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Home » Opinion » Opinion Columns

Giving Chinese medicine respect it deserves in China

By Wan Lixin | June 6, 2012, Wednesday | Print Edition

LAST weekend, my sister called me asking how I managed to cure my chronic enteritis more than 20 years ago. I contracted the ailment during my college years.

I replied it was the qigong (a kind of breathing exercise to move`internal energy or qi) that I practiced later.

Prior to that, I had tried nearly every kind of Western medicine, to no avail. That experience somewhat shook my faith in Western science, in which I had placed great trust.

The qigong I practiced was jingzuo (sit still), the simplest of its kind.

In two sessions every day, each 30-40 minutes, I just sat still, breathing slowly but deeply, with the aim of pushing the qi to the dantian (a region in the abdomen). At the same time, I banished from my mind every conceivable kind of worldly thought. After my initiation, I began to find this "non-meditation" immensely enjoyable.

Xinmin Evening News carried an article on Monday headlined "In treating IBS TCM methods address both root causes and symptoms." TCM is traditional Chinese medicine, and IBS is "irritable bowel syndrome," characterized by chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain, discomfort, and bloating.

Western medicine has yet to find any known cause, and cure, for the condition. The article states that TCM, in adopting a holistic approach, looks into both the symptoms and the causes, and "enjoys obvious superiority in the treatment of the disease."

Correct path

'Cihai,' one of the most authoritative Chinese encyclopedias, in explaining "medicine" in its 1979 edition, states that "medicine" in China comprises two systems, ie, TCM and Western medicine. It goes on to say "China practises the integration of TCM and Western medicine, with the creation of a unified new medicine being the correct path of China's medical development."

I do not know if in later editions "Cihai" updates the mission of Chinese medicine with regards to TCM, but in reality TCM has been so marginalized and eclipsed that today advocating it can easily cause a furore.

Recently, Liu Weizhong, head of the Gansu provincial health department, has been under fire for advocating qigong and TCM.

Among Liu's controversial behaviors: supporting a qigong training program; requiring all Western medicine departments to add TCM doctors; asking doctors trained in Western medicine to be released from work for a period to study TCM, and requesting that knowledge of TCM be included in examinations for doctors seeking higher professional qualification titles.

Many people find these proposals ridiculous, chiefly because TCM has been so successfully marginalized.

Does any one express surprise at TCM doctors working with a computer and a stethoscope? Do they protest when TCM doctors have to cram for exams on Western medicine in order to be certified as TCM doctors?

If anything, Liu's proposals are perfectly in line with the "correct path" as defined in the 1979 edition of "Cihai."

TCM has been so humbled and effaced that any advocacy must be couched in subtleties so as not to arouse immediate suspicion of quackery.

Ironically, the rising suspicion of quackery is also a result of the long neglect of TCM. Some TCM doctors can no longer have the ability to feel the pulse today. Given this situation, the Ministry of Health's response to the public dismay over Liu Weizhong remarks made a lot of sense.

It stated that the controversial qigong training session in Gansu is aimed at familiarizing medical workers with more TCM approaches and methods.

It said the ministry takes the view that TCM has made invaluable contributions to the propagation of the Chinese race, to global civilization, and continues to benefit people's health in ways that cannot be replaced by other medicines.

The ministry also asserted that as human understanding of life deepens, modern research is providing new scientific evidence to support TCM theories and approaches.

Timorously defensive

But the ministry's statement is timorously defensive. My opinion is that TCM's worth does not hinge on new scientific evidence, for TCM and Western medicine view the world differently. If Western medicine fails to see what TCM is seeing, that merely suggests the limitations of Western medicine, which are many.

TCM views human beings more as part of nature, thus, it works to restore human inner equilibrium. Balance, moderation and harmony become important TCM concepts.

By contrast, Western medicine is human-centered, to the exclusion of all other concerns. This difference is not only evident in different views on life, but on death as well.

Traditionally a TCM doctor would adamantly ignore entreaties by relatives, if he had diagnosed a case as hopeless.

Those doctors tended to believe that "bark and herbal roots can cure the disease, but cannot save life." It was an enlightened view based on philosophical acknowledgement of human mortality, and thus very sensible.

Western medicine, on the contrary, would sustain a human body even in persistent vegetative state.

The West's single-minded pursuit of one metric or purpose often blinds Westerners to the existence of larger purposes. Unbeknowst to many of them, the fanatic pursuit of wealth and affluence is worsening the living conditions of all living species on earth.

The prolongation of human life at all costs also complicates the many ethical, social, and environmental problems already confronting men.

We do not know if Liu Weizhong, the beleaguered provincial health director in Gansu, has other motivations for promoting TCM, but from what I can find, Liu has been consistent in his stand since he was a college student of Western medicine.

He is advocating a cause that should be better advocated by the state.

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