese medicine that binds her as one union, that made her reject the hospital model.

 

My daughter’s Great master is from the one-to-one Great Mater education model. He was very skillful. Patients came to him even from several other provinces. But he had no certificate. He was invited by a hospital with a short time contract. My daughter said, once the higher lever leaders came, they would ask him his history of education – certificate, which makes him very self-abased. He was invited in the Chinese medicine hospital and it was his contribution that paid the payments to staff in the whole hospital. From the beginning, my daughter could not understand why he did not write Jing formula but big formula. Later, she understood that he needed to care about the income of the whole hospital. Having real skill but no certificate made him very difficult in many things. He needed to pass the examination for the self-education to get the lowest certificate. Every morning he needed to see 40 to 50 patients. He needed to prepare homework for the certification exam, including the English as well. Though he was a Chinese medicine doctor, his body was weak. He had no time to have a rest.

 

To get the certificate, my daughter needed to pass all the exams for western medicine. She also needed to learn politic, English, and lots of western medicine lessons. She also learned and got one specialist certificate and another. She needed to go to clinic practice, acupuncture, tuina… When other students in the university could feel relaxed and able to play, she had to stick to the study. That the teacher stood in front of the blackboard to read the textbook made her has time to be able to study by her self. All happened when she refused, on purpose, the western thinking manner. She made a joke with me: let the brain alternatively transfer from one side to another as such, would it separate out?

 

Chapter 30: My daughter

 

Education from the Great master, such one-to-one education system, may allow a pure and absolute Chinese medicine doctor. My daughter studied in Chinese medical university. She needed also learn western medicine at the same time. Under this condition, it seems impossible in theory to learn both Chinese medicine and western medicine. This is indeed an experiment, to combine the western medicine way of thinking with the Chinese medicine way of thinking. If it has been seen in B ultrasound and CT the cancer mass, try not to think to cut it off. Is this very difficult? I told my daughter: several times of evolutions of the human brain were to make the impossible to possible. The abstract is a development, and an overcome, so is imaging thinking. The combination of these two overcomes is a new overcome. I believe that the human brain has a hidden ability to make the impossible into possible. Even in the western world, people there also correct the extreme that is caused by their ways of thinking. For example in court, the judge needs to be high integrity and good reputation. When with complex cases, what the public depends on him, is not his knowledge, education history, or his power, but his feeling that comes from various life experience. People respect him very much for his freedom in adjust, judge and heart feeling, not needs him to explain.

 

When I worked as a teacher in a middle school, I have had a feeling of inability, since I clearly saw the multiple possibilities of the development for the children, but the school only allows them one way and allows them to fulfill one possibility. So-called education is not to develop and fulfill the multiple possibilities but to deplete such possibility, by the name of repairing the small trees. To me, it almost likes a murderer. The “science” products by the school education system are with a low rate of passing the inspiration. The small part among the many non-science products is the non-developed, non-science thinking. I have tried to educate the students to think in the way of scientific thinking, but the result was not satisfied, indicating that the students are not attractive to such way of scientific thinking. In this case, rather than to teach the rabbit swim, and turtle to run, it would be better to let them go by themselves. Since the eastern people are more good at image thinking, let them like Japanese, to mimic the western culture to about 80%, but allow them to explore their image thinking to the extreme in their best area. Is this not good?

 

Nowadays, there is a hot discussion about whether Chinese medicine is science or not. To say if it is science, I would instead say that it is not a question. What’s matter if Chinese medicine is science or not. For the past twenty years, how much science has developed? The book << Parenting encyclopedia>> published twenty years ago is very not scientific if it is read today. But a weak and sick child, growing in a way according to the ways recommended in this book, now has grown to twenty years of old. Could science take this responsibility? What I learned thirty years ago about the definitions of the life, the universe, the material, the particle, now has been changed and corrected in a huge amount, even quite the opposite to the previous knowledge. Who knows, after another thirty years, how much our current knowledge will be changed and corrected then? The development of science will prove the truth of Chinese medicine. As a comparison, if the backward state of the Chinese medicine means it unchanged during the past two thousands of years, I would rather like that it did not change, since it is just proving its forever truth. Should a truth change itself again and again? For example in the baby nourish, the more “advanced”, new, and scientific way, the more dangerous and more harmful it is. The best and safe way is the most traditional way and natural way.

 

Thanks that to criticize in theory does not solve the problem in practice. Let someone spend their time to prove if bread or a jewel is more useful. The fast development of western medicine creates enough space for Chinese medicine. The high costs in the healthcare system make even the most developed countries hard to take. The current healthcare system in our country even raised more practical problems hard to solve. This also creates a chance for Chinese medicine to develop. Chance should be taken. It would not come back after losing it. History is fair. Though Chinese medicine was destroyed to pieces in the past hundreds of years, it has such a historical chance now.

 

Now, what is needed is to follow Chairman Mao’s idea: let the countryside surrounds the city, to go to a road of a combination of Chinese medicine and western medicine, theory and practice, to combine the Chinese medicine idea of healthcare, health maintenance and treatment, and nature and human being life. Promoting Chinese medicine with traditional culture, and promote the restoration of the traditional culture with Chinese medicine. I wish that the existence and the development of the Chinese medicine could leave our nation a method allowing it uses this method to save itself when it was so difficult for the whole nation, as I have hoped its philosophy core helps my daughter being peace, quiet, warm, natural and calm.

 

It could meet her wish to be a real Chinese, to learn the Chinese medicine. Allow my daughter able to help others, have something for a living, be independent, have a chance to fulfill an achievement, learn even at the old age, keep human dignity at any time of difficulties and hardship, and have her own life believing and aim.

 

To be impressive and dignified Chinese, it is easy to say than to do. Being a civil servant, how could you do this? Being a job-lost employee, how would you do this? Being an owner of a small booth, expelled by police, again and again, a hungry farm worker, how can you do this? Whether a man could be an impressive and dignified Chinese, also depends on his career. Chairman Mao commented Dr. Bethune a dignified man, a pure man, a moral man and a man helpful to the public. If he were not a doctor, it might be tough to get such comments.

 

A thin silk string, went from my mother to me and then to my daughter, expending and expanding. What it expands is the blood relationship, Chinese medicine, the Chinese culture, and the Chinese feeling. This thin string waves, emitting the warm feelings of the love and warm, to others, that is special love from eastern people. Wish we all be able to help each other and go to tomorrow.

 

Chapter 31: Practice Chinese medicine by a pure heart

 

The phone calls to my home now are mostly for my daughter from her patients. My daughter commonly asks them to go to her Great master. She said: “I am a student, I cannot practice medicine before I get the doctor’s license.” She does not go to the internet to see the discussion about Chinese medicine. She smiled at my concern about the internet discussion. She said: “There is no need to argue with others. Whether Chinese medicine could exist, whether it is science or not, depends not on the argues, but on the practical results. As long as there still so huge population in China, and there are so many farmers in China, Chinese medicine will exist. My future job position is in the countryside, the rich people in the city need to find me in the countryside if they want to see me. Children in the village would tell them: “Doctor has been in the mountain to collect herbs in this mountain, but it is hard to know where she is since the mountain is so deep and the cloudy is so heavy.”

 

People come to see my daughter, actually with the aim for her to feel the pulse. She is very accurate. Every day, she feels the pulses for more than fifty patients for one morning. Others watch when she feels for one. It is still an exam on the spot for Chinese medicine. To get the trust of patients, you need to know the pulse feeling first.

 

It has surprised many people for my daughter's pulse diagnosis. She felt the pulse, said to the patient: “Your blood pressure is too low, you feel dizzy.” Patient cries: “You are wrong this time. I have high blood pressure, western medicine does not work for it, so I come for Chinese medicine…” My daughter asked nurses to measure the blood pressure, twice, both showed low blood pressure. She said: “You have already treated your high blood pressure into low blood pressure.” To another patient, she said: “Kidney stone, uterus fibrosis…” The patient did not believe, said she has no feeling. My daughter asked her to have a check. She went back and shouted: “Yes, it is. All are correct. All you said are right…”

 

Her Great master also felt surprised to her progression. He said he had many students before. Many students could not feel the pulse even they have had practiced for many years. Even for those who can apply the pulse diagnosis, no one could exceed my daughter. Some students who learned under the same Great master come to the discussion and learn from her, but hardly understand how she could come into the core of this technique. One of her classmates, the best student at a Chinese medical university, followed her to her Great master to practice Chinese medicine during his practice period. This student left after five days, since he felt hard to start the practice, felt as in a daze.

 

My daughter never conserves her feelings or experience from others. She said Chinese medicine need many people to practice. I should share what I learned with others. But the colleagues usually had no feeling. My daughter said Chinese medicine is not so hard to learn. The problem is that the current ways of thinking have blocked people's mind. A pulse already tells everything to you, but the doctor could not experience it. Once the feeling is blocked with the iron armor, how could one feel the information that the pulse tells us?

 

The Great master said the trick is that my daughter’s heart was not contaminated.

 

My daughter became calmer and more and more honesty. Once she felt a pulse that she could not understand, she would think and think again. Her Great master noticed this, so he came to feel the pulse. He told the patient: “You practiced Qi Gong. Your disease comes from the Qigong practice. Your disease is also between the skin and the muscle. No herb can work. It is hard to cure.” The patient said he was practicing Yoga, there should be no harm, but he has no appetite, and has frequent spermatorrhea… Her master smiled slightly and said: take medicine for a try.

 

At noon, my daughter invited her Great master for lunch. She asked how he found the reason for that patient. The Great master explained from the meridian point of view, so she understood it right away and felt clear in the heart. My daughter told me, if we do not look at this disease from the meridian point of view, his disease is hard to diagnosis and hard to explain. However, from the pulse, he is sick, but it is different from others… Daughter said: perhaps, the meridian theory occurs just because there is a need to explain such disease reasonably.

 

In the morning, my daughter goes to her Great master to see patients, and in the afternoon, she comes back to western medicine hospital, follows Surgeon to operating rooms. On the chairs at home, there are string nods that were left by her after she practiced to tie the string. It was her practice for later surgical operation. The meat I bought for the cooking, will be cut by her first, then sew again.

 

She told me, no matter it is western medicine or Chinese medicine when coming to a particular level, they meet. The skillful specialist, when performs the operation, does not use the knife to peel but uses his hands. He cut off the tumor or diseased mass with his feeling, without damage to surrounding tissues. Therefore, if it is the Great Master Hua Tuo, who operates, he would not use the modern surgical operation tools. That the surgical operation is not developed in Chinese medicine, is not due to the rejection by Chinese medicine, but stop by some reasons due to human. In the year AD 610, in a book << Zhu Bing Yuan Hou Lun >> wrote by Great master Cao Yuanfang et. al, it has described the surgical operations for intestine connection, artificial abortion, tooth pulling and so on, indicating that the surgery had been developed into a pretty high level at that time. But the ancient people must be hard to accept the surgery operation. The example for this is General Cao Cao.  He even killed the doctor who proposed to do a surgical operation for him. All in all, the development of Chinese medicine in China could also meet an obstacle.  How Chinese medicine develops is not only determined by Chinese medicine doctors. 

 

 

Chapter 32: Explanation for Chinese medicine

 

My daughter told me not need to worry the current situation of Chinese medicine. She said, it is not easy to destroy the Chinese medicine. Someone wanted to stop the use of the Chinese lunar calendar. Do you think it is possible? It is impossible, since farmers need it to plants. Someone also asked to stop the use of Chinese characters. Do you think it is possible? Have a look at Japan and Korea, both of which stop to use the Chinese character but later restored the use of it, you would know. Under the condition that the China exists, there are farmers in China, the lunar calendar exists, and the Chinese character exists, it will be a wishful thinking to stop the Chinese Medicine. Of course, if China is purged by other countries, the invader passes a law to delete the Chinese medicine, then it can be said that the Chinese medicine dies. However, it only needs fifty years, the western medicine would realize the importance of Chinese medicine. At that time, it would be the western medicine that wants to learn the Chinese medicine. This is the necessary of history.

 

However, in the clinic, it is difficult to communicate and discuss with those of patients who have had a modern education. Every morning, a Chinese medicine doctor needs to see more than fifty patients. It is therefore impossible for them to explain Chinese medicine in detail for every patient. It makes me laugh to pain in abdomen when my daughter told me how her Great master dealt with this problem. At the same time, I felt the hopelessness of Chinese medicine. It is, of course, hard to understand Chinese medicine from the modern scientific point of view.

 

However, my daughter thinks, the development of western medicine is absolutely a promotion to Chinese medicine too. A soldier without an enemy is hard to keep his struggle power. I felt the change of Chinese medicine in my daughter’s hands. When my mother saw patients, she could only explain the disease and its symptoms from the Chinese medicine point of view. For my daughter, she can talk out the western medicine diagnosis term from the pulse feeling. She could even speak out the figures of the lab testing. This is again the achievement of her study in western medicine. In the western medicine hospital, she felt the pulse when she needed to count the number of the pulse beat. She analyzed various parameters and data when she needed to write case history. This analysis again co-operated into her Chinese medicine consideration. This makes her communication and conversation with patients much easier and fast. She said she would first be a qualified western medicine. It is not difficult to be a good western medicine doctor.

 

At home, she always holds ancient Chinese medicine books to read. She knows current people have a misunderstanding in recognition. They think, no matter what theory or truth, people will understand if there is a clear explanation. If you can explain clearly, what you explained should be a “truth” that every people can accept. The reason that people cannot accept is that the explanation is not clear. Based on this misunderstanding, there are lots of questioning and explanation everywhere in the whole country. Everywhere are the talking and explanation voice. People’s mouth does not grow there for vain. In fact, it is not broad for the scope of conversation among people. Even for chemistry, physics, math, can they be communicated among the public? Are they clear and easy to understand upon explanation? That man who practiced Yoga and got sick for that practice could not understand, is the Yoga a good exercise? How could it cause disease? He could not understand that there is a precondition to say that Yoga is good health maintenance way. In the western countries, practice gym will not cause disease indeed. However, if people practice Yoga in the same way as they practice gym, it is quite common that it causes disease. It is not as easy as saying that you are cheating.

 

If we admit that Chinese medicine is cheating, who can tell how Chinese medicine cheats? Which western medical doctor can explain how Chinese medicine is cheating? My daughter laughed and said, anyone who could explain and studied clearly the mechanism or ways by which the Chinese medicine is cheating, would be a good Chinese medicine doctor. Therefore, we should learn hard the Chinese medicine. Since I was born in China and am a doctor in China, I cannot act as a doctor in the western countries to omit or avoid Chinese medicine. This might be my responsibility as a Chinese doctor?

 

Since it is believed that a reason could be explained clearly, people should pay attention to listen. However, currently, no one wants to listen to another. All talk themselves. Chinese medicine is questioned. But did the people who question the Chinese medicine spend the time to study what Chinese medicine is? Did they sit down, listened to the answers of Chinese medicine? It also sounds as some people blamed author Lu Xiun (Mr. Lu Xiun is a famous novel author in China history). But how many of them had read his books? The real Chinese medicine would not waste time to entangle with those who questioned Chinese medicine. So, those who questioned Chinese medicine felt victory and proud of themselves.

 

My mother never opposed western medicine. On the contrary, she looked and understood western medicine from the TCM point of view. Many patients who came to see her had already visited western medicine. She always asked the course the treatment by the western medicine, studies and pondered over the role of the western drugs in the body. Sometimes, she even got some drugs to have a taste by herself, as the famous Dr. Li Shizhen in Chinese history, to allocate the drug into different classes according to TCM. I saw clearly she used both western drug and the herbs at the same time. I thought, the rhinoceros horn, antelope's horn, musk used by a minority nation, and longan, lychee kernel from south China sea, are all used by the Chinese medicine doctors in the mainland of China. The herbs produced in the Southeast of China also come into China for use in Chinese medicine. They all enrich the TCM herb usage in this way. 

 

Dr. Tang Zonghai believed that Chinese medicine and western medicine, both have advantage and disadvantage. They should be integrated. At the time he had clinic services, he also wrote two volumes of the book << Zhong Xi Guitong Yi Jing Jing Yi >>, based on the Chinese medicine theory, absorbed the anatomy and physiology etc. The book was published in the year 1892, in which, there were charts of western anatomy. It is the earliest book combined the Chinese medicine and western medicine. In the year 1894, published was his another medical representative book << Zhong Xi Huotong Yi Shu Wu Zhong >>, which was sold in both China and out of China. Dr. Tang Zhonghai is the forerunner in the combination of Chinese medicine and western medicine in both theory and practice. He was famous not only in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, but also in Indo-China, and south of China. Can you still say that Chinese medicine doctor cares their face very much?

 

 

Chapter 33: Chinese medicine styles

 

According to a linear way of thinking, there would be only one correct way of treatment. Alternatively, there is only one that is the best. This is as a man who plans to go to Beijing. In his mind, there is only the Jing-Guang line (Note: Jing-Guang line is the railway line between the Beijing city and the Guangzhou city in China). The memory and impression of the Jing-Guang line in his mind are profound, though he also admits that every road to Roma (Beijing). From the traffic point of view, there will be many more choices. The road can be a land road, but also sea road (by ship), and air road (by plane). The theory of western medicine is united, one. However, the methods for the treatment can be multiple. Chinese medicine theory is the same for every doctor, but a different doctor could have a different way. Chinese medicine has various styles, such as “Fire style”, “Cold style”, “Depletion style”, “Soil style”, “Yin style”, and “Warm style”. There are furthermore different styles among the doctors within the same such big “style”.

 

People may feel strange, can the “Cold style” only treat febrile disease, not chill disease? Will, the patients with a chill disease, be treated to die by those doctors belongs to the “Cold style”? In the same reason, doctor of the “Fire style” will only treat the patient with a chill disease; otherwise, the use of herb Fuzi would not make the patients die? My daughter said, even for surgical operation, the different doctor has different style too. This means that, in making a comparison between different styles, the parameters as good, back, right, or wrong, does not work.

 

That many patients come to see my daughter and her Great master is with the aim to discuss the choice of treatment strategy. The result of each strategy depends on many conditions. Whether the strategy is good or bad, depends not only on the strategy per se but also if the conditions it needed are available. If you go to western medicine, living in a hospital, having a surgical operation, spending 50,000 dollars to cure the disease, but you can also try Chinese medicine, living at home, drinking herbal tea, spending 500 dollars, with the disease treated to about 80% better, which strategy you would choose? To most of our Chinese farmers, they chose the second: Chinese medicine.

 

The readers might say, well, the Chinese medicine appears not the best, since it cannot cure but only solve the disease condition to some extent, though a large extent. My daughter is young, eager to cure disease, so she tends to use all of her means in the treatment. I told her that her grandmother only treated the disease to some extent, to leave a space for the body to cure by itself. She said, under the current situation compared with western medicine, Chinese medicine should not practice in this way. She pushes her Great master to do the best work in the treatment. For this, her master had a time with her for discussion.

 

Her master said, disease, has not only the manifestations but also the reasons. The reasons can be from outside of the body, could also be from the inside of the body. What the doctor treated is usually the surface symptoms of the disease, but the reasons for the disease may not be able to deal. For example, if it is due to the body constitution, would the doctor be able to change the body constitution? Under such condition, if the doctor wants to cure the disease, it would mean that he wants to change the body constitution, the source of the disease. It is not wisdom for the doctor to do so.

 

Her Great master told her, during the disease treatment, there should have some part of the disease left for the body itself to cure later. It means do not block the coming road of the disease, with the aim of leaving the road clear to see and to watch, making the disease has no another road to creating. If we block the road that the disease comes, the disease, that is due to the body constitution, would create the second road. In the clinic, the harm of the second road is stronger than the first one, since the disease cannot create the second road if it has no more energy to do so. For this, we need to leave a watching hole to it.

 

My daughter understands, but how the current public accepts this idea? Everyone wants the disease cured, who would want to endure part of the disease remains in the body?  Therefore, it is not only difficult for Chinese medicine and western medicine to combine in technique, but it is also difficult in the treatment strategy. There is still a long way to go.

 

Someone says that the results of the western drug cannot be explained by Chinese medicine. This is not correct. If this is true, Chinese medicine would have no way to accept the patients who have had treated by western medicine. Nowadays, Chinese medicine cannot avoid consideration of the effect of the western drug on the body. Many people who come to Chinese medicine doctor have already treated by western medicine and used western drugs. Chinese medicine needs to know the course of the treatment by western medicine. Chinese medicine not only needs to know the effect of the western medicine drugs, but also the meridian the drug goes in the body. Otherwise, how Chinese medicine can solve the symptoms? Whenever my daughter asked and got the answer that the patient has used steroid medication, she would exchange eyes with her Great master, since both the master and his student believe that the use of steroid is to explore the Kidney Yin Jing. The steroid has used the innate life energy of the body. The exhaust of the innate life energy is not easy to supply by later life treatment.

 

Speak about the effect of the western drug, even among Chinese medicine, and there are many styles or groups, they could understand each other, why Chinese medicine could not understand the western drug? Furthermore, there are, in Chinese medicine universities, quite much more hours in lectures on western medicine. Students master the lecture very well. There are many Chinese medicine students passed the exam to the postgraduate (student) program in the western medicine university. How can we say that Chinese medicine does not know western medicine? It is, in fact, true that western medicine does not know Chinese medicine.

 

No matter where my daughter goes, people are discussing the disease with her and stretching out their arm to her for pulse diagnosis. She told out the corresponding diagnosis terms in western medicine and urged the patient to have a check in the hospital. They came back with lots of lab test report, found her again, continued the discussion, listened to her suggestions for the treatment. She is a doctor in the hospital, and she is a doctor out of hospital too. She can use the techniques in the hospital to detect. She can also not use them. She can even only use an acupuncture needle for the treatment without any herbs or drugs. If there is no needle, she can use tuina or massage technique, to fulfill the responsibility of a doctor. Such a manner of medical service cannot be performed by western medicine.

 

Chapter 34: Rule vs No rule

 

When talking about Chinese medicine, there is always saying that it is broad and deep, mysterious and miracle. I do not agree with such saying somehow. What in the world that is hard to understand? Why make Chinese medicine so wonderful? I never believe that my mother is a smart woman. The wisdom of my daughter is also a middle level. As my father laughed at my mother: in old time, people who practiced Chinese medicine are those who failed in scholar exam of state, so could not be a government officer, also had no ability to something else. For this, the social level of a Chinese medicine doctor is lower than the scholars. If the student is smart, can pass the exam, would be government officer, whoever would be a Chinese medicine doctor? This means that it is not always the most talented people who practice Chinese medicine. Its knowledge does not need the most talented people to understand.

 

Why it happens that the current people feel hard to understand Chinese medicine, so want to deny it? I think this is due to the environment. It is due to the blockage between the generations. This is like to send the children who grow up in the city, go for farming in the countryside. They are not growing up in the environment of the countryside, the farmer, and even if they have the education in the agriculture university to a master degree, they anyway are not a farmer. There is a block of a film membrane between them in person and the farm work. The children who grow up on the farm could learn farming work without the need to pay specific attention. The point is the environment.

 

Based on this point, I think that it is not a mysterious thing for an old generation to create Chinese medicine theory, but a natural thing. If we ask a current person to go to the forest for hunting, most possibly he would be eaten by the wolf. Hunting gun and long spear, used in hunting, which one contains the highest technology, depends on how to compare them. It is not difficult to understand Chinese medicine if we put it back to the environment where it was created and developed. Just like to live among hunters, you can understand them just by watching.

 

The modernization of Chinese medicine, to me, is as the modernization of farm. Currently, farmers use the seed developed by scientist Yuan Longping, and care the farm well with the combination of the traditional and the modern technology in a perfect way. I noticed when an old Chinese medicine doctor told his students: it is “there is rule outside the formula, and there is formula outside the rule.” I think this is like the farmer work on the farm. What to plant and how to plant is the “formula”, but we have also to consider the weather, the dryness or flooding, such a four-season rule. However, do we need to do things always according to the rule? If we have a warm tent, we can grow the vegetables in winter too. Does this not mean that there is a formula, outside the rule? Just based on this point, I support Chinese medicine, support its theory, but also western medicine. When my mother used western medicine and western drug, if she could understand it from the Chinese medicine point of view, it is ok. If not, she would use it as the formula outside the rule. How could we say that the rule of western medicine can cover and dominate every disease, without any except? Does it not have any formula outside its rule?

 

Because the soil that creates Chinese medicine is far away, it makes us feel not so real. The soil to create the Chinese medicine is not only just under our feet, but also at this current reality. Even western medicine under our feet, there are also kind of differences from that in the western countries. No matter the western medicine admits or not, I feel that western medicine in China are localized, though both claim them western medicine.

 

Yesterday, I met a friend, who came back from Beijing. Her son is now in Japan for studying and gets sick. The relatives in Japan called her, crying and choking with tears. They told her that her son’s illness is very severe, with whole body red and swelling. The doctor said that the patient would die with skin ulcer everywhere. They need to pay 150000 RMB to allow her son to live in the ward in the hospital. Heard this, the couple felt very urgent. It was not possible for them to Japan right away, so they arranged her son back to Beijing. This couple also hurried to Beijing to meet her son. I asked if the hospital her son stayed in Japan is a small one, he should go to a big one. She said it is in a big hospital with more than 400 staff. Doctors there did lots of exams, and he brought back lots of detection reports. The president of the hospital had also taken care of his disease. It is the president who said his body would be broken with ulcer to die.

 

The couple met their son in Beijing. They went to the hospital in Beijing soon. The doctor had a look at the skin and threw their registration book to them, said: “It is an allergy. Stop all medications, live at home for two days; it would be all right.” Then doctor called: “Next one!” Such an attitude made their son very angry: “How can you act like this, do you care a human right? In other countries, they cared me very much, and the president of the hospital saw me by himself. How could it be such in our own country?” The doctor felt strange and asked: “Hi, boy, what’s matter? Do you want to take some drugs? The reason for your disease is due to the medication taking. It would not be cured without stop any medication!” The parents brought the son out, stop him from arguing more. They then beg help from a friend to the No. 203 hospital for a specialist. The specialist did not pay too much attention to his disease either, but exchange the reports among colleagues with laughing. My friends do not know they should laugh or cry. They brought the son traveling in Dalian for two days. The disease, as that doctor said, got well. Her son returned to Japan.

 

Heard her story, I felt funny. To speak of the material conditions, the equipment and the way of training doctor, the Japanese are better than Chinese. How comes in practice and the clinic, the doctor there acted such childish? I asked her if she consulted this question with the doctor in Beijing. She said the doctor in Beijing said, in the western countries, the medical conditions are of course excellent, the number of the doctor is significant, but they have no so many patients as we have in China. The number of patients allocated to each doctor is much less than to our doctors.  The doctor there had more book knowledge but less practical experience. How could the doctor there has as much as our doctor who is melted in the sea of patients every day so has much more experience? After listening to her introduction, I thought, compared with the Japanese doctor who tends to separate patients into groups, our Chinese western medicine doctor tends to pay attention to the individual. This makes the western medicine in Chinese imperceptibly has the starting point as Chinese medicine, and appears more care about the experience. From this we can see, the land under our feet suits the development of experienced medicine.



[1] In China, if a doctor is good at surgical operation, he is called a “knife”. Here, Li, Zhang, and Zhao, is the family name of such famous doctor.

 

 

 

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