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 问中医几度秋凉()

TCM, its past, present and future (2)

Author: Ai Ning (China)

 录入者:医者佛心

 

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

 

The reason that the public feels mysterious and strange of the Chinese medicine is its theory, such as the Yin-Yang, Five-element, Five-yun-six-qi, etc. Nowadays, people live in the city. They do not see the sun the whole day or do not see the moon often during the year. How can they understand that their life is related to the sun and the moon?

 

I discussed with my daughter if we could throw away some of the theory, such as the Five-yun-six-qi? My daughter said it is impossible. It should not be depleted out of the whole Chinese medicine system. People whole know the pulse diagnosis know that our body is very closely related to the weather change. The pulse feels different in different seasons. It is felt like a string in spring, big in summer, floating in autumn, and solid in the winter. It is also different in the morning and at night. It is even different in the spring this year, as compared with that in the last year. The function of each organ is different in a different season and different place. Without the application of the Five-yun-six-qi theory, it would be very hard, or impossible to organize and to study the role of the pulse variation. My daughter said, if no this theory, how your mother predicted the kind of infectious disease in a given year?

 

Why is the current clinic healing effect not so good? How many TCM doctors are using the Five-yun-six-qi theory? The current TCM, in general, has omitted the Five-yun-six-qi theory in practice. People are suggesting to use an instrument to replace the hand-feeling of the pulse, to make the pulse diagnosis more accurate. These people are actually making a consideration that every healthy person has the same pattern of the pulse, and the pulse does not change according to the season and the time during the day, and so on. They do not know that the pulse is even different between the old and the young; between man and women. This fact is very new to many of us since we cannot feel such variations, but it is true. If the pulse is variable among people, whose pulse should be used as the “standard” or the “background pulse”? How can we use an instrument to replace it?

 

Think this way: if there is no Five-yun-six-qi theory, you felt the pulses of hundred people, if you are not good at the pulse diagnosis and if you are not sensitive to the variation among the pulses, you would feel the same for all of the people. If you are more sensitive in the pulse, you may feel each people is different for their pulses. This makes that someone feels the pulse diagnosis is easy to learn, and others feel it is hard so to deny the pulse diagnosis. This is also the reason that many TCM doctor cannot apply the pulse diagnosis in their clinic work. Put aside the Five-yun-six-qi theory, the pulse diagnosis is an utter mess.

 

When I was young, I had also some critics to the pulse diagnosis, for its uncertainty. For patients who came from far away places, the far they came from, the long time my mother felt their pulses, the more questions she would ask, and the more careful she made the assessment. Upon treatment, she would also make a trying first, watching for several days, then made the decision to use large doses of herbs. I felt strange at that time, why mother could not make a precise diagnosis easily as usual? 

 

After learning of the Five-yun-six-qi theory, I understand right away: a Chinese medicine doctor is alike a Chinese farmer. Chinese farmer plants according to the season (lunar calendar). The four seasons of a year are divided into 24 steps, and 72 sub-steps. Plant, transplant rice seedlings, harvest, every step in the farm work needs to follow the weather and the natural Qi change. Once missed the natural weather steps, even if it might be only several days delay, the year-end harvest could be very different. Farmers use Farmer's proverb, or farmer is saying, of the "Bible of Farmers". For example, Chinese farmers said, “Year of cow and horse is a good year for farm harvest”. No one doubts it. When I was young, I heard from my grandmother: “If there is raining in the Chunfen sub-step, there would have fewer patients”, “If it is not cold in the Dahan sub-step, people and horse would not be in peace (would have diseases)”. All are proven correct again and again, year by year. This is now called the environmental signaling. The study of the environment signaling is now a branch of science.

 

“Five-yun-six-qi” is the environmental signaling of Chinese medicine. A farmer knows how to deal with the seeds in his hands, after knowing the season at that time; and knows what he needs to do after seeing the growing conditions of the plants in the field. There is also the four-season-eight-step, 24 Qi, and 72 diagnosis system in the Chinese medicine.

 

Chinese medicine masters the relationship between human growth and the sun and the moon. This is not created from the mind of the Chinese medicine doctor, but a true exist fact. The pulse in spring should be felt like a violin string; it would be a disease condition if it is big. The doctor aims to adjust the pulse to match the season. This is the goal of the treatment. It is so simple the Chinese medicine is. In the treatment of female infertility, my daughter’s Great master adjusted the female menstruation matching the circle of the moon. He said it is rare that the woman’s period is matching the circle of the moon but not get pregnancy especially if the period comes during the full moon.

 

However, if we send a farmer who lived and did the farm work at the North of China to the South of China, he would be confused after he is given a hand of seeds or the seeds of the plants growing in the South of China. He needs to watch, learn and understand and adjust his previous experience to the South China environment. In the same way, Chinese medicine also has a territory specification.

 

My daughters Great master needed to see 50 to 60 patients every morning. After my daughter felt the pulse of every patient, he no longer to feel the pulse again by himself but wrote a prescription right away. He can judge the pulse of this person without touching the pulse.. The more the patients came, the more possible he could master the environmental signaling, knew the disease at that time, knew the disease of the whole local people at that time. This is the reproducibility and the system of Chinese medicine. This makes he looked very mysterious and marvelous.

 

In the same hospital where her Great master worked, there were also other Chinese doctors of old age. Their door of the clinic opened largely, but with only a few patients visit. My daughter chatted with them. She said, these doctors also had rich knowledge in Chinese medicine, but they could not master the environmental signaling in Chinese medicine, so they could not correctly practice Chinese medicine. The pulse is changeable, the pulses of whole residences are also changeable, moving, in a dynamic changing manner. If a Chinese medicine doctor does not know this dynamic pulse changing, he would not be able to master the pulse. Therefore, if a student with Ph. D. in Chinese medicine could not treat disease, not because he did not read lots of books, but because the Chinese medicine cannot be separated from the actual clinic and actual nature changes. If the learning of the pulse diagnosis is a not a continuous matter, if it is learned from textbooks, it is hard to master, and the student may develop doubt to it. That Chinese medicine is hard to learn, is because it is needed to learn from practice, not only from books.

 

My daughter felt pulse for everyone everywhere she went. She said I could not stop to have a break. I need to master the environmental signaling in this way. If I did not feel pulse for a long time, I would not be able to know the basic pulse pattern of the people in this area at this time. At such time, if you let me feel a pulse, the level of accuracy would not be high.

 

Daughter asked me how her grandmother mastered the environmental signaling at the beginning of her learning Chinese medicine. I told her, my mother started Chinese medicine at her 24 years of old. She rode on a donkey, visited each family, visit patients by herself My daughter said, buy a car for me. I would drive it to farms. If I sit in the city to wait, I would be as many of the old Chinese medicine doctors who could not practice Chinese medicine even their mustache turned white. I do not want to destroy the Chinese medicine as them.

 

For thousands of years, the population of China is always one-quarter of the world. In the analysis of the relationship between the weather and the diseases, Chinese medicine holds the vast pool of clinic samples. No any other medical systems in the world had such continuous monitoring and the data accumulation for thousands of years. Respect the knowledge and life experience from far old generations. Chinese medicine is not abstruseness. Chinese medicine is neither old or modern. It exists in the human experience. It should be easy to understand this if we stay in the course of practicing it.

 

Why Chinese farmers have no problem to accept and use Chinese medicine? It is because the principles for the farm and the Chinese medicine match each other. I have paid attention to the modernization of agriculture. The farm can be modernized, so can Chinese medicine. If gene research can change the seed of a human, Chinese medicine would also be able to use a new way to treat disease.

 

 Chapter 36: Chinese calendar

 

In Chinese, we call every day is “Day”. The time during the day is recorded according to the run of the sun. For every month, in old times, the old Chinese recorded the month according to the run of the moon, so did each year. However, our 24 seasonal steps and 72 sub-steps, are recorded according to the run of the sun, similar to the western calendar, which is measured based on the Chinese Hongtian instrument, e.g., based on the believing that the earth is a round planet. This means that our ancient Chinese people have tried to make the subjective and the objective come to match each other. The experience of the old Chinese is to bring us to the objective, to the accurate and to the truth.

 

Old Chinese expressed, explained and associated the influence of the sun and the moon to the human being, with the Yin-Yang concept. They adjusted the explanation based on their practice, again and again, to make the theory more cooperated with reality. After the historical wash, what is left is a clear river bed. This is the Chinese medicine theory. If we look at Chinese medicine from the historical development course, we could see that it is simple, natural, true, and logical.

 

Since the living things on the earth are affected by both the sun and the moon, it was necessary that the old Chinese use both the solar and the lunar calendar. The heavenly stems of 60 years circle are the near moon circle and the tropical year circle. It showed that the minimum similarity circle is 60 years, using the Dongzhi (winter solstice) sub-step of the season as calculating spot, for the relative position among the earth, the moon, and the sun. This calculation is in accordance with the nature rule. This makes me think, either the life of old Chinese is not as short as we believed, either the records for the nature is very strict and precise from generation to generation; otherwise, it would be very difficult to monitor the nature so close to the truth. Chinese emphasize the tradition and the knowledge transfer from a Great master to later students. Without such a tradition, it is impossible to fulfill such monitoring tasks.

 

Within such 60 years of the circle, the change of the relative position among the earth, the sun, and the moon, cause changes of overall environmental conditions on the earth. Such environmental signaling is expressed in Chinese medicine as the Five-yun-six-qi. The five Yun means Metal, Wood, Fire, Water, and Soil. The six Qi is Wind, Cold, Hot, Wetness, Dryness, and Fire. Once we mention the Yin-Yang and Five-element, current people feel a headache, do not know what they mean. They are not so complicated. We can understand it in a simple way. For example, when we start to understand the concept of temperature, we understand it by use of the concept of cold and the hot. When it is minus 20 degrees, we say it is cold. However, could we deny the hot concept from the minus 20 degrees? Is it 10 degrees hotter than the minus 30 degrees? When we say that 30 degree is hot, does it also colder than the 40 degrees? Therefore, when we speak of the Yin, it does not mean there is no Yang in it. Also, when we speak of a Yang, it does not mean there is no Yin in it. The level of the Yin in the Yang, and the Yang in the Yin, is expressed by the five elements. Therefore, the five elements are the status, or the level, or the extent of the Yin or Yang. I believe that the Yin and the Yang, and the Five-element is the very practical fuzzy mathematics. In this point, it is not overstated that it is advanced science.

 

After the establishment of the Yin-Yang and the Five-element theory, it becomes the law of Chinese medicine. Nowadays, some people stand in the middle the two major groups who are arguing against or for Chinese medicine. The people in the middle group suggest to use the herbs or herbal formula of Chinese medicine, but not the theory of it. Such only keeping the herbal formula, but not the theory of Chinese medicine, is just what I suggested when I wanted to learn Chinese medicine but refused by my mother. At that time, I thought that, if mother told me the herbal formula for the treatment of aplastic anemia, or psoriasis, or infertility, I would have hoped to succeed if I meet trouble in the clinic treatment in future. For a long time, I could not understand why my mother is so foolish. Now, I understand, with the herbal formula but no theory to guide the use of the formula, the Chinese medicine would have no regeneration ability, cannot adjust the treatment according to the environment changes, cannot treat any possible new diseases in future. At this point, these theories can be regarded as the life of Chinese medicine.

 

If there were no biological changes in our body according to the seasons, there would have no meaning for the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory to the Chinese Medicine. My daughter said, upon the passing from one season to another, the first group of patients almost all are the seasonal disease because their body did not match the change of the season. This group of patients can be used as a reference mark to the diagnosis and treatment for other patients since the master of the environmental signaling in the clinic needs to be used in each actual patient. The Chinese medicine doctor needs to set up a standard to be used as a mark, to express the current environmental conditions. Therefore, we can say that, to a Chinese medicine doctor, the more his patients is, the more precise his treatment is, the higher the efficient his treatment is, since every patient is related to each other. One patient is an object of reference of others. An individual is the part of the whole group. The more the patient's samples is, the more precise his assessment to the environmental signaling is, so the better the clinic results is. Therefore, the doctor who has fewer patients would have less such standard or base mark allowing him to assess the environmental signaling, would have less level of precision in his diagnosis and treatment. The doctor who has fewer patients would need to try several herbal formulae to try for each patient. For this reason, I do not recommend to change doctor so frequently. We should give each doctor enough chance to understand the disease condition.

 

In this way, some old Chinese medicine doctor looks like a farmer selling his melon in his clinic work. The farmer picks up a melon: 6 pounds!. He picks up another: I am sure this one is mature enough to eat! after he tapping on the melon. If you need him to show you the evidence for the mature, he can not. You can weigh it using a scale, or cut it open to see if it is eatable. When I lived in the farm and went to the melon field to pick up melons, I never questioned the scientific evidence for the farmers way to tell the weight and the mature level of the melons. The farmer understands more precise to Chinese medicine than some scientists. This does not prove that Chinese medicine does not bear any scientific meaning or prove foolish of the farmer. In fact, Chairman Mao understood this more.

 

Modern life is more and more away from nature. It makes us feel no strong relationship between our body and nature. Later, the scientists in the western world started to find biological clock, the bio-rhythm. They found that it is not good to have physical exercise at night, found that sunbath can treat poor sleeping To be honest, because I paid close attention to the development of scientific research, such new scientific findings pushed me back to the time of my mother. Compared with what my mother said, such new findings are only a formula, not at all a theory, or a rule. Such formula can be deduced out no need to have such scientific efforts to find it. 

 

Chapter 37: Use hen as a therapy

 

It is biased to believe that the current people are smart than old generations, western people are clever than eastern people, and scholars are smart than labor workers. I do not believe that people using a gun is clever than those who are using a long spear. People in modern life have technique, but the ancient generations had skill. The dependence of people in current life on the technique makes us only see the technique but not human being. The doctors in the western medicine act as a machine, or as practically no function. If you tell him that you have pain in the stomach, he cannot give you a diagnosis, but send you to a Beta ultrasound detection. If there is really something growing in your stomach, he is not the one who tells out to you, the technician who performs the B ultrasound could tell you already. My daughter said, coming into hospital as into a factory. Everyone is a technician, chill and icy.

 

Why are Chinese modest? Why Mr. Confucius said: “Among three people, there will be one as my teacher”?  This is because if our generation does not learn, we could not know what the previous human generations knew.  We cannot, from our birth,  know everything. This is like a walk. Everyone needs to learn the walk when we are a baby, a step no one can omit. Even if our whole life is to use a car, no need to walk, we still need to learn to walk. Scientists represent the current technique. Most people think that these scientists also represent themselves, so look down the old generations. Current people with a weak body but with a gun in hands laugh at the muscular body, braveness, and skillfulness of the old generations. We, with the robber manner of the western world, deal with the knowledge of old human generations.

 

I dare not to deny things that look as foolish by looking. Foolish things come as a flood. Chinese medicine is as the river after a flood. There has been a man on the internet, who described the chicken blood injection, and Red Tea Fungus therapy that has been spread in China many years ago. He sighed with emotion for the foolish of the people at that time. Though we know that these therapies are nonsense, the road not only Chinese medicine but also modern science is never straightforward. Have a look at the current science, is it not also the river bed after a flood? Is the current result of the science not also an unexpected product of many tries that have been regarded as foolish actions before? Now the science is dominated as an empress; some people struggle to give it a gloried history and an excellent reputation for its past. Is there such necessary? When I taught the students in middle school, I told them the real history of the science, so not to let the students set a superstition to the science and not to suppress the students own creation.

 

It looks foolish the chicken blood injection therapy. There is a negative reaction in people of an allergic body constitution. However, injection of penicillin can also cause an allergic reaction. Beside of the surface foolish, if we look from the Chinese medicine point of view, animal therapy has been used for a long history. The medicine used is not only the part of animal but also alive animal. For example, we use leech for bleeding therapy, and use bee-toxic to treat joint pain, and so on. The therapeutic effects of pet to human are not only in emotion but also in the physical body. Now, it is admitted by the western medicine that, people may get less chance for the allergic reaction if they have had a pet in the home when they are young. Old Chinese generations noticed that cat is a cold animal. It is suited for the treatment of febrile disease. The dog is a warm animal, which is suit for the treatment of a chill disease, such as cancer, liver cirrhosis, and arthritis.

 

I have a colleague. She never ate chicken. If she needed to have a party at home, she would ask me to help her at home. I washed and cooked the chicken while she stood out of the house. She said she could not endure the smell of the chicken. To cook the chicken without the odor of the chicken, I cooked it as the way for Xiangsouji dish. The chicken was boiled, added orange peel, cooling wine and mushrooms into the chicken, then brought the mixture to steam. Then the mixture was fried with oil. I asked her to smell. There was no smell of the chicken, but she still refused to eat. To stop me from trying again and again for her, she told me the reason that she does not eat chicken. When she was 12, she was very sick to die. Her parents tried the last way: they picked up a hen and came to her bed. They pull apart the chest of the hen and put the hen chest on her chest. She turned alive, but she never ate chicken from that time.

 

I discussed with my daughter why chicken could be used for treatment. She said, according to Chinese medicine, it is to transfer the life Qi from the hen to the girl. When speaking of the Qi, it is opposed very much by the people who are superstitious to science. It is very natural for my daughter that there is Qi in nature. She said that the pulse is different according to different seasons, is the association of the human body to the Qi. Meridian is the pathway of the Qi in the body. If an acupuncturist only knows the acupuncture point, not the meridian, not the acupuncture feelings, does not know how to choose the acupuncture points, his acupuncture is not acupuncture.

 

When my daughter was 2 years of old, she had heart failure. Various treatments and therapies had been used without clear improvement. I asked the doctor to inject my blood to her to save her life. The doctors laughed at me: Is your blood a medicine? What disease it can treat? I insisted. After infusion of 200 ml of my blood, her eyes opened, that had been in close for two days, and she asked something to eat. I thought, if my blood, here to draw away and there to infusion, works as the same as the chicken blood therapy and the pear of the alive hen?

 

Not to deny something does not mean to admit or support that thing, but means a caring attitude. I believe that it is easy to deny something, but there is no harm to ask more questions. The knowledge in our brain is different from that of old human generations, but it does not mean that the brain, the container is different in quality from that of the old human generations. Our physical body neither changes dramatically from that of the old human generations.  Therefore in the medical treatment, it would be safer to choose some old technique than a new technique. If a strong body, a brave hunter has a gun in hands, is it not more perfect? Why after there is a technique, we should throw away the skill?

 

My daughter had a classmate. He found a way to learn Chinese medicine from a very famous Chinese medicine doctor. He found with great surprise that this doctor is also good at the use of western medicine drugs. The healing effects were much high than ordinary western medicine doctors. In other words, he would have been a high-level western medicine doctor, but he still stands as a Chinese medicine doctor. Current Chinese medicine doctors are not living in old age. The scientific knowledge of many of them is higher than those who write articles to criticize Chinese medicine. If science can combat the Chinese medicine, why they still insist on the practice of Chinese medicine? As a Chinese medicine doctor can understand western medicine, and many western medicine doctors also suggest patients try Chinese medicine. Those of people who publish articles against Chinese medicine belong to none of the medical systems.

 

Chapter 38: Cooking dumpling

 

Discussing Chinese medicine with young generations is difficult. Even if in talking about traditional culture, there is hardly a start point to talk. The young generation is used to think things from the current life point of view; there is no space for traditional things in their minds.

 

Later, I finally find a way to talk to them about traditional culture. I asked youth: Do you like to eat dumping? Most of them answered: Yes! I asked: Whats the original material for the dumpling? They generally could answer out: flour, meat, vegetables, oil, salt, etc. When asked for the process of the cooking, they also know the preparation of flour, prepare the dumpling filling, spread the flour, fold the dumping, etc. I asked, is it hard to prepare? They admitted it is hard and complicated. I said: since it is hard to prepare, according to the theory of meat being broken in the pot, can we add all the material, that is needed for the preparation of dumpling, in a pot, cook all together and then eat them? Why should we work so hard to prepare the dumpling following the traditional way? The youth said it is still a good taste for the traditional dumpling! I laughed. This is Chinese! They chase after good taste. Even if for the youth who keep their everything to the western style, in the eating, remains the same traditional way rather than turns back to the western style.

 

I said, if you really want to learn from the western, I suggest you start from eating since it is not a simple thing. It is known that western people do not spend time on preparing dumpling. For western people, they eat according to the nutritional aspects. They do not chase very much after the taste as Chinese. Food enjoyment is not very important in their daily life. Therefore, western food is, generally speaking, simple. Though many foods tasted pretty much the same, but it saves time and contains enough so-called nutrition. The concept of western food culture is following their philosophy. What they research is the rule or the theory of things. The rule and the theory of things look as the French-style lamb chop. One side is tomato mud; another side is the lamb chop, plus some green bean and tomato pieces. The color is sharp in comparison; the states are entirely different from one part to another. Each part in the dish has its color and taste. No mixing, no interrupt each other. If there is any connection, they connect within the dish and in surface looking. Such philosophy creates the life for the western culture, making it have advanced development in natural science, in psychology, and methodology.

 

However, the procedure for preparing food, in Chinese, is called cooking. Chinese cooking means to make the food eatable by boiling, by steam, by fried and so on. Cooking also means to adjust various tastes in one bowl. The tastes mean the sour, the bitter, the sweet, the salty, and the hot. Chinese cooking pays attention to the beauty of the adjustment of taste. The shape and the color is the outside beauty, but the taste is the inner beauty. Chinese food pays more attention to the inner beauty rather than the surface. The beauty taste needs the original taste of the food material, the taste after cooking (steam, or boiling or fried, or smoking, or salty, etc.), plus the tastes of the additives. The tastes mixed each other to create more new tastes. Describing the good taste by words is hard. You can enjoy it by yourself but hard to tell it out. This is just the same as the Chinese philosophy. Chinese chase after a kind of hardly described “artistic conception” in food. Artistic conception is the core of the art of all kinds, not exclude the food.

 

To chase after the good taste is not the real enjoyment of the Chinese to the food. Chinese medicine pays attention furthermore to the order and the time of the food taken. The food should be eaten according to the seasons: in summer and autumn, the taste should be simple, and light; in winter and spring, the taste should be relatively stronger.  The taste also needs to be different according to the environment territory, the time of the year and day, and the individual needs. It also emphasizes that herbal therapy is not better than food therapy. Chinese medicine believes that different taste has a different influence on the body, so has different healing effects. When we choose food, we need to take care of the balance of the five major tastes, so to keep health. If any of the tastes are extreme, there will be disease happen. The balance of the tastes is the pre-condition of health maintenance and long life.

 

My daughter said, mentioning the medicine, people would think about herbs. In fact, a doctor can treat a disease without the use of herbs. For many diseases, such as hypertension, stomach diseases, fat liver, only change the diet, without herbs or medications, could also solve the problems. According to the research of the western phytologists, Chinese eat more than 600 kinds of vegetables, which is six times more than that eaten by western people. Every food is allocated to the five tastes, to make adjustment and coupling, according to Chinese medicine. The concern about the food is very much by the Chinese to a very high peak regarding the tastes. There are so many concerns about the food by the Chinese. Their chasing cannot easily summarize it for taste. Some of the current modern diseases are due to the chasing for the beauty of the taste only. From this point, Chinese medicine also emphasizes that the disease starts from the mouth. When my daughter feels a pulse, she may tell the patient: “You are Korea people”. This makes the patient very surprised. My daughter said Korea people eat hot food year around, it will also reflect in their pulse. in the Chinese medicine clinic, we cannot neglect it.

 

When my mother is alive, there is a rule what to eat in each special times of the year. It does not mean that only Chinese medicine doctor will do this way, an ordinary Chinese knows this. For example, in winter, we eat some food for supplement; in spring, we eat wild vegetables, in summer, add mustard in the food, and autumn, add turnip, and so on. The fruits and the vegetables should eat the ones harvested in that season. This matches the Yin-Yang and Five-element, and the natural law. If we do things inapposite way, the disease will start from the mouth. Nowadays, how many modern diseases are not due to the wrong eating? If we peel off the food culture into only a taste, how could we not catch a disease?

 

Chapter 39: Art or technique

 

No matter how I support Chinese medicine, I still recommend western medicine as the main healthcare stream in China, not to develop the Chinese medicine with too many efforts, since the western medicine is more matching the current needs of the time. In the population explosion time, in the war, Chinese medicine does not match the need to handle a large number of wounded people in the war. If we stop Chinese medicine now, the society still runs. However, if we close the western medicine now, with two-fold of Chinese medicine, will it be able to take the full responsibility of the healthcare need? The doctors in western medicine can be reproduced through the classroom and lectures, can be produced quickly. Chinese medicine is hardly reproduced within a short time.

 

Some people said that Chinese medicine falls behind. Yes, it is. The number of Chinese medicine is as less than half of that before New China (the year 1949). However, can we say that the Chinese medicine hundred years ago is at its peak? No. Chinese medicine has never come to a peak time in history. It should not come to a peak time either, only because there is no competition force against it. There is an opinion that the falling behind of Chinese medicine is due to the impact of western medicine. I think that it is the excuse of Chinese medicine for its low competition. The impact of western medicine to Chinese medicine is the historical necessity, but it is also an inner power for it to grow later.

 

I thank the eastern forward moving of western medicine. Though it suppresses Chinese medicine to a lower valley, it is not an absolute bad thing. Along thousands of years, Chinese medicine never had a challenger from outside. It never has a reference to compare. It is not good for its development. It does not mean that something has a life power because it is at its peak and is popularly accepted. Using western medicine as a comparing point, it allows us to look at Chinese medicine, with a viewpoint that has never happened in history before. It also allows us to make a summary of Chinese medicine. The comparison aims to develop our advantage and to avoid and deplete the disadvantage. It is not the comparison in the eyes of a judge.  The aim of the comparison is not to deplete one medical system. We, Chinese, need to find our position. If western medicine is good, there is an advantage in it, we should learn from it. We also need to know our weakness and correct it.

 

Now, western medicine takes the primary responsibility of the healthcare tasks. It is a good time for our Chinese medicine to come into an adjustment for the next step of development.

 

Compared with western medicine, I felt that Chinese medicine is bigger but also smaller than western medicine. Bigger means it is associated with every part of human life. Smaller means its technique is smaller than western medicine. For example in the science area, Mr. Li Shizhen said: “Seeing the truth of the world, the ultimate in creation”. Is his book << Ben Cao >> not scientific research? Chinese medicine does not exclude the technique. Chinese Zhenggu is a technique. When meeting a patient with difficulty in urinating, Mr. Sun Simiao also used the stem of Chinese green leek (scallions) as urine conduct tube (catheter). However, none of the technique in Chinese medicine could smear off the nature of art in Chinese medicine. Why do we feel the Chinese medicine mysterious? Why people, in thanks to a good doctor, send him a banner with the words “Achieve a miraculous cure and bring the dead back to life"? Why some people, no matter how hard he studied, cannot be a good Chinese medicine doctor? Why the course of the Chinese medicine study following a Great master is as to discuss, to consider, to think, and to practice then think, and to think then practice again and again, as to create art? My daughter said firmly that she is to “be a big Chinese medicine doctor, be a great master”. I never heard a western medicine doctor say this way, but heard from many people who practice an art, that they want to be a Great master, not only a technician. My daughter said, to save a life does not convince her to learn Chinese medicine; to find a way of living does not convince her either. She started the Chinese medicine for the reason that she found a feeling from the Chinese medicine. I understand her when she said so. I think it is important to find the feeling in the professional field. Human life is commonly searching for the feeling that belongs to the one himself. For example, the mathematics seek for the beauty of harmony; physics seek for union field. And the artist search for the emotional feeling, etc. The feeling of a human being has a way of excluding “wrong”. It does not hold anything that does not belong to it. The feeling has a leading effect. Its far-seeing power cannot be omitted.

 

My daughter likes art, and she does not want to get rid of her love of music after she started the Chinese medicine. On holiday, she still brings her violin to her previous teacher to practice it. One day, her teacher said: You have a feeling before when you played it, why you have no feeling now? My daughter said, after silence for a while: I understand, my feeling has changed. It has changed to Chinese medicine. My daughter brought the violin back home and said: That one mind cannot be spent on two things at the same time refers to my current situation. My feeling of art cannot be spent on two things either. So I decide not to practice the violin for some time.

 

To reach the miracle in healing is the level of great doctor. The great doctor performs treatment like performs art ability. However, how art can be popularized and reproduced on a large scale? How could it be enjoyed by the people who are with scientific eyes? How could those numerous fine and practical process, those feeling and realization, those considerations and discussion, those practical experience exchanges be framed in the frame of reasoning? The shrouded Chinese medicine is surrounded with a layer of a witch spirit. The mysterious qi around Chinese medicine is composed of artistic factors.

 

Chapter 40: Lifespan or Life quality?

 

As Chinese, even if in practice of western medicine, doctors have kind of Chinese characters in clinic thinking. Dr. Cao Zeyi, a famous doctor in gynecology in China, faces many cancer patients. In early years, when he operated, he tried to clear the cancer mass as much as possible. He was proud of being able to clear more complete the cancer mass than other doctors. However, when he sees that those patients got a life but lost a happy family, even got disaster in life, he doubts his way of treatment. Now, if other doctors spend ten hours on the surgical operation, he may spend only two hours and cut very little the tissues. He started to risk. The death rate becomes higher than before since he emphasizes the treatment more on letting the patient later lives as a human, instead of letting the patient lives but suffers, e.g., he pays more attention to the quality of the life of his patients after surgical operation. In other words, he would rather risk the death of the patients, than create disaster for the patients with his surgical operation procedure.

 

His concept of medical treatment needs much consideration and pay attention to evaluate it. This is a different way from a doctor who only sees the disease but not the human being. This kind of treatment increases the risk factors for the patients; it is therefore not in a strong position in theory. However, many Chinese can understand and accept his way of treatment.

 

President Chen Guoqian, in the research lab of the Shanghai Hematology Institute, China, heard: there are some old Chinese medicine doctors in the North East of China, who applied the “treat the toxic with toxic” theory, used arsenic to treat cancer patients. These doctors kept a large volume of clinic data for such therapy. He studied these data and found that, among 32 patients with cancer, there were 28 of them got a complete release. Dr. Chen Guoqian, in his clinic study, infused 10 mg of pure arsenous oxide solution in high-risk patients, every day for consecutive three to four weeks, until the patients got a complete release. Most of the patients had no strong side reactions. This result makes the western people stunned. In their mind, arsenic is highly toxic for killing or for suicide. They felt very strange and hard to believe that the infusion of arsenic in vein did no cause apparent side effects.

 

The western medicine in the China territory, could turn, sometimes, independent of their will, to the road of Chinese medicine. I thought, is this because, in the mind of Chinese, there is more imaging thinking power than the western people?

 

When my daughter was young, I have tried to culture her scientific reason thinking. Like many girls, she is not good at accepting the scientific reason thinking. It was common that reasons for something have been explained clearly to her, but she still said: yes, the reason is as such, but I still want that other way.

Well, it is to waste time to explain her any more reasons. Considering that many girls are not good at mathematics, physics or chemistry, I have tried to create her interest for those objects. Started from her third grade of school, I spend three years, read the book << Science history >> to her every night. I thought, the courses of mathematics, the physics, and chemistry in the middle school, do not start from encouraging the interests of students. They peel the history of the science development. Such a way of education does not in assistance with the law of cognition. If I could culture the interest of my daughter to the science, the education in middle school would not be a difficult process for a student to accept. Within the three years, I finished the reading and explanation of the history of scientific development but also emphasized the theory of relativity of Einstein. We also read the book << Mysterious traveling in the science world >>. Then, I thought it would be enough. However, in middle school, my daughter, together with most of her girl classmates, felt hard to the mathematics, physics, and chemistry. I have thought it is due to the wrong education manner in the school. I started to help her by myself at home. I soon found that my daughter’s mind refused the solving tests, refused linear thinking. Her teacher in physics got to mad and yelled for help from God, by her strange questions in class.

 

I made strenuous efforts but failed to bring her back to logical thinking. I felt confused and asked her: “I explained to you for three years the science. You opened your bright eyes, excited, focused on me. I ask you, where are the things that I explained to you before?” She smiled: “I felt fascinating when I see you were performing. Who listened to you?”. I, as her physic teacher, to cry for God: “My God, does it not mean that I wasted three years? “ She said: “How can you say it is wasting? Without trying for so many efforts, how could you know that I am not good at leaning science? How would you accept the fact that I can not learn the science?” My daughter forced me to accept that people’s manner of thinking is not the same.

 

In fact, I know. My mind is not a pure reasoning thinking way either. I studied with others to solve the mathematics test for “Olympic”. If others can solve ten tests, I could only then solve nine. People said it is not bad. With little trying you would also solve all of the tests. But I studied the last test and found that the problem is not whether I try or not. I could not solve that test at all since that is the limitation of my mind in science wisdom. From the surface, it seems that the difference between me and others is only one math test, but in fact, the difference is from the sky to the earth. The people who can solve the remaining math test must be the pure math mind, but I am not that one. From other’s eye, there is the only small difference between me and math master, but the “small” difference is far apart between us. From this point of view, to learn from others, we can only learn the surface, not the real thing. If we want to be really as other, we cannot mimic others. Later, when I help my daughter in homework, I no longer force her to think the test with scientific reasoning thinking but allowed her to use a kind of mimic thinking. Such mimic thinking can not allow people to reach 100% but 80% to 90% of perfect. But in choosing a lifelong study, I cannot let her choose the life-long mimic thinking, but encourage her with her own way of thinking. This is because, for the people who come to the peak achievement in their profession, no one did not use their own way of thinking.

 

I read an article by Mr. Gao Gong. He said in his article: in history, yellow nations (such as Mongolia) were melted in the Chinese culture, even though they are a winner of the war. However, the non-yellow nations, such as the nations in the Xinjiang territory, though they have been under control by the Chinese for two thousands of years, adopt the Chinese culture to a very low level. It is even lower than the yellow nations in countries around China. Even now, there was no one non-yellow nation accept Chinese culture. Is this only by chance? This makes me think whether the Chinese way of thinking is hard to be accepted by western nations?

 

 

Chapter 41: Logic mind or image mind?

 

Some people believe that one without a mind of mathematics, physics and chemistry and without strong logical thinking, would have no ability to do scientific research work, or what the one did is not science, but a “Pseudo-science”, that should be killed by those who support the science and is the fan of the science. I admit that science is marked and evaluated by the concept, standard, logic, and rule. From this point of view, Chinese medicine is not a science. I do not oppose. From this point of view, it is also correct that many people cannot learn well the science. However, if someone uses these parameters to separate the high or low wisdom, the reasoning or not reasoning, even to determine who should be further developed and who should be stopped, block or be destroyed, I would strongly disagree with him. I would struggle against the “science”, since such struggle is for the right to survive, to hold territory for my mind, for not be a slave of a spiritual colony.

 

I never said that we should ban western medicine, but the proposal is raised to ban Chinese medicine. Would my mind is not a mind? Does Someone want to force me with the strong ship and a sharp gun (to kill me)? Not to speak of that mathematician Qiu Tongchen believes that mathematics is closely linked with the art, of that a surgical doctor feels the same kind of happiness of creation as an artist, of that art feeling is the creating power of every scientific research areas, how can we say that the development of science only depends on its own efforts?

 

Check the records of science development, it fills with a lot of by-pass ways, unexpected, unwilled achievements. The history of the science tells us, the road that the science went is never a straight way. For how many days the science has started to concern about the standard, the logic, the concept, and the rule? If great Chinese scientist in agriculture, Mr. Yuan Longpin, went a “standard” scientific research road, can he have the achievement in the current hybrid rice? How many were great scientists not criticized in the beginning for their research works?  I cannot understand why some people want to make the science look beauty and pure?  Can science not accept the social position of Cinderella? I believe that science today is still going on a "trying-wrong" road.

 

I believe that science is still going in the way of trying-to-going even now. I thought, with the aim of my daughter not being scared by the pure and lofty science, when I explained the history of science to her in previous years, did I implant in her mind the real truth for the science development? The unexpected harvest that I got for the three years of explaining to her the << The History of Science Development >> is that my daughter is not superstition to the science. It might be that what road she is going is the original road of science development?

 

The science is so holy and pure, that scientist Yuan Longpin is so hard to be elected as an academician of Science Institute of China. It is said that he will no longer apply for the position in the future. Science becomes pure under the defense by some scientists. Does it also lose some vitality? The authority of science makes some scientists hardly have any more achievement in their research work rather than defense for the purity of science. They hold the right of invention and finding. Whatever does not meet their requirement will be marked as pseudo-science. They, in fact, block the development of science.

For this reason, the color of Chinese medicine is always gray. By this way, the science is high at the peak of the mountain, does not connect with the products of other kinds of human mind working, loses a strong living basis and source of nutrition. The disease of the science in China is the deficiency in both Blood and Qi. I have cultured bean spring at home. I added one pound of the bean into a basin, added water, left it in a warm place. No longer than two days, the bean spring came out all together. I picked out the spring to cook. There is always some bean left in the bottom of the basin. I call them a metal bean. I put them in my hands, look at them. It is wrong if you think they are dead. They are against the standard rule of water, temperature… the rule of the process of bean spring culture.

 

When I was a teacher in a middle school, there were always some students in the class, who are not good at the lectures. They are not a scientific mind, nor imaging mind. Other teachers call them as a stone mind. I tapped their head sometimes, sighed that they are the metal bean of a human being. They accept the domination of more significant rule than the culture of bean spring. I feel lucky that my daughter’s mind is not science mind. She knows the power to put the science to develop is not necessarily the great specialist, but those who have a particular skill, has strong acting ability, tends to have more feeling mind, pays more attention to practical results, not easily bound by science theory.

 

My daughter stopped her current preparation for the exam and decided to visit an old man who is more than 80 years of old. The old man works to pick up herbs in the mountains. I said it will affect her exam. She said, yes, but the old man is already more than 80 years of old. If there is not one who accepts his knowledge and experience, do you think he can wait for us later? Between the exam and the visiting to him, which one do you think more important? I think, of course, the later is more important. Her friends believe the former is more important. They think that the old man has only perceptual experience. He uses some herbs that are not in use for a long time by current people, applies the herbs is not the standard way as the current people. Though he can have some surprising healing effects, his way cannot be explained by science.

 

My daughter said, though she cannot understand it at this time, it is needed to inherit as soon as possible to save it first, then we can study it later, not to let it disappear in China. In China, indeed it can happen some mysterious things. I have a friend. His daughter got a kidney disease when she was 5 years of old. He has brought his daughter to the local hospital, to the provincial hospital, then lived in Beijing for year-long treatment. The treatment aims to release the symptoms for the girl, to keep her alive until her 12 years of old. Then she may accept kidney transplantation surgery. There was no other choice besides this. For the treatment for his daughter, he used up almost all that the family has, with terrible massive debt. To release his stress, whenever I could find him, I invited him out to a restaurant or to drink something. He always started crying, bending on the table, after drinking a cup of wine. We all donated to him. He has the skill of decorating paintings, so we find such contract job for him, to let him have more income. We all believed that he would be destroyed by such situation, he should try to plan in a different way. They recommended me to talk to him. I, with very careful way, talked to him, he has tried very best to save the child, if he can plan to have another child… He stops me urgently without I finishing my words, and expressed that he would not give up at all for his daughter.

 

What I can do is just a sigh. I can do nothing but wait for the worst thing to come. However, at that time, a mysterious thing happened. There is an old man in our local area, who has a inherit herbal formula that only treats one kind of kidney disease. Since there were no other ways to try, he used this herb formula to his daughter. The result is, for such a significant disease, it was cured as easy as a common cold. She recovered so good that we all feel hard to believe. She had no side effects or sequela! Later when I saw this child, she is not only healthy but also naughty. I asked why she is more naughty. Her father said, What she got for education in her young life is a "medical" education, which should be called an "exceptional" education. The old man who cured this girl is not at all a doctor, knows nothing about the medical theory or rule, has nothing to do with the mystery.

 

Chapter 42: High blood pressure and overweight

 

Recently there are two people whom I know about, died. One is 42 years of old, and another is less than 40. Both are overweight and had high blood pressure, brain bleeding. Seeing their loved ones grieve, I feel that human life is very fragile. At my youth age, there were no so many overweight people. There was also very rare to see people with hypertension. Once I saw a patient with hypertension, my mother would be very interested. The hospital also paid much attention to the patient with hypertension. The patient would be given a break certificate after their blood pressure was measured high. If there is someone who wants to have a break from work, they will try to make their blood pressure higher. What they did, as I remembered, was to run for 800 meters, drunk a cup of hot water. Hold tight the hands when the doctor was measuring their blood pressure… the blood pressure by thus being higher. So they could get one day rest. In 1978, students needed to have their body re-examed physically. There was a female classmate, who would be very nervous upon the sphygmomanometer. When it was her turn to measure, the blood pressure is high. Doctor asked her stood aside for a while then to repeat. Her face turned pale. I went to comforted her, massaging her Quchi acupuncture points. When the doctor asked her to measure again, the blood pressure was normal. Later she gave me a big apple for thanks.

 

According to the statistics from 1979 to 1980 in China, the incidence of hypertension in human over 20 years of old is 5.8%. Borderline hypertension is 3.3%. Now, the incidence of hypertension over 18 years of old is 18.8%. It is even 29.2% in Shanghai city and surrounding countryside. Vice-president of the education committee, Beijing, Mr. Du Songpen declared the data for national student body constitution research for the year 2005. It indicated that more than half of the students at that year got their blood pressure in a high level. The statistic shows that half death reasons are due to hypertension or the hypertension-related myocardial infarction and stroke. For this, the October 8th every year is decided to be the day of hypertension in China.

 

I felt very strange, why there are so many people with hypertension? Generally speaking, such modern, group-appearing disease in history is usually infectious diseases. Is hypertension passed among people by “hypertension bacteria”? According to an earlier standard, the half of students and one-third of the Shanghai people should have a break for rest. Right? The reason for hypertension remains unclear for the medical society. Some specialist said 95% of the patients are due to heredity. I thought it is impossible since these family with hypertension also follows the same birth control policy in China, how can they have some much patients in their family? Again, I do not think that these more than 160 million people with hypertension are all having hypertension family history. Such a doubled number of patients makes me have to think that it is a lifestyle disease of modern time. Why the incidence of hypertension increases so sharply? My daughter said it is due to the modern lifestyle of the current people, of course.

 

The statistic shows that the incidence of hypertension is higher in the city than in the countryside, higher in brain-working people than labor workers and it is higher now than before. It is a common disease in the world. The more developed country, the higher the incidence. It, also, indicates the association of the industrialized lifestyle with the incidence.

 

See that I am confused, my daughter said, as a non-doctor, I can understand it in a simple way. She said, we can look at the blood vessels as water vessels. Why the blood pressure increases? It is due to either with too much blood supply or to less blood supply. If the blood supply is too much, of course the blood pressure will increase. If the blood supply is less, what would the body do? The compensative mechanism of the body is to increase the blood pressure. It is the high blood pressure. The commonly used medication is to expand the vessel. The water vessel becomes bigger, so when you measure the blood pressure, it of course is not high. However, the reason for the increase in the blood pressure did not get solved. The burden of the heart does not get released, the blood vessel is unnaturally dilated, the heart has to work more hard to meet the need for more blood supply due to the dilation of the blood vessel. By this way, the hypertension was not solved but created more potential and possible problem for the heart and brain. I asked my daughter, current hypertension needs life long medication. What about the hypertension patients in old time? Is it no way to cure? Daughter told me, the sphygmomanometer was invented by Italian doctor in year 1896. Blood test came in about 1910. Therefore there is no concept of hypertension in Chinese medicine in history. The hypertension belongs to the dizziness and headache in Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine believes that there are many reasons for hypertension. If people have high fat in the blood (hyperlipidemia), have high viscosity in blood, both can cause hypertension. If one has anemia, with Qi and Blood deficiency, can also have hypertension. Therefore, overweight body can be high blood pressure, and slim person can also have hypertension. But the treatment by Chinese medicine is absolutely different for each of them.

 

Chinese medicine believes the reason for hypertension is associated with body constitution, emotional disorders, life disorders and so on. The most important factors are the body constitution and the emotional disorder. The person with a slim body, easy to get upset, with Yin deficiency but Yang overwhelming conditions, tends to have hypertension. Overweight body, with Spleen deficiency and more Phlegm in the body, the Wind and the Phlegm mixed and enhanced each other, can also get higher blood pressure..... When people are in highly upset and angry, his liver Qi reverse up, the blood goes up too with the reversed Qi, will also have increased blood pressure. With a strong happy or strong sad, scared feeling, nervous emotion, the heart, and the liver were disturbed. The person in such a condition can also have high blood pressure. If one eats too much fat and heavy taste food, the food damages the Spleen system and blocks the function of the Stomach to cause accumulation of Phlegm in the body, to cause hypertension. Overeat spicy food, which exhausts the Yin part of the body, causing Fire going up, can also result in hypertension. Especially if a person eats more salty food, the blood becomes sticky, damaging the function of the kidney, the person can also have hypertension. All of such factors are enhanced in the current modern lifestyle.

 

The vice president of the Ministry of Public Health in China, Mr. Wang Delong said statistic indicated that the overweight rate in China in the adult is 22.8%, the Obesity rate is 7.1%. It is estimated that the number of people with overweight and obesity is 2 billion and 0.6 billion, respectively. That number in a big city is 30% and 12.3%, respectively. Professor Jing Haibing stated that the incidence of mental diseases was about 2% in the last 1950s. In the year 2000, it came to 14%. This figure suggests that emotional nervousness is another character of our current time. My daughter said, there are so many people with overweight and obesity, together with so many people with emotional distress, how could we have less incidence of hypertension? It is not hard to treat hypertension. Only change the lifestyle could reduce the blood pressure dramatically. Is it a clear fact? However, people would like to take blood pressure reducing drugs that have a high rate of side effects, pays high cost and risk, rather than to change lifestyle. Under such emotion in mind, it is hard for them to accept Chinese medicine.

 

Chapter 43: Arsenic, poison or medication?

 

My friend came to my home to visit me. She brought a bag with her. She took out several boxes of “Guiling Gao” to me to eat. She said it works for beauty. She opened one and started to eat first. She said she ate three boxes every day. I took up one bottle and read its ingredients. I told her: “It is not suited for you to eat.” She answered: “Look at the function. It works for detoxification, improves face beauty. “ I was stunned. Talking with current people is hard. I remembered that my daughter’s Great master would stop to explain when he met a similar situation. When people use herbs as the same way as using western medicine drugs, when people regard the function of the herb fixed, and no change, he would feel that it would be useless to read the texts of the ingredients. This friend is weak in body. She needs to eat several doses of “Shenmai Yin” every year. If you did not monitor her for a while, she would start to eat something as “Zhenzhu Feng”, or “Kuding Cha”. Now, she started to eat the “Guiling Gao”. You cannot prevent her always. I said: “You always want to remove toxic. What toxic in your body? What do you mean the toxic? What it is? When ordinary people talk about the toxic, they mean the toxic fire, do you have such toxic fire?”

 

How many Chinese is Yang Excess? Your body shows all a Cold condition. You need a condition as in summer to nourish your Yang Qi. Now, however, you eat such a cold thing that suppress your body Yang Qi down, making a chill condition for your Spleen and Stomach. It is strange that you do not feel pain in your stomach when you eat such a chill thing?” She held her stomach and said: “I need to go to washroom now.” This makes me cannot cry or laugh: “You are too sensitive to the suggestibility. When I did not tell you, you eat three boxes without stomach pain. Once I asked you, you feel stomach pain right away.” She said: “Not as you said. I do have stomach pain at home, but I did not link it to the herbs. After you told me, I cannot hold up any longer.”

 

I have mentioned the toxic nature of herbs. I oppose the saying that every drug/herb is with 30% of toxic. If this is true, the treatment procedure would be 30% harm. Arsenic is strong toxic, which is a poison to the public. A healthy person will die after eating it. But when using it in medical treatment, the patient does not die, but rather is alive away from the edge of death. From this point, there is a precondition, to say that the arsenic is toxic. For ordinary food, who of course would believe that it is toxic?

 

However, I always remind this or that of my friends, do not eat this, or do not eat that. Why? For example for this friend, I recommended her not to drink green tea or cold tea. She refused to follow me. She said that green tea is good for face beauty. I said that if your Yang Qi cannot arise, you have a dark face, how can you have face look? I opposed her to use air conditioning, eat ice cream, even asked her not to eat bitter melon. From this point, did you find that I regarded some food as toxic? This is true. If something is not used correctly, no matter it is a drug, herb, or a portion of food, would be harmful. From this point of view, everything comes into the mouth would be either good or bad to our health. Chinese medicine emphasizes that “Disease comes from the mouth”. The disease does not mean a bacteria or virus but means the cold or hot nature of the things that come into the mouth.

 

I am not only opposing the food that we are eating every day, but also the lifestyle. When the refrigerator was showing in the market, I bought one. I would like it since I like to cook. However, I used it for only several years, I throw it away. I did not use a refrigerator any longer after that. Now, I would instead to go to the market to buy vegetables, not to buy them to store in the refrigerator. I would instead to serve my family with warm food, not the cold ones, such as iced watermelon. Air conditioning and refrigerator makes the body Yang Qi sediment down. They make the stomach and spleen system is a weak and cold condition, and make the summer hard to nourish the Yang Qi in our body. 

 

Empress Dowager Cixi(1835-1908) of China, the concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty and later Empress Dowager, was the power behind the throne in China from 1860 to 1908. Her court physician prepared her diet according to Chinese medicine, but not to the nutrition value. From her diet recipe, it is not hard to find out the aim of the physician. For the food that needs to be warm, he prescribed to use a casserole. If it needs to be cold, he asked to use a thin bowl, etc. For my requirements, such as the balance between the rice, millet, bread, and the seasonal fruits and vegetables…, people feel hard to follow. They feel that it means not to enjoy the current civilization by following such requirements. They eat heavily, stick to cold and ice, enjoy the air conditioning to a high level. They feel it is high enjoyment of life if they could let them not feel hot in summer or cold in winter.

Furthermore, they eat the fruits that are not the harvest at that time of the year… the body that has been in harmony with nature for thousands of year becomes no longer harmony with nature. The inner body becomes in disorder, so the modern disease come out.

 

Some people opposed me with the lifestyle of the western people. They said that western people live in a very modern style, but they are healthy. How do they solve the weakness and coldness of spleen and stomach that bring to them with the modern lifestyle? I noticed the physical exercise of them. For example, their physical exercise is nationwide. They have heavy physical activities such as running every day, not looks like the running, but really running and heavy breath running. Such running is a way to raise the Yang Qi. It makes the Yin and Yang in the body has a chance to balance each other. It can adjust the side effect of the modern lifestyle, becomes the crucial means for the people there to balance the Yin and Yang. Therefore, they are addictive to physical exercise. Once they stop the exercise, they would feel not good, not comfort.

 

A while ago, there is a debate about whether life depends on the moving or the quiet (such as meditation). Each side has its own reasons. To me, life depends on the balance of Yin and Yang. If the exercise could balance the Yin and Yang, life depends on the exercise; if the quiet helps to balance the Yin and Yang, it depends on the quiet. It is such simple.

 

Chapter 44: Dead chrysanthemum

 

The mother-in-law of my friend, who heard about my daughter, came to ask her to feel her pulse. On the feeling, I noticed that the face feeling of my daughter was strange… After everyone left, my daughter said, with rubbing her hands: “What pulse she has, no root?!” I laughed after heard: “This is right. Her life was bought from the King of Hell. How could her pulse have root?” I told my daughter, she was very sick three years ago, bleeding in the whole body, in the urine, stool, eyes, everywhere. Western medicine failed to make any diagnosis nor to treat.

 

Chinese medicine believed she got depletion of her kidney energy. It is hard to supply more energy to her, and she might die. My friend then waked with her conscience, remembered all the goodness from her mother-in-law, swear to save her, but no way to go. So she came to me expressed her worry, that makes me annoyed very much. So, I send her to a female sorcerer, since at that time, only this sorcerer “has the way”. To my surprise, the sorcerer said, she has already died. What can I do? I said you can go to another side, to see if she has already filled her position there or not yet. If she has not reached her position, try to see if you can find a way to buy life spasm for her again. So, the sorcerer guided my friend, “bought the life” with some kind of magic. By this way, the friend had something to do, so not come to bother me anymore. Her mother-in-law in this way kept alive. I laugh to my daughter: “She belongs to another side. Her life is bought back. She is here in alive, just as a release on parole. Is it correct that her pulse has no root?” My daughter sighed with hopeless: “You can really make fun. A no-root pulse can be explained by your way”. I stopped laugh and told her: “Of course it should not be explained by this way”. I continued: “But we need to understand the meaning of life further deeper.”

 

I remembered Mr. Lu Xun (A famous novelist in Chinese, 1881-1936) said, his German doctor said to him, if his disease happened in people in European, he would die five years ago. So Mr. Lu Xun said he cannot depend on this German doctor to treat the patient who has died five years ago. If Mr. Lu Xun met the female witch in Europe at that time, would he accept that he has “gone”? The mother-in-law of my that friend is a mother who cares others very much but not herself. She cared for the family in her heart, but not herself. It is not her wish to live for herself that keep her alive, but her extreme worry for the family. She, therefore, endured much discomfort in life. If it were other people, she would have died five years ago. 

 

People who grow flowers know that some flower has a personality to keep their flower rather than their life, and some other flowers want to keep life rather than their flower. The personality of chrysanthemum is the former. Several children jumped into my garden and picked up a chrysanthemum that is to bloom. Next day on the road, I found this flower that was so withered to die. I took it back, planted it in the soil, watered it. The flower started to blooming again. It was as fresh as nothing happened to it. After blooming, it died. Facing this flower, I stood there for a long time. All sorts of feelings well up in my heart. The color of this died plant is not in wither yellow. I have been for a long time believed that the wither yellow is the color of death. But instead, its whole stem, its branch, leaves were in dark brown, as the color of the sauce. It made me know what is trying the best and what the real life is. In autumn, when I come to the field, everywhere is in yellow. I know it is not the death. It is the stop, harvest, and storage. The life is continuing… The mother-in-law of my friend is showing such dark brown life. It is her real body energy; her kidney spirit hat prolongs her life.

 

Hormone works very fantastically. No matter what disease, its use could create a miracle. Therefore, upon coming of SARS, no one knows how to treat. What should be used then? It is the steroid hormone. What is the steroid doing in our body? It stimulates the coming out of our kidney libido. It starts the consumption of the kidney libido; our inherit life power. The phenomenon of brief revival before the death is due to the spark of the kidney libido. It is the burning of the last drop of oil in an oil lamp. The therapeutic effect of steroid hormone is not due to its supply of more libido to the body, but to disturb the original libido out to work. This is similar to the use of steroid hormone by athletes in the competition. It could largely increase the achievement of the athletes, but it is due to the exhausting of the kidney libido. Is the sudden death of the athletes not due to the peak exhaust of the libido? If the person not died, the person would get bone necrosis, since, in Chinese medicine, the kidney is associated with the bone marrow and dominate the storage of libido in the body. Exhausting of kidney libido makes the bone hard to store the libido and to grow the bone, so the necrosis happens. Such “removal of the east wall to repair the west wall” and such urgent to achieve, is against the principle of Chinese medicine to enhance the kidney libido. Health maintenance, how to do and what to do, we should not unknown.

 

Chapter 45: Chinese: grass animal

 

In explanation of the kidney essence in a scientific way, I think that it is the “Super energy” saved by Nature (God) for us. When we meet great disasters, such as meet a tiger or wolf, we may run much fast than ever, crib much higher than ever. Science terms it latent energy or potential energy. If we have used it too much for the ordinary condition, we would have it “damaged”. My daughter is good at Taijiquan (Taijiquan, a kind of traditional Chinese shadow boxing), so she is chosen to attend a national competition. She got four months of training before the competition by a professional gym teacher. The training damaged my daughter, however. She feels scared upon mention of the gym. She asked her teacher: “ We are competing Taijiquan, why should we get training in physical energy?” Her teacher told her: “This is a scientific training manner, we must do this way.” So, she had to run 5000 meters, do push-ups for 200, do sit-ups 200, lift 75 kg solid box for 100 times… Her original body condition was pretty good before. She plays basketball, play football. The football team in the senior high school is the mixture of the boys and girls, chosen based on personal skill. She was the only girl in the class team. However, she lost interest to the gymnastic by later training. 

 

The Olympic slogan is “Higher, faster and stronger”. To me, it exceeds the common concept of training for health. It is to explore the extreme level of physical ability of human being, to challenge the extreme point of human ability. However, it makes most athletes lose their health through the training. As a statistic from an insurance company for 6000 athletes who have died, the average lifespan is only 50 years of old, far less than the average lifespan of 70 for the overall public. There are about 1000 German died during play tennis, or practice clambering. Based on the data of Russian Health and Sport central institute, there is only 12% of athletes who gained excellent mark in competition is healthy. Watching the World Football Match, the question of why Chinese football team is not good arises again. Exclude other factors, simply consider the body constitution, the Asia people is different from the western people. To let the Chinese team play football with the Italian team is almost as to let women play football with a man. Compared with the body constitution of Europe, I believe that the body constitution of our Chinese belongs to the “Yin”.

 

Statistic data showed that the length of the intestine of the white people, with 1.8 meters high, is about 5.4 meters. The ratio of the length of the intestine to the body height is 3. For Asian yellow nation, body height of 1.7 meters, the length of intestine is 8.5 meters. That ratio is 5. The length of the intestine separates the grass animal and the meat animal. The protein from an animal is similar to the human body. It is easier to be absorbed and used by the human body, becomes the nutrition to the body. The protein in the plants is more different from the protein of our human body. It is hard to be absorbed and used by the human body, so human needs longer intestine to digest and to absorb it. Therefore, no matter it is a human being or animal, whichever eat grass and plants would have longer intestine than those which eat meat.

Furthermore, we know that meat-eating animal and the plant-eating animal is very different in personality too. Meat-eating animal obtained more nutrition and hormones from the meat, so it has a stronger body and more aggressive personality; while the plant-eating animal has a smaller body and more kind and less aggressive personality. For the same reason Europe people eat more meat, they are stronger in the body shape and also has a stronger attack tendency in nature.  Asia people mostly eat plants, e.g., carbohydrate, they have a shorter body, and kind personality as well. The hunting life of the Europe nation needs them have a stronger body, and therefore their body is Yang Excess. To digest and absorb animal meat protein, their intestine would secrete a hormone called “norepinephrine”. If one eat meat for a long time, there would be more of this hormone in the body. This is a hormone that could stimulate the increase in blood pressure, stimulate brain surface layer, reduce the control ability to the feeling zone, so makes the meat-eating people easy to excite, easy to develop spark feelings, tend to creation, risk challenge, wish to be excellent and stand out. All are needed for an animal that needs a hunt for food. 

 

For thousands of years, Asia people most eat plants as food. Their personality, generally speaking, is kind and meek, introverted and deep in mind. The football match is a strong antagonism match. It is natural that the Europe people are good at such a match. It is an original ability. On a comparison, yellow people, though they started tennis very late, and no nice or excellent training conditions, but has an excellent player, such as Zhang Peide (He is a yellow nation in USA), Sha Shaai, Silichapan. In China, there are also some player, who have no good environmental conditions for their training, no nice or warm atmosphere for tennis in China, but beat the seeded players again and again. This is because the tennis also needs very quick reactions. In other words, Chinese has talent ability in tennis.

 

It is known that China is best in acrobatics. In China, it is also known that Wuqiao city is best in acrobatics. It means, the acrobatic performers are not chosen from the whole of China, but a small county, Wuqiao. The player in one small county is already excellent in the world.

 

People said Chinese athletic Liu Xiang is not an except either. He is not good at short-distance running, but his skill in running over the obstacles and in keeping rhythm. The 110-meter obstacle is an exchange course of kinetic energy and potential energy. Every time he runs over the obstacle, he could transfer his kinetic energy to potential energy, since he is good at the running over the obstacle. Over every obstacle, he could save little potential energy. After several obstacles, his potential energy shows the advantage in the later course. So, we see that his most achievement is in the later process of the competition. He exceeds his competing runners during the last several obstacles. This means, if we want him to compete in short-distance running, he will not win. He is good at more in his technique advantage.

 

I thought, should we have more scientific considerations in the development of sports?

 

 

Chapter 46: Skill brings to death

 

To explore the secret of human life, it is needed such as anatomy. But can this branch of science reach the core of the life secret directly? Life is like music. When we explore the mystery of music, can we study the string, open the piano body with physics? Is the study of the mechanism of sound equal to the study of music? Did we find the goal of our study, when we study life? The study of music should no limit to the study of musical instruments. Chinese medicine theory studies life over the human physical body. It looks the nature as the out layer of the human body. It pays attention to the harmony between the outside body and the inner body. In such a life study, is Chinese medicine not mastering the core and truth of life? Besides the concept to unite the nature as the outside of the human body into the whole theory of the Chinese medicine, another characteristic of Chinese medicine is dynamically dealing the relationship between the technique and the medicine.  

 

Medical technique may avert from the direction of medicine. This is as the swimming technique may bring the swimmer to death. When I was young, I do not agree that “Those who die during the swimming is those who know how to swim”. I felt it is not logical. If the one really knows how to swim, how could he die during the swim? Since he dies during the swim, it means that he does not know how to swim yet. So, once he dies during the swim, I would allocate him as not knowing swim. He is dead during swim since he did not master the technique of swim. I believe this is solid truth. However, later, I find the truth: many swimmers died just because they had nice swimming technique, proving the saying that “Those who die during the swimming is those who know how to swim”. I studied the photo records for those who died during a swim. I found that their skill of swim is perfectly well, no error in the body position, no problem in the strength of actions. The reason for their death is not due to their poor skill but in their mind. Most pity thing is, the dead man, upon to their death, never realize that it is wrong for their mind in the swim. If they could realize this in the last minutes, they should be able to save themselves. They are the victim of their mind.

 

For a long time, human being walks to the opposite side of nature, based on their technique. Technique becomes the weapon of human to combat nature. We not only developed a dependence on the technique but also created a technique dominating thinking. This results in when in risk, it is better without technique than with technique. It is idiotic to swim across a big river, according to technique, especially swim in a status of competition. If the swimmer stops the use of technique upon the critical time, following the nature of water, stop to struggle against the wind and wave, regarding himself as part of the water, you would find that, the water is not against you, not wants to make you to death. When you do not want to master the control of your body, you would find that you did not lose this power.  It is really a pity that so many people did not die from their technique, but their mind. It is not easy to let a man who has a high technique to give up the use of his technique. It is the most people’s way to struggle again and again until the last minutes without trying any other ways.

 

Watching the video records for Chairman Mao in swimming in the Yangzi river, I am surprised. The old man has no standard position for the swim, he is just rolling in the water, no technique to show. It can be said from this point that he does not know swim. But you have to admit that he knows the nature of water. Why did he ask for a swim in a river, lake, and sea? It is because there is no water nature in the swimming pool to learn. Learn swim, the technique is not the only thing. Many things are outside of the techniques. Without knowing this, even if a person knows the technique, it does not mean he knows the nature of the water. If one does not know the nature of water, there would be a risk to die in the swim.

 

Chinese medicine looks, sometimes, not so advanced in technique, is not so rich in technique to use or to depend. If there is some technique, it is melted naturally, not so apparent, not so stand out. This makes the people who practice Chinese medicine shame, in such a time when the technique dominates. However, as a current people coming into a forest, his confidence and brave does not come from the heart, but the gun in his hands. Once he loses this gun, he will become nothing. Western medicine makes all values in outside. It cannot see human being from the inner nature of it. Chinese medicine looks falling behind. However, should we have a look if Chinese medicine has some unique characters in the uniting of the medical technique and medicine theory?

 

My mother did not teach me any technique, did not show me any unique skill in the treatment. She forced and pushed me to explore my own potential ability. If a person has already had gained something inside, then learn the technique, the technique is for him to use, rather than to become a slave of the technique, even hurt by the technique. 

 

Currently, a hospital cannot be without instruments. Doctors cannot do anything without instruments. The hospital and the doctors melt into a tightly close big machine. The heart and the body of the medical staff closely depend on the technique, on the hospital. Out of the hospital, the doctor is nothing. They are not individual human being, healthy human being, not to speak of the release and freedom in the heart or spirit… Why the graduate from university chase for a big city? Why they apply for a job? The reason is: the textbook “technique” educated from school acts as a “body-selling indenture” for them. It makes them adhere to common technique groups of machine nature. Such adhering relationship is so torturing, that people commonly develop discomfort feeling, creating lots of emotional trouble. For this, people analyzed more from social aspects, less from the scientific technique point of view. What they searched is a simple reason, not complex and comprehensive reasons. 

 

From the technical point of view, if one has a disease, it should be treated. If it is not treated, it would be a wrong thing. Any cure without technique would be laughed at, blamed and criticized. The mark of social advance is expressed on the disease treatment. That is: if there is a disease, it should be treated; if it is a small disease, it should be treated with significant efforts; if it is a severe disease, the medical facility of the whole hospital or even whole country should be tried. The dead swimmer never knows the reason for his death, until he died. Those of us who remain alive can use a single word of “not good technique” to put the responsibility to the dead. This is just as the Beijing University that uses “depression” to blame the dead student. This makes this university that has produced a lot of “crazy man” or “crazy genius” before but now depletes crazy and genius. What a spell the “Those who die during the swimming is those who know how to swim” is?

 

 

Chapter 47: Chinese medicine and go

 

I am not a Chinese medicine doctor. If allow me to talk about Chinese medicine, there would be two negative results to the Chinese medicine. First, I would be laughed at being an “expert”. People would feel that I like to put on airs in front of others most, and I win popularity by cheating the public. Second, it reduces the Chinese to a level at which everyone can talk about Chinese medicine, making the Chinese medicine look like not a particular academic department. Here comes out a topic, the department separation. It is well known that western medicine has a very detailed department separation. There is a specialist who primarily studies the brain. There is a specialist who especially studies heart. Some specialist only studies hands, nothing else. So, a specialist who studies hands could have a high title in the profession but may have no ability to solve a small disease like a common cold. If a Chinese farmer comes to a big hospital, he may not understand why a chief physician of a department cannot solve his disease. Why the smaller the disease location, the more mysterious it is for a doctor to cure.

 

It is hard for Chinese medicine to separate into various departments. It is hard for Chinese medicine to only treat a headache if the patient has a headache, or only to treat the pain in feet if the patient has a problem only in the feet. So, according to the western mind, Chinese medicine is not super, not specialized. Chinese medicine, if it can be talked about or discussed by ordinary people, to some peoples, it means Chinese medicine has less technique value. To them, the public knowing of Chinese medicine suggests it low level and less value. Is this not a fooling-people mind that is secreted out by the scientific separation? This is a contradiction. We feel that simple thing is a lower level thing, so we go to elaborate and specialized. The so-called specialization means what is in the specialized area is unknown or hardly known by the public. “The non-professionals” has no right to question, except paying respect or fear to it. Many scholars feel pleased with themselves in their own specialized castle. If what they know can be understood by the public, it would be their shame, since the higher the specialization, the lower its popularity. Therefore, the separation between each specialist is like the separation between the two mountains. People feel hard and hard to understand each other. There is no right to criticize the other side. What I want to ask is: as human society, can we allow our society to continue to specialize further and further again? If yes, then once we solve the contradiction from the social aspect among countries and nations, would we have separations again due to such scientific specializations?

 

Why there is so much stress relationship between patients and doctors and have so many conflicts in medical services? Why we hate the police and government officers? Why the up-visit cases increase sharply? For these, people are more to find a reason from the social system, less from the point of professional separations. The reason is that the non-professional people do not listen to the explanation by the specialized staff. Hospital in our city set a “Grievance award” especially for those of doctors who explained to the patients but not realized or understood by the patients. If the explanation can be understood, why no longer has an overall law education campaign to the public? People have willing to understand the special issue. They would not give up the willing due to the denial of their ability to understand, or to the limitation to the particular area. The logic of doctor blocks the patients, patient’s logic would regard the doctor as a killer. The logic of the law blocks the ordinary residents; the ordinary residents would regard the law-enforcer as a robber. The things that are hard to understand can not only create respect but also rejection, refuse, oppose and hate. That Chairman Mao did not allow the law being too specialized, is also be due to such considerations. 

 

Chinese medicine is similar to the game of go. Chinese medicine is simple. The doctor can pull up a bundle of grass that grows in front of the door to treat disease; can use a needle to treat disease. It can be popularized to the whole country by the model of “Barefoot Doctor”. But is the Chinese medicine really very simple? Do you want to have a study to try it? Go seems the simplest game among all the games. There is no king, no general, almost no rule. Almost everyone can play it. But the go is really simple? Do you believe that human can invent the computer that is master in go? Many people are playing go, only a few people can play it well. We do not deny the go for the fact that there are too many ordinary players. There are a few people who practice Chinese medicine. The number of these people who are in the master level is much less. The public indeed denies Chinese medicine for the less number of masters in it. People believe that there is a difference in the level of talent among the go players. They do not deny the Master Nie Weiping or Ma Xiaocun for the low talent of themselves in the go. However, they commented Mr. Zhang Zhongjing and Li Shizheng as swindlers for the aim to deny Chinese medicine. This is because they can not deny the Chinese medicine if they have to admit there are masters in Chinese medicine.

 

In the current concept, the physical body is as a machine. I use my body but I do not need to understand the mechanism by which it works, nor to repair it if there is something wrong with it, since it is the job of specialists. If there is something really wrong, hand it to a doctor to repair. When the doctor is working, I do not know how good they are, what I can do is to look at them with uneasy eyes. I can only deduce their skill from their attitude. If their attitude is careless, and my disease becomes worse, I will think that they must have made things wrong. Since life and dead is the matter of doctor and hospital, and if I cannot accept the fact of death, is it natural that I will transfer my angry to the doctor and hospital?

 

I am talking about medicine since I have a body. As a human with a body, I need to understand my body in medicine point of view. I want to be the first doctor of my body. The same as I play go and love philosophy since I am living. I want to be my Go player myself and philosopher. I cannot stop playing go and studying philosophy for the fact that there has already been Mr. Ma Xiaochun and Mr. Li Zehou. I do not want to give up my own life with go and philosophy and only cheer for go master and a great philosopher. I want my own life. At the beginning of Chinese medicine, it did not want to be specialized to an only small group of people to understand it. Why did Chinese medicine need to be consistency with the Chinese culture? Why has it been tried to unify the way of Chinese medicine, the government of a state, and the law of nature?

 

Why it is said, if a man has no chance to be a good government officer, he could be a good doctor? Only understand the reasoning of nature and human society altogether in the same way, could the reasoning of medicine be to understand and accepted. The unity and the same system of the Chinese characters, and the consistency in the expressing manner of the characters make the dialogue even between the king and the ordinary people no misunderstand. Nowadays, Chinese medicine is hardly understood by the public. The reason is that western culture has broken our original common understanding system. The Chinese culture that is depended on by Chinese medicine is hardly understandable by the public. However, the diversity in the understanding, if it lasted for a too long time, will request for a merge again. 

 

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

 

 

After the “Deep Blue” beats the International chess master, a human being develops a scare, self-abased and confused feeling in the heart in front of the computer that he created. Along with the more and more powerful and higher and higher ability of the machine, the human being becomes more and more admires the machine. I do not know how many people are willing to bend down in front of the machine? They wanted themselves to be the “Deep Blue” but cannot. It seems that the machine will dominate the world. The question is where the position of the human being is? How could the international chess master find his value in front of the “Deep Blue”?

 

Will human being be the slave of the machine that he created, lose dignity in front of the machine in not far future? One day, if robots wholly beat us, would we only masturbate ourselves by blasting that we create the robots? The same as the God masturbates himself that he creates the human being? In the area of logic and wisdom, this would be the reality in not far future. How would the science solve this problem?

 

Many evidences show that, our human being want to combat with the robots by making ourselves as machine. At least we want to struggle for an even position as the robots. When human being is lead by the robots by the nose, towards a direction that human being is also a machine, should we feel cheer for the wisdom of the machine, or feel sad for the wisdom of the human being? That I said that Chinese medicine would die, is due to the development of the science that cannot be stop.

 

When a human being makes the weather warmer and makes the weather periods in disorder, the Five-yun-six-qi in the body will also lose its regular order. When the weather becomes disturbed, the environment becomes contaminated; plants lose normal growing conditions, the nature of the plants changed, the Chinese medicine herbs would no longer the herbs. When the surgical operations are more and more frequently applied, the Qi and Blood systems in the body would also be disturbed. The acupuncture and other Chinese medicine therapies will also lose its functions. When the silica gel, plastic, metal, and other human-made material are implanted into the body, the Yin and Yang would no longer show… Chinese medicine loses the soil it depends on before, loses the target it works before. Without the original herbs, and the adjustable Qi and Blood, the Yin and the Yang, the Chinese medicine, of course, will die. The degenerating of current Chinese medicine has been contributed in some ways by such factors. The day at which the human being comes to a machine is the day the Chinese medicine dies. This is because Chinese medicine is a medicine based on human being, a living thing. The restriction of desire in Chinese medicine is to save desire, but the indulgence in sensual pleasures in the current lifestyle is to destroy the desire. If the body desire is destroyed, what’s the use of the body? If a human has no body, what’s the use of Chinese medicine?

 

Therefore, to delete Chinese medicine is the beginning of our human to delete our body. I do not feel pity if Chinese medicine disappears. I, as the all of you, believe that there will be a time of high technology. When a human being is no longer a human but a machine, what’s the need for Chinese medicine to exist? The human being will accept calmly the fact that we become a machine. We have already been impatience to our body now, felt that the body is cumbersome. We have already had a kind of urgent desire to become the machine, to solve our living fear. If being a machine can allow you to live for 150 years, would you refuse to be a machine? Our body makes us have less and less reluctant to leave. Even the little desire for food has been depleted for the aim to lose weight. The psychology feelings that our body allows us to feel, such as love, art, are more and more looked down. What our body can still supply to us? When all of the living things on the earth have been contaminated into toxic things, and when the living environment becomes worse and worse, our body cannot endure the outside environment at all, what you are going to do without choosing to be a machine? At that time, Is it not a relief and liberation to break free from the body? Current education is computer education, to make the human brain into a computer. The difference among people becomes the difference in the function of computers. Human brain becomes the target of logic analysis, classification, and leveling.

 

Comparing the reasoning of  “Deep Blue” and human chess masters, it is natural to question the dignity of human wisdom. Our brain educated by this way is beaten by the same way? International chess is the logic wisdom of the western people. The “Deep Blue” of logic search beats the logic wisdom of human being, declaring that a machine can beat human logic wisdom.

 

Does human have any wisdom that has not been beaten by the machine? Our eyes then fall on the go, the only kind of chess in which a computer has not beaten human wisdom. On the combat of computer against go, the first thing analyzed is the difference between the international go and chess. It is interesting that the difference between go and chess is gusted that between the eastern and the western culture. They are hard to be linked or connected with logic wisdom. The go that looks simple, contains image wisdom that cannot be beaten by logic wisdom. There is many pseudo positions in the game of go. The player has to also be very big in imagination in his mind, so to handle all of the positions in his mind.  The pseudo position is space. It is the combined reasoning exist of time and positional structure. It is not within the logic wisdom area. In the go, once put in a point, the potential the whole game changes. The value of each point cannot be analyzed by itself but from its relationship with other points.

 

The group of people who support to keep the herbs but delete the medicine theory and rules, suggesting to keep the function, the nature of the herb, believe that they picked up the most valuable things from the Chinese medicine. They do not know that the function of every herb in the different herbal formulas is different. The nature of the herb could change according to the formulation. A herb, due to its supporting-combating-depressing-facilitating relationship with other herbs, shows complete different function compared with that analyzed in the research lab. This is the same as the function of an individual in a society. His function is associated with and limited by his environment and his relationship with other people. Chinese medicine is a container. It saved an original seed of human wisdom. 

 

People will eventually find that silica gel, plastic, and metal material, such filling stuff is cumbersome of our body, will eventually throw away the body that brings to us by gene project. People will also throw away the body that is brought by the gene project, though the gene project has not been well developed yet. The gene project will also be thrown away like a human throw away Chinese medicine. The human being will exist in a pseudo form, e.g., the form of energy, completely goes to the opposite of materialism. At that time, will humans who exist in illusion think of the real thinking of Chinese medicine?

 

Chapter 49: Caesarean section

 

My daughter told me that newborn baby dislikes Caesarean section. I laughed. My daughter said, yes, it is true. The baby who was taken out from the surgical opening looked sad, very unhappy. I said the babies with the ordinary birth course are also crying to the world. No one comes with a smile. She said, well if you go to the ward to visit them, the babies with the natural birth look calm in the face. But babies with surgical operation still look upset. I have no experience in watching them. Of course, I cannot oppose her. However, according to my stupid thinking, the natural course should be better than the surgical operation.  Not to speak of the disadvantage of the Caesarean section, the baby birth course is a co-action process between the mother and the baby. Mother chooses this Caesarean section, but the baby does not know it. He tries his best way to come out following the thousands years rule for birth. Surgical operation disturbed his first life plan. No wonder he does not feel happy when he is taken out from the mother’s abdomen. The happy that nature gives to the mother is through the first bitter then happy. Without the bitter process, there would have no such happy. When the mother is in the process of the baby delivery, it makes her escaped from a chance to test her brave, through the Caesarean section, then escaped the responsibility of breastfeeding with reason. The statistic data from women healthcare institute, Shanghai city, China, suggests that the rate of Caesarean section has come up to 60%. In some hospital, it is even up to 80%. Non-breast feeding rate also comes up to 50%. The mother who escapes from above responsibilities later can also escape from the responsibility of education. Some mother would like to stay with a pet, rather than stay with her child. She is willing to send her child to hosting house or hosting school in years of the child. Facing my question, they said: “ I paid money to them. How do you think that I escaped from my responsibility?”  I know that the Caesarean section saved the lives of many women, but taking the path of life-saving as a big road, just as using hormones as a common medicine, it is extreme.

 

To give birth, to have breastfed, and to bring up the kid, all are the key to open the maternity. If the key has been thrown away, how the maternity can be explored out? That a woman has no maternity in heart, and that the baby has not been nourished in the maternity, have not been calculated into the loss of life by people in modern life. The most poisons thing is the article << If no breastfeeding, why big breast? >>. The author, with the answer she known, but still asked, the big breast is not for the baby, but the baby’s father.

 

I thought, from what time the Chinese men started to like big breast? In history, Chinese men have no such hobby. This is learned from western people. Love breasts look elegant, and the trend it has triggered is already morbid. This hobby of Western men reflects their Oedipus complex. The reason for this is the lack of a mother’s love when they were young. Look at Prince Charles’s Oedipus complex.

 

The book << Parenting encyclopedia >> written by western people that I bought twenty years ago, is good enough to produce a man with Oedipus complex, if we look back now, consider it and bring up baby according to what it asked. To feed the baby once every four hours, leave him alone in a room, to allow him crying, and not to hold him… are what introduced in that book. Nowadays, 80% of Caesarean section and 50% non-breast feeding, will allow future Chinese men really stick to abreast. But the breast is not his mother’s but his child mother’s. His son has to robber his son’s. How many psychological variants will this generate?

 

Currently, there are some experts, such as Mr. Li Yinhe, struggling for the rights of some group of people with particular psychologic emotion. The experts also tried to confirm the existence of such a group of people in society. To me, it needs no confirmation. Even if they are small, they will become a lot in the future. Only at that time, people will think that such groups of people are there and they are a lot originally.

 

Not to speak of the next generation, even our generation is affected by the western thinking unconsciously. For example, we do not want our son to enjoy the breasts of his mother completely. We connect the breast with the sex, thinking that the breasts might bring to the son some improper sex stimulation. One day, an old lady talk to me. She said, her son, whom she did not see for ten years, brought his wife and his son home. Her son asked to feel her breasts. The son held her breasts and said: “I see my mother!” I was astonished after heard this story, so did his wife and his son. The son laughed at his father on the spot. 

 

Breast belongs to the child originally. It should be the pronoun of the mother. Modern people turned things upside down and became sexual organs. When it is not occupied when a man was young, the man will rob it from his son when he grows in an adult. So, the natural function of the breast gives way to modern psychological needs.I really don't understand the current things from a moral point of view, but think that the production of morality is done in harmony with nature. There are many rationalities in it, and it is easy to break, and it will pay a price. Current women refuse to have natural birth delivery for fear of loss in the vagina; refuse to have breastfed for fear of breast prolapse; refuse to bring the child up for fear of affecting the wife-husband feelings. The contemporary woman’s love for men cannot be said to be exhaustive, but it is reversed and violates nature.

 

If we really love a man, let do something from when they are a fetus. Give him whatever the world could give to him without any conservation. The side effects of Caesarean section are a lot. It has been realized even by the western medicine per se. The side effect of the Caesarean section is just the loss of vagina, prolapse of the breast, reduced sex desire (frigidity) and early menopause syndrome.

 

My daughter’s teacher in western medicine advised again and again to her students: don’t do the Caesarean section unless it is really needed. Love, in the aspect of philosophy, is the psychology space. With a big space, it can hold and can contain. Now, we do not give it channel but forces it to a narrow and twisty road. The psychologist marked it as abnormal first, then asked people to adjust emotion, and to look at things with a normal heart. Many unusual phenomena described in psychology books twenty years ago are now a normal phenomenon. Western people are really good at a joke!

 

 

Chapter 50: My grandaunt

 

I do not support to delete Chinese medicine, because I do not want to lose “heart”. Specifically speaking, that I do not want to lose my Chinese heart.

 

There is a Chinese scholar. His name is Wen Huaisha. He is 97 years of old this year. He has been the professor in the Beijing Chinese medical university. He said, he accepts western medicine with a brain and accepts Chinese medicine with a heart. I feel that he said to the point. One lives not only with a brain, but also has to live with heart and spirit. Those who lift the western flag, regards himself as the representative of western, has their brain as western, but how many of them have western heart and western spirit? Human not only lives in the brain. When Chinese advice others, it is said that the advisor should let the one knows the reasoning, but also the feelings. Even the best reasoning, it is not readily accepted if it is not in consistency with the human feeling. This is the same as many reasoning does not work for people in love.

Compared with western medicine, the focus of Chinese medicine is on the heart. Many people do not admit the “heart”, thinking that it is enough to have the brain, with the same reason as if there is the reason for feeling happy, there should be feeling of happy. Chinese medicine emphasizes the “heart”, the intuition, the creative nature and ideological state in its learning course. This is laughed at by those of people who are the fan of science. It is not easy to promote or popularize Chinese medicine since it is not easy to master and understand.

 

Mr. Wen was tortured during the Cultural Revolution in China. He felt sad, depression, bloating and continuous pain in the abdomen. He is diagnosed as the late state of hepatic cancer. When declared this result to him by the Rebel group who gloated at his misfortune, he stunned for the beginning; then he laughed loudly. He said, there should have no traitor inside of the body. Do not let the traitor cooperate with the disaster in the outside of the body to harm the body. In the following three months, he lied down on the bed, reciting a poem and classical prose (prose written in the classical literary style). Three months later, his hepatic ascites disappeared. Cancer also disappeared. To this, he explained: the medicine is the intention. At this time, the poem and the classic prose, all are medicinal herbs. He said, what I used is the heart therapy. It is calm in my heart inside though it is a storm outside of the body (e.g., the political torture). 

 

In China, many scholars know Chinese medicine. For example, Mr. Ju Qiubai wrote prescriptions to the warders. He might not cheat these warders. I read an article. It said there is a man. He had his bone broken. His friend recommended an expert to solve the fracture. He asked how good the recommended expert. The answer was he is very famous. So they went there. What he saw is famous author Xiao Jun. His famous is the reputation in literature. Mr. Xao Jun helped the re-connection and adjustment of his bone. Then all sat down and talked about the literature. Be able to make cancer disappear and able to solve bone fracture, is it the ability of excellent doctors? However, it is a minor ability for these scholars.

 

In China, there are no less such people with “excellent talent”. My the fourth grandaunt was often invited out to see patients. In seeing how she saw the patient, even mother was stunned. For a patient with high fever and spasm, she asked to open the anus of the patient. There was a white color hard lesion. She picked open the lesion with a small knife and picked out strings of thin white string. After finishing the pick, the disease was cured. The fever after infection is regarded as septicemia by us, but the old lady tried to “stop red line”. She found the “red line” along the wound, picked broken the “red line” at the end, release the “toxic”… There was another emergency condition. She used a needle to press a small white spot on the throat.  Compared with her, my mother appeared more like a western medicine doctor, since when my mother treated such a condition, she treated them as a severe illness. My mother thought that the way of my grandaunt for the treatment has no “reasoning”. Later, she concluded that that was not a professional way of treatment, it worked for these diseases of the local area. However, my grandaunt felt very happy herself. She said it would be a big thing to deal with if the patients went to the hospital to my mother. To her, it is a small thing for the treatment of such diseases. She, however, could not solve her arthritis. From time to time, she had to come to my mother, to have acupuncture or herbs from my mother. Many diseases, if they are big and severe diseases, would be a small thing, or an easily solved disease to Chinese medicine. The same thing, some diseases are a small thing, and easily solved diseases for western medicine might be a big task to Chinese medicine. If some clinic conditions are difficult for both western medicine and Chinese medicine, it might be a small thing to the indigenous therapies.

 

For this reason, it would be a good cat if it can catch a mouse, no matter it is a white cat or a black cat. It is natural that human can solve his own disease, no need to depend on a doctor. If the leg of a red-crowned crane was broken, it could paste grass-mud to the broken leg, as the human using plaster. If a wolf gets sick, it can also find a herb for itself to eat.

 

There is an old saying that “man could be a doctor after having a disease for a long time”. It means that if a person can pay attention to the summery and experience in the treatment and reaction, he would also understand some healthcare knowledge. Not to speak of the Chinese medicine, it has kept made the summery and the experience for thousands of years!  Such ponder needs not only the brain but also the heart. The man has to use the heart to feel, to experience and to ponder. The feeling is a strong necessity in Chinese medicine. My daughter now watching people is from the doctor’s point of view. She deduces the conditions of several body organs from the face. She even deduces the health condition from a person’s breath, and body odor and so on. Though I know, it is very primitive, but I admired her: “Good, my daughter is good. She can look the lab test report, but also the face of the patients. She is still a doctor out of a hospital!” Now the analytic chemistry is so advanced, but to tell the level of the goodness of wines and tea, it still needs the master of person to taste them. We have to still depend on smell to tell the quality of the perfume. It means that the quality of a thing is not only recognized with the instrument measurement. It cannot be omitted the human feeling organs. 

 

Chapter 51:  2+3 = candle

 

As a man, do you want a woman as a man? If not, what do you want a woman is? Has the current woman female nature? Before I gave birth to my daughter, I am the same as a man, regarding language, thinking and do things, through work, education, read, coming into society and working with men. At that time, I did not realize that this society is set up by the male. The so-called standard that the society required is actually for the male. I thought that this standard is common for everyone, no sex difference.  The society is set up by the male. In science and culture and other aspects of the society, a woman seems no unique contributions. Man denies a woman in reasoning area. A philosopher said: if a woman said 2+3=8, what mistake she got is a mathematics error. However, a woman quite often said it is equal to a candle. My father believed that a woman could not be reasoning with. If a woman has dignity, how would she face such social reality? So, many women tried to meet the requirements of the society, to approve that woman is as the same as a man. 

 

I felt that I am as the same as a man in society, and one time when I wrote a document to a women association, the leader of that association told me that what I wrote was the same as a man did, having no “women” taste. I felt stranger, what is woman taste? Is it fussy and sissy? Is it sticking and adhering to love feelings? If not, then what it is. How could it be 2+3=candle? When I was young, my worldview is what I called it a triangle with equal edges: materialism, objectiveness, and science, the same as a male’s worldview. For this, I felt satisfied. It seems that I should have no change in quantity. Or you may hardly believe that I may change. If such change does not happen to me, I would not believe either. If there were no such change, today, I would have been a man. It is very simple when speaking. My change comes from baby delivery. To give birth to my daughter, I tossed and turned for one day and two nights. At the time I exhausted my body energy, and I was in a condition almost to die, I heard a cry of a baby. Open my eyes, I saw my daughter.

 

Just this glance, along with dizziness, the reverse of the universe, I feel that my equilateral triangle has fallen over. The triangle is still a triangle, but the sequence of concept in it is completely different. In the new sequence, I found, with astonishment, that 2+3=candle! Suddenly, I understand what birth is and what is death! The fear of death that around me and bothered me for a long time went away! I knew from that time I could face the death bravely and I would happy to accept death. If there were no such birth process, my life would be one generation. I might be good-for-something (promising) in something, be excellent in something. But I would be obstinate, and too sure for myself. I would be a pupa crawling on the ground, cannot go over a ditch without a stone under feet, cannot go over a river without a reasoning tree branch. I would have no the second generation of my life – becomes a butterfly. A woman can have two generations in one life, as the life of a butterfly.

 

Research has found, Caesarean section prevents the production of oxytocin and reduces the level of happiness feeling during the birth delivery and affects the feelings between the mother and the baby. I believe this research report. Both father and mother love child, but the way of loving is different. Father loves child, but his triangle will not fall over. He would not change his worldview after having a baby. We all heard the story that a stepmother is vicious, and I also know that there is a saying that there is a stepmother there will be a stepfather. In fact, many stepmothers do not do anything wrong but are realistic to the child. The birth father, who is initially realistic, indeed accepts the realistic manner of the stepmother, trusting more the stepmother. When a family is overwhelming the “reasoning”, there would be something wrong soon. A child who is looked at by reality and by objective manner would be withered as a young grass without sunshine and rain. This fact, in turn, reflects the objectivity of the stepmother. 

 

Current people feel that children do not need special love. General love and like to them is enough. So they believe that it is not a mistreat to the child to find a stepmother to him. Nowadays, some mothers’ love for their children remains at the level of a like. When they talk about their children, their spoken manner is as a teacher, a nanny, but not a mother. They often assess their children with social standards. They do not know what the unique role of a mother is. It might be a reason for a university student who is catching suicide, that he was treated objectively at home and in society.

 

Whoever wants the wife to look at him objectively? Would don’t you think that women look men more and more objectively nowadays? The bitter feeling during the baby delivery peels the layers of social shells that covered on the body of the woman. It digs out the primitive basement of human nature. It sets the relationship between the child and the mother on the most primitive base. There is no reverse of the universe, there would have no the coming of true mother love. The heart of the child would have no full sunshine. It is said what a mother beggar could give to the child cannot be given by the father who is an officer. It is this reason. Why is stepmother cruel? It is because her mother love has no broad road to go. She is forced to go on a narrow and a twisty mountain road.

 

Man can also become “butterfly”. I noticed that such Thinking leap of man is “awakened”. An “awakened” man can also overcome the social reasoning as an “awakened” woman. The course of the “awakening” is usually accompanied by the bitter life and painful body, such as a Penance. I thought, there could be a kind of force in the painful process of the awakening, which has not been understood fully by current people. We did not make it clear the relationship between pain and happiness.

 

In an earlier chapter, I said, there was a couple with infertility. The husband beat the wife broken her ribs. I felt very angry at that time. My mother, however, said, okay, they will have a child. I could not understand what my mother meant. Later, I understand. It is well known that emotional factors have a powerful impact on the course of infertility. What we do not know is how it impacts.

 

There were a wife and a husband, both of which are my friends. There came red light for their marriage life. They had no friends except me. Their relatives were also far away in other cities. I did not support their friendly divorce. I closed them in a small dark room, letting them communicate. It was a tough course. Not to speaking of they did not eat or drink, no more the blood or tears, no more violence or suicide, they finally felt exhausted. Now, they met the most primitive, and the move nature love. They fell into love again. If they are a couple of infertility, they will get pregnancy at that time. In the animal world, there is commonly an exhausting stage during the heat period (oestrus). Does it mean that such an exhausting condition is helpful for conceiving? In the torture-love in some of the western people, do these people are trying to find the primitive nature of love by such twisting manner?

 

There are three time periods for women in which their body and emotion are nourished: adolescence, pregnancy, and menopause. Cesarean birth does not nourish woman. Menopause syndrome bothers many women. Medicine does not work for them. Some people asked me what drug or herbs they can try. I said nothing needs to be eaten. Once you have a grandson, your problem will go away. The current young couple refuses to have a baby even if they are over 30, which makes their mother fall into menopause trouble that is the seasonal disorder of human life.

 

In nature, there is much bigger wisdom than that in the human brain.

 

 

Chapter 52: Patient ≠ human being?

 

Yesterday, I had a party with one of my friends, to celebrate the five years after she left the “Aseptic bin”. She had stem cell transplantation. According to current medicine theory, after five years of transplantation, the patient’s survival rate will be higher. So we celebrated.

 

There have been nine patients including her out of the Aseptic bin at the same time. Now there are only they two alive. I saw her doctor when I accompanied her to have a check of her body condition after out of the hospital. I admired him. When we thanked him for saving her life, he said: there are three reasons that she could be helped: a good doctor met a good patient, plus a good fortune. I agreed with him with a nod. This doctor is the authority in this professional area in China. however, he marked the role of a doctor so low. It appears that Great doctor commented thing to the point. This makes me remember another authority doctor who specifically treats late-stage diseases. He said what he is doing in the treatment is trying and trying.“ I know how my patient died, but I do not know how my patient survived.”  For the patients who survived by his efforts, he never believed that he saved them. He always tried to know why the patient did not die. From this point, is the western medicine also tries to find the way of treatment from nature? Just because western medicine can tell out clear how the patient dies, it creates over-fear among the public. Because it becomes popular to ask for the right of knowing, a patient needs to sign on a contract or information sheet. On the documents, list many possible results this surgical operation might cause. Even if it is a mild surgical operation, there will also be several pages. Its scaring nature is enough to destroy the patient’s spirit. Following the eyes of western medicine, people turn their eyes to the death reasons that it can tell out clearly. Once a patient gets the diagnosis report for cancer, he is just like receiving a death sentence. 50% of people are scared to death first. I always advise people: in fact western medicine does not know how patient survives, why to give you up to western medicine. The advance of western medicine in clear explanation of the death reason is well documented in forensic medicine. So there is an example in which criminal invents new toxic stuff to kill people, but escapes the penalty of the law since the forensic medicine fails to explain its mechanism. I thought Chinese medicine can kill people with the use of the Yin-Yang and Five-element, forensic medicine cannot explain it either.

 

Chinese medicine usually knows how the person survives, but not knows how he dies. So, western medicine studies medicine from the alive person, but Chinese medicine studies medicine from a dead person and makes corrections. Chinese medicine never emphasizes the significant role of medicine. This is different from western medicine, and it appears that Chinese medicine, therefore, is without strong confidence. When in work, the Chinese medicine doctor has a kind of attitude that he may treat the disease but not life. The disease in a young of twenty years of old is easier to treat. For disease in an old man of eighty years of old would be hard for any Chinese medicine doctor, since his body is already in autumn, not in spring. Chinese medicine emphasizes more the role of patients, not the doctors, since it is the patient who solves the disease, and it is his body Qi that works. The doctor only helps the body Qi. It is a helpful role, not a determining role.

 

The public does not now pay much attention to Chinese medicine. This is also because of some reasons from the Chinese medicine side. Chinese medicine does not want people to develop addictive to the doctor. The risk of the dependence of the public on western medicine is that the public asks the western medicine take the responsibility in healthcare, for people with over-load enjoyment of life. The western medicine not only not refuses such requirement but happy to take the responsibility of protection. So, human, under the support of science, diverts far and far away from nature. What I worry is whether science can support all the way to the end. In other words, if the speeds of the science development could match the speed of the desired expansion of human being. With the support of “Viagra”, indulging in sexual pleasures is no longer an abnormal lifestyle. “Viagra” can cause sudden death of people, will the western medicine also cause sudden death of human being? How couldn’t I know that the most important is the development? I admit in fact that science is an elixir of life and believes that eating the elixir the person will become an immortal. However, it is not that everyone can eat the elixir. With dirty body, with the non-settled desire, the elixir would cause sudden death!

 

Science is the gift given by God (Nature). However, it has its own “proper time”. If it is not properly used in the proper time, it is poison! Some patients were pleased after listened to my daughter’s explanation for their diseases: “What you said is correct. Write your prescription now. I want to try it as soon as possible.” My daughter refuses to write any herbal formula to them: “If you cannot change your lifestyle and your disposition, drinking herbal tea is not to help but harm you. If you drink liquor while you drink herbal tea, what the herbal tea will work for you? If you get upset or angry when you are drinking the herbal tea, what meridian the herbs would travel in? What’s the difference like to kill you?”

 

During the diagnosis by Chinese medicine, the role of “I” is significant. Chinese medicine emphasizes not only the doctor’s “I”, but also the patient’s “I”. This is hard to be accepted by western medicine. There is almost no any “I” in the western medicine CT film. The difference between the instruments and the doctors in western medicine is not clear. It is very obscure the personal color in the medicine. I saw a medical lawsuit. The responsibility falls on the quality of a medical instrument, in the final determination.  I noticed that the number of psychologists and the patient is one to one during psychotherapy. Even so, there is no “I” in the doctor’s side, neither an “I” in the patient’s side. So the therapeutic result of the western psychotherapy is not satisfied. The personal role is so substantial in Chinese medicine, that once a senior Chinese medicine doctor dies, his medicine loses forever too.

 

In Chinese culture, everywhere there is such “I”, so that Chinese feel that there is no more significance for a description of a purely objective. For example, if a teacher teaches the essay << My mother >>, he would think that with a too much objective description of the mother, making the mother as the same as other’s mother, would be an artistic defect. The title of the essay is only to tell you that you need to write something about your mother. But if you did not imply yourself in the relationship with your mother, did not tell out how you love her through your description, your essay would be a meaningless one.

 

Chapter 53: Nature power in healing

 

My grandmother died when she was thirty years old. She died of withered, very weak in physical body energy. She had even no power to breathe. The night she died, she said to her two daughters: “You can go to sleep. I would be ok in the first half of the night, it would be an something happen in the following half night.” Her death triggered my mother to learn medicine. My mother told me, she was only little more than ten years old when my grandmother died. She knew nothing to help her. If she had given her some supplementary and nourishing medications, my grandmother would not have died. After my mother died, I realized that my grandmother might also die from heart disease. My mother’s heart was always in a weak condition for all of her life. She dared not to walk crossroad when she was 17 years old, since she may fall in loss of consciousness any time. How could the later-life nourishing medication help such inherit weakness? In my family for continuous three generations, there was only one child in the family in each generation. My grandmother strongly insisted my mother have four children. My young brother is only one year younger than I. It was the time in China, in which there was “three years of natural disaster” and also the “Cultural Revolution” period. The poor life condition made my mother fall down after giving birth to my young brother. She fell down on the bed for three years. Now I can consider that she might catch rheumatism. She felt pain all over the body, hard to move. It was in the Culture Revolution, my father escaped away, no one knew if he was dead or alive. No one could help my mother.

 

She lied on the bed, performed acupuncture and cupping for herself. It is interesting that she also injected some vitamins to herself with a syringe. Three years later, she could get up, but the bone in the whole body had changed form. Ten years later, she died from heart failure. After giving birth to me, my mother has no breast milk. Also due to it was the “three years of natural disaster period”, my body is very weak in both inherit and later life nourish. I have had experienced many times of the close to death feeling. Whenever there is an infectious disease, my mother looked at me and felt worried. Mother let my three brothers catch measles and chickenpox to get lifelong immunity. She however dared to let me catch such diseases. She said I would die if I catch such diseases. Mother let me eat a spoon of placenta hominis  (e.g. dried human placenta) and I escaped from the infectious diseases. But my mother has been worried about my lack of immunity.

 

When I came into middle age and felt my heart weaker and weaker, I realized that the same quality of the hearts of mine, my mother’s and my grandmother’s. Later, I got the same symptoms as my grandmother. I felt weaker and weaker. I could hardly get up for a movement. My heart was exhausted with a burden, extreme fatigue. No medication works. I know it is not that the medication is not right and it is not that the therapy per se is wrong either. It is due to the too weakness of my heart that was too weak to hold any medication. For such condition, the author of the book << Thinking about TCM >>, Mr. Liu Lihong compared it with the soil that is too dry to absorb any water. The water poured on the soil is not only not absorbed, but also flows away. The weakness of heart resulted in many other problems, such as the failure of other organs, and the growth of bone spurs. My walk is not only weak but very difficult. Clearly, the road of my mother and my grandmother is in front of me.

 

Nourish and treatment is not an escaping way for life. Wouldn’t the doctor who treated my grandmother give her nourishing medications? My mother drunk her own herbs, expanded her life to as long as possible. But the weak heart finally made her leave the world too early. When I lied down on the bed and felt hard to move and felt very tired, I knew that I could not escape from the fate of my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother who did not know any medicine and my mother who knew medicine went the same way. Is there any third way for me to go?

 

I chose the third way. I bought a land in the countryside. I sat on the ground, sometimes lay face down to the soil, from spring to summer, to autumn, to winter. I had a house built. The house was ready, and my heart was no longer weak. The bone spur disappeared. The weakness stopped.

 

When I was young, I could not understand why old people like to have sunbathing. Now I know, the sun, the soil, and the spring wind have something that nourishes the human body, and that could improve the life energy of human being. Returning to nature should be the more prominent therapy than the nourishing and treatment. It is a pity that my mother and my grandmother diverted away from nature for a too long time. They did not realize or experience it. For this, I doubt that the disease of my mother and my grandmother might be a disorder of lifestyle. Is it due to a long time of isolation from nature, artificial living and work conditions that evoked the resist of the heart? The heart opposes the burden through not working hard. We, however, use drugs, heart pacemaker, bypass operations to maintain the heart, but not follow nature. Sometimes, only the sunshine can help people with depression. The lack of sunshine alone can cause depression. The patients with depression are more convincing for the harm of escaping nature than the patients with heart disease. For those poor but healthy people, psychologist gives various explanations from the psychological aspects. To me, the poorness makes them more close to nature. This should be the main reason for their happiness and health. If there is no energy source from nature, even Chinese medicine, and Chinese herbs are hard to supply more body energy to the patients. So, don’t have superstition to western medicine, nor Chinese medicine. The best herb cannot replace the role of nature in health maintenance.

 

In nature, many kinds of diseases can cure naturally. Many diseases should not be regarded as a disease. I told my daughter. If I would get dementia, she could perform peace-death (euthanasia) to me, since this disease could bring many troubles to others. My daughter smiled and said she will have me wear a body of animal fur, and leave me in the mountains. She said: you can wander around there. What trouble you can bring to us? I will send a shepherd dog to watch you. I feel her idea is excellent. Patient with dementia would damage things in the room. What they can damage in the mountains? If the patient returns to wildlife, it might be useful for their recovery. Have a look at the nursing home in the US, the patients with dementia sit in wheelchair line by line. How terrible the picture is. I thought if there would have some dogs or cats around them, have children playing around them, would the mind of these patients better? The importance of the human relationship and human feelings and the natural lifestyle are all more important than we believe now. Even if we do not realize this importance of the harmony of the nature and human, of the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory from the Chinese medicine point of view, only from the consideration that human is birth from the nature, and human needs the re-relation with the nature to maintain the health, it would be enough for us to establish a theory much similar to Chinese medicine. If someone wants to suppress this realization, they appear not close to human nature. It would evoke our suspect for their intention.

 

If it is correct that our health needs us not to throw away the primitive life completely, should we return to the primitive lifestyle from time to time? We admit that many current diseases belong to rich diseases, to lifestyle disorders, but we can do nothing to correct it.

 

I remembered something that my grandmother said before. When we feel hard to understand how can those of people who are lack of life care, are not living according to the modern lifestyle, but survive, she said Nature feeds them. At that time, I felt that my grandmother is very superstition. We always believe that nature is cruel to the human being to live. If we exposure to nature completely, we would not be able to live. Those who were said by my grandmother to be fed by Nature, are just living in a primitive lifestyle! Now we realize, it is not at all strange or mysterious that Nature feeds people. Are our lives indeed fed through the modern lifestyle? Do we not regard the secondary factor as the main factor in the way of putting the cart before the horse? The most healthy things are in nature. It is the best way to get health by returning to and living by nature.

 

My mother told me before that her senior fellow apprentice got tuberculosis. Sixty years ago, tuberculosis implied death. The man set a shack under the mountain and said that he was going to mourn for his mother. He started to live in a primitive manner. Three years later, his tuberculosis got cured without any treatment. I thought that her senior fellow apprentice understood the meaning of nature more than my mother.

 

 

Chapter 54: Suicide, medical or emotional disorder?

 

A survey for the university students in Beijing showed: there are 100,000 students with depression. It was one-quarter of the all students at that year in Beijing. It is also indicated from the results of the study of Beijing university student psychology conditions, more than 60% of university students have above the middle level of disorders in the psychology. This number is creasing. Recently, the data from Xi’an psychology health institute suggested that in this province, half of the 720,000 patients with depression are students. Junior school students were 16%, senior school students were 18%, and university students were 24%. We cannot understand these data. What happened to our children?

 

According to the national health minister: there are 287,000 suicide cases every year in China. It is about 3.6% of all death cases in the country. Among the death reasons between 1995 and 2000, this is the fifth big death reason. 80% of suicide cases were with depression. Two-third of the patients with depression have an intention of suicide. Ten percent to fifteen percent of them successfully got suicide. From the year 2000, there was 22.2 persons suicide among every 100,000 population. There is one suicide every two minutes, eight of them not succeed. The ones with suicide intention are six to seven folds of those who already tried suicide. Besides the death due to suicide, there are ten to twenty folds of people who did not succeed in the suicide got functional disability. Among the 15 to 34 years of old, suicide is the most critical reason for death.

 

There was a young boy whom I have helped him to decide the desired university to go. He told me, the first day when he went to the university, the psychologist doctor in the university declared to all of them new students: “There would be 20 of your guys get suicide. My job is to reduce the number to ten…” I felt hard to understand. Is it an infectious disease or epidemic disease? Even for a famous university as the Beijing University and Qinghua University become careless about the jumping building suicide. A “depression” becomes the full reason for these students’ suicide. If we accept this reason, we should carelessly look at the one-quarter student death? How scary it is! (The reason to develop such thinking is just from the western medicine, its definition thinking manner. The Yin-Yang and Five-element thinking would be able to correct it.)

 

I also checked the conditions in the US. In the USA, 5,000,000 people are taking anti-depression drugs. There are 300,000 people died of suicide. One-fifth of children and youth in the US have emotional disorders. Experts induced: there are about 6,000,000 children in the US who have severe emotional disorders. It appears that the condition in the US is much worse than in China. They have only 2 billion populations. The World Health Organization now lists the depression as one of the five diseases that harm human life. It predicted, up to the year 2020, the emotional disorders, including depression and epilepsy, would be the second primary reason for human death. 

 

Experts estimate, in the future 20 years, the number of people with emotional disorders will increase sharply. The depression causes stress in the family and social relationship and reduced labor ability. It is estimated, one suicide could affect at least six persons around the dead one. The person with depression and their family all stick in the deep pain. 

 

Fear of death, how difficult is it to overcome human weakness? The traitor is afraid of death and should be hated, but can also be understood, because this is a human weakness. To not die, how many people would instead crawl out of a dog hole? Does to want to die not to oppose against the human nature? If the suicide is due to too poor, it can be understood somehow. However, from the statistic data, the territory with a high rate of suicide is usually where there is advanced in social and economy. Does that mean: the more developed, the richer, the more cultured, the less willing for people to live?  Is it true that richness and education could kill people? Professor Boris Birmaher, a psychologist in the Pittsburg University found, the children from a family with a history of severe depression have abnormal reactions to a substance that stimulates the production of growth hormone in the body. Though the study does not imply that the children with depression would have retarded growth, it supplied data for the reasons and deep mechanism of the depression syndrome. It also supports that the depression is a kind of inherent disorder. The experts said it is a biological disease, not a mental disorder. They said that it is a mistake to believe that the suicide person is in a condition at which they “did not have a clear mind for the time being", if to encourage or convince them, they would not go to suicide. The experts also said the suicide is a disease. The patients must go through professional treatment, with drugs and electric shocks, as well as mental directions. There are 80% of patients who can get cure through the treatment. However, this way, it appears that if some relatives or friends got depression, we, as non-professional, would have no help to them, since the experts said it is no use to have ideological efforts to them.

 

We did not hear any depression syndrome before. Is the depression syndrome “found” in the same way as the homosexuality? Statistic data indicated that the number of homosexuality is about 4% in populations. The number for depression is however as high as 20%! It would be scared to think this. If there are just 100 stuff in our company, we stay every day together, know each other, and have a good relationship with each other. Now, let me think that there are four homosexuality and 20 depression syndrome. How scared it is! Experts said the best treatment for the depression is electric shocking. Use it to beat the patient, to let him lose consciousness, so let him shacking without consciousness, though it is needed to prevent his suffocated due to nausea during the coma. I thought if my co-worker is just under the critical time of his work and he tells me: “I get sick, I need to go for an electric shock”. I need to stop my work and accompany him. Otherwise, what about he cannot walk after the electric shock? Does he need some help to take a car home? If I said: “Insist for a while, wait for me to stop my work first”, but he jumps off the building after turns his body? As for the homosexuality, experts said, it should be changed the traditional idea about the suicide being disrepute. The suicide is a social phenomenon, not the dark side of the society, nor a  “disrepute” thing. The public should understand the suicide person. As the ratio, there should be one depression out of every five persons. Among those who are my best friends, there would be several depression persons. I should follow the advice of the experts, look at them in normal emotion. They depress themselves and I enjoy my own happiness since the expert said it is no use to make any ideological effort to them. The suggestion of “look at them with a normal manner”, to me, sounds that I should ignore what is happing to the depressive person – see as not seen. If he is to jump off the building, I said “ok” to him? If I try my best to stop him or ask more of my colleagues to stop him, would these depressive persons, as the homosexual people in the US, go to the street and cry loudly: “We want suicide! Give us the freedom to suicide”? 

 

Chapter 55: You are not only yourself

 

It is lucky that we have no, according to the ratio, four homosexuality or 20 depressive persons in our company. The question arises: “Why we do not have many such sufferers in our company, according to the ratio?” In fact, in our company, according to my observation, there are no persons with a similar personality. In other words, we have corresponding people, but such a possibility was not changed into reality. I believe that it is the group living that corrected them. Currently, many people think that group suppresses individual, so they oppose the grouping work. I think, however, the too loss connection between the individual and the collective, could be one of the reasons causing emotional disorder of individual. There is a clinic doctor in the US. I think he found the core of the reason for the depression. He thought that depression is due to the result of a wrong way of thinking things.

 

My colleague, who got leukemia, did not follow the advice of the doctor. She started work after surgical operation. Many people regarded her survive as a mystery. Journalists also came to visit her. Later, one of the upper leaders studied her case carefully and declared to her: “You are lucky to live in a good collective. You would not be able to survive today if you change your environment to a different one.” Some journalist feels hard to understand. They asked again and again: “How cruel your leader is, to allow a patient to start work. The patient has just finished the transplantation operation. Does he not know that the patient with leukemia needs sterile environment?” Such a question is hard for us to answer right away. It is risky to allow this colleague to start work so soon. In fact, she indeed got the infection, again and again, every week for some days. She was again and again in an emergency. If she really died in such way, and if there is someone really checks the responsibility, it would be a very tough case, since our way does not follow the doctor’s advice, or follow science. It is also tough to explain our intention. If we, however, allow her lying down on the bed for rehabilitation, like many other people who had the surgical operation as her, I thought, she would mostly die as them a quite long time ago.

 

Coming to the work, at the collective efforts of all the stuff and friends here, she, as said by herself, had no time during the whole of the day to remember her disease. I do not know what else an environment would be better to reach such a result. She had the most suitable chance to develop depression. In fact, among her wardmate in hospital, some persons did suicide by jumping off the high building. She said two days ago, that one of her wardmates, during the time her family discussed whether her disease got returned she jumped from the ninth level of a building. Her family did not find that. After returned to the ward, he was not there on his bed, but the windows were open… If people cannot think about his disease, and enjoy the happiness of the living, people would have no depression. In this way, how a person would think about suicide? To reach this point, however, it is not enough to depend on the efforts of the individual, but the joint efforts of a collective. 

 

When I was young, I could not understand many of the thinking of my grandmother. My grandmother emphasized a lot on the affection among family members, on the selfless, responsibility and contribution. In all, all are the old thinking of old generations. When someone emphasized that he is living for himself, my grandmother would show contempt with a smile: “If one lives for himself, he might live very well, but might also have no desire to live.” When I was young, I could not understand the first half what she said, since she worked very hard for her grandchildren, but she also suffered a lot. Everyone knew this fact. But why if one lives for himself and he may not live? Only after I come into the adult, stated I understand her later half sentence.

 

I told the wardmate with leukemia: “You should not think about to die. Think about it, if you die, how many disasters of life would happen: Your son loses mother when he is very young; your husband loses a wife in middle age; your parents lose daughter when they are old. For us, we lose money only. All of us donate the money paid for your operation. If you die, does that not mean our money was wasted as a water bubble?” Therefore, she endured massive pain due to the rejection reaction. The spiritual energy is not only for herself. If it is only for oneself, one may lose life many times in one life. One life is not enough for so many times of suicide.

 

Current people overemphasize the importance of self — no others in his heart. Everything can be concentrated entirely to himself, but he gives up life so ready. This means, once the life is concentrated to the self, the “I” is not expanded but shrunk. “I” is an army group. There is “you” in the body of your children. There is “you” in the body of your parents. There is “you” in the body of your brothers and sisters. There is also “you” in the body of your friends and relatives. “You” are in everywhere you are something to do with now and before. If you lose part of “I”, you will feel that you lose part of your own life. If you lose too much “I”, though you do not realize, your “I”, cannot be cheated. He will be unhappy, gloomy, even depressed. The thinking of contracting all the “I” back the self is a way of suicide. It is imbalance for the development of the human brain or heart. Over emphasize both the social nature or individual nature is harmful. The human brain and heart are seeking a balance between the human individual and the social nature.

 

Some experts said, the reason for the US Children to feel depression is due to the frequent change of living and working environment of the parents. Many children have their teenage time spend over the traveling of the family. It causes them to have no fixed play friends. Also, the divorce rate in the US is very high. The children need time to adapt the family stress in a psychologic aspect. The nature of this question, to me, is due to the difficult to set up a concrete or solid social relationship.

 

Confucianism culture, as sociology, has a relatively better way to deal with. Real sociology is not set up on a so-called correct theory that is independent of and isolated from the human heart but set up to harmony various social relationships. There is always someone who comes to seek my help and wants my idea or suggestion. After a long time of observation by my daughter, she said: “The suggestion you gave to people is not always the best or the most correct. It is neither your idea. You tell people what they want to do most in their own hearts. You are not helping them to find a suggestion, but to help them confirm their own idea.” I said, correct. You found it. What I believe the best or correct idea might not bear significant meaning for them. An idea that opposes the inner feeling of the individual, is not a good idea.

 

Why do the university students feel depression? Did they not follow the parents to pass the exam to university? Do they not succeed? Why they still feel depressed and jump off the building to suicide? When an idea is obvious, our mind (brain) can realize it. But it does not mean that our heart can accept it.

 

All in all, we are not only living by the brain, but also by the heart. No matter how clear reasoning is, if the brain suppresses the heart to accept, it can work one day or two days. After a long time, the heart will feel tired and exhausted. The person will get sick. To study the suicide, it is not enough to have medical stuff attended, but also a sociologist, philosopher, and psychologist as well. It is not enough to have scientists only from the western. For the product of their thinking manner, they may not help themselves, such as a knife cannot cut its handle.

 

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

 

Currently, the healthcare expenses of China can only cover about 20% of the population. Under this real condition, to ban Chinese medicine is as to allow Chinese only eat one meal with fine grain, rather than three meals of coarse grain. There are half of the patients who should come to medical help, but they do not. One officer said: “The financial ability of China cannot meet the needs of healthcare for all population.” All in all, one word for China: “poor”. If my grandmother lived, she would have said: poor people have a poor way to live in poor. Can we not live since we are poor? Can we let the half of Chinese not have healthcare due to our poor? From what time we can only live in a luxurious life but not a poor life? I do not think that there is a significant meaning to discuss whether Chinese medicine or western medicine is good.

 

Even if western medicine is 100% good, it occupies 100% of the expense for the healthcare but only serves the 20% of Chinese. Is it not an aristocrat medicine? The hospital always builds up a more prominent building, imports more advanced instruments, and serves more aristocrat people. Science is under continuous development, to catch the speed of the science, the hospital can only input more and more high technology, and goes far and far on the road of aristocrat style. If the treatment needs only ten dollars, the cost of the examination and of “seeing a doctor” may need ninety dollars. If you have money, you have all the examinations done, you would see your disease, even if you are not a doctor. If after the complete examinations, you cannot see your disease, I would be sorry to say that your doctor can not see it either.

 

I remembered when the MRI just came, a doctor asked me to have a test. The price is two folds of my monthly salary. I asked, can this machine treat the disease? The answer is no. It only allows the doctor to see my “disease”. The doctor wants to see my “disease” but wants I to pay the cost. Does that mean that I need to buy glasses for him if he is short-signed? During the course in hospital, I feel that I need to pay money for the doctor for X-ray glasses, later, Ultrasound glasses, again CT glasses, or MRI glasses. If I do not pay money to buy such glasses for the doctor, he cannot work.

 

I feel that my disease has much value of enjoyment, so I had better leave it to myself. I asked the doctor if you see the “disease”, how are you going to treat? The doctor said, there is no way to treat currently. I asked, then what’s the meaning to have this test? The doctor said it allows us to make it clear what it is. This makes me remember the biopsy after death. It bears meaning to the doctor and medicine, but not to the dead. I am not going to pay to dissect myself.

 

In the earlier year of the last century, some Chinese felt happy for able to see their “disease”. They feel clearly sure in heart even if the disease cannot be cured. Now, people spend much money, they can see the “disease”, but not get cured. They feel not happy. They wish to spend money on the most critical point, e.g., on the cure. The costs of detection and tests in a hospital are scared high. The nature of the aristocrat nature of western medicine expresses the fact that, without a big hospital, without instruments, it is hard for a doctor to be a doctor. Many doctors in the hospital with high titles are only the technician knowing how to manipulate a machine. If we let them go to the county hospital, town hospital, village clinic, they are no longer a doctor. They can do nothing.

 

It is commonly said that doctors want to work in a big hospital. If there are no instruments, the doctor without the instruments can still be called a doctor? It is commonly said that ordinary people want to go to a big hospital for treatment. The term of doctor is no longer for an individual, but a collective. It is the overall term for the sum of the medical instruments and medical stuff. This big “doctor” occupies the whole healthcare expenses of the whole country but only serves the 20% of the population. This 20 % of Chinese must also be rich people or those who can find money to pay to it. The metabolic function of the big “doctor” is powerful. It consumes a lot. So, the things turn worse and worse: there is no doctor outside the big hospital. If the ordinary people can not come to the big hospital for the medicine, he would only stay to die.

 

One of my colleagues returned recently from a hospital. He had a surgical operation for stomach cancer. He spends nearly 300,000 RMB. He said the patients can be separated into three groups. The first one-third group, the patients spend about 30, to 50,000 RMB, no more money, so they stop treatment. Second one-third cannot endure the painful treatment or do not want to continue the treatment or are treated to die. Only one-third of them can finish the whole treatment. He wants me to write an article to admire his wife. Seeing me feeling strange, he told me, he feels thanks to his wife since he saw that many patients had been deserted by another partner. He commented very hard on going to a doctor. It is “so hard as to go to the sky”. He anyway belongs to those of 20% Chinese.

 

I said that my mother had a nickname of “Yu Big Head”. “Big heat” in our local language means foolish. This nickname comes due to the fact that my mother paid for the patients, the money or herbs. Now I think, why my mother did so? She did so by inheritance from her Great master.  I was her herbal technician. I know she earned or lost. Chinese medicine doctors can be a role of “kill the cruel rich to help those poor” in society. Why Chinese medicine cared about the rich and the poor the same way, not refuse the rich? This is because the rich go to the doctor even if it is a minor disease and they care about their health condition very much. Why there are many nourishing and adjusting herbs? It is the serves of Chinese medicine for the aristocrat. There are always some relatively rich people who need prevention and healthcare services. My mother used the money from the rich and pay for the poor to save their life. By this way, there would have no situation such as not to save those close to dying, refuse treatment or stop treatment for those they really needed.

 

I saw an advertisement in a city. It said, do not give anything to the beggar. If you feel sympathy for them, please call the following number, the relief provider station would come to help. I thought this Relief station would supply the meal and hosting, primarily for everyone. How a high degree hotel to hosting the beggars? If the beggars come to the hotel, they would be beaten out. If every hotel is the high degree hotel, would we let the beggars live in the street? Therefore, my mother served the poor to save their life and served the rich with aristocrat help. I never saw my mother refused patients for their having no money to pay. If the patients had a disease that is hard to treat, my mother always gave them either the medicine or herbs for free. It should be known that my mother did so with her private effort. It does not mean she is dignity. I said, my mother, is a very pure person. She has no that high level of think. It is the nature of Chinese medicine that determined her action since her Great master did the same way. Therefore, Chinese medicine has never been reviled. It is after western medicine comes to China, that the Chinese medicine was reviled.

 

My daughter said that she will work in a hospital in a small town, which serves about tens of thousands of residents. She is to serve people with Chinese medicine thinking, combined with Chinese medicine and western medicine. She is to aim for less input of money on healthcare but better healing efficiency and pay much attention to the prevention. Based on the meet for the requirement for all the residents for primary healthcare, try to meet the need for more people’s need for a higher requirement. As the democracy of the US style that we can not afford somehow, the big “doctor” should not be established too much in number. She is to use two-thirds of the money to run big “doctor” and use the remaining one-third money to help doctors such as Chinese medicine doctors who are more flexibility in treatment and more close to the ordinary residents.

 

Chinese medicine is developed in the history of the poor. We have no bread yet, how can we throw away cornbread now. Without bread would rather die. What logic is it? My daughter said, 80% of the disease can be solved with ordinary treatments. The big hospital monopolized talented people, the instruments, techniques, price, but has low efficiency. If one has a common disease but goes to the big hospital, it would be said to be cheated to pay money, rather than to be treated. This is one of the reasons that people now feel unhappy. Though the medicine tends to go for higher level service, people want to find the best doctor, use the best medications. What people need is the best suggestion. People need a doctor whom they can trust. My daughter learn western medicine, has friends in western medicine, is to understand the most advanced development in western medicine, so be able to give the best suggestion to her patients.

 

Under such condition, it is a very significant thing to train a doctor with both Chinese medicine and western medicine. 

 

 

Chapter 57: Nature of water

 

Though I am a Chinese, I am still very interested in the study Chinese. The foolish of Chinese, in the eyes of others, is the living fossil in my eyes. Many people said that the Chinese have no religion believing and they feel sad about this. I feel that it is a good thing for the world, If the Chinese would have believed in Allah or Jesus, whole nation has one heart, one believing, they may also launch a what “Holy war (Jihad)” again and again, for so-called truth, it would not be as simple as the Second World War. The Chairman Mao time was the time in which the Chinese turned a body during a dream. This work is very interesting. The US has high technology, but less population. It feels a bit hard to occupy the whole of the world.  China has a large population, but as sand. It does not destroy the world. Thanks that the Chinese have no religion believing, so the world is in peace.

 

The reason that the Chinese have no religion believing is that the current believing systems do not meet the needs of the Chinese. Water in the bowl can believe the bowl; water in the river can believe the river bed. What would the water in a sea believe? Allah and Jesus, to Chinese, are the bowl, the river bed. It can be used to drink, or to have a bath, but cannot be used to travel to the Atlantic (Ocean).

 

Foreigners admit that individual Chinese is very clever, but believe that as a group, Chinese become weak due to inside conflicts with each other. This is as the foreigners are good to study the individual, but weak to study the union. They cannot find that thanks for such inner conflicts, that makes the Chinese not stick to the bowl or pool. After drinking, they left the bowl, and after a bath, they left the pool. The things as the bowl or pool do not meet the need of our Chinese. We need much bigger things. To study individual Chinese people, you cannot understand the whole Chinese as a nation. So, I do not care very much about the comments on Chinese. The person who can make a correct comment on the Chinese has not been birth out yet. 

Individual Chinese is a drop of water. This has been realized by Mr. Lei Feng, who was only 21 year of old. Why he tried to integrate himself into the masses? What’s the real nature of his spirit?

 

Study the H2O is to study the water nature but is this the whole of the water nature? Is there wind and wave in a bowl of water? Is there any hidden stream and whirlpool in a pool of water? Is there any typhoon and seismic sea wave in a river?

 

Someone may say that the typhoon and sea wave cannot be regarded as the nature of the water. However, they know that, without water, much water, how comes the typhoon and sea wave? How could people build the ship to travel in the sea without understanding the ocean stream and sea waves?

 

China is not a bowl of water. The study on a bowl of water has no big meaning to deduce the things happen in China. China is neither a pool of water. A pool of water cannot hold a boat or turn over the boat. Much water of Lei Feng style, though each is only a drop of water, makes the Chinese into a group, to potential, to accumulate into a deep pool and to hold a dragon. This is why Chinese tend to chase for big, for size, and space. They do not care the small stream but river; not care the river, but the ocean. It is not little math, but great mathematics.

 

Egyptian used pyramid and obelisk to express forever. Chinese culture used another way to build the pyramid and obelisk. The material for the pyramid is human. The building structure is human social relationships.

 

Chinese study the water nature, not only through the fish, the ship to feel and to express, but also use dragon to express the nature of water in an extraordinary manner. Therefore, Chinese do not believe bowl, not river bed. If they believe, they would rather believe dragon.

 

The nature of a dragon makes the Chinese have willing to believe but hard to have superstition. Let ask the question: how many Chinese not believe science? No one. However, how many Chinese have superstition to the science? This makes the Chinese go to western medicine hospital for a check but also goes to Chinese medicine for pulse feeling diagnosis. There is a kind of reasoning factor for such a bland and no-aim manner in the medical care of Chinese. Such action and behavior of ordinary Chinese are actually to combine the study on H2O on the wind and wave. So, believing both western medicine and Chinese medicine, among ordinary Chinese, it not at all a conflict. It has nothing to do with the foolish. Therefore, the opinion would fall into failure, that if a person becomes rich, and if it is no longer expensive to see a doctor,  Chinese medicine would have no its market. These people think that through the education to the ordinary Chinese, the Chinese would sublate Chinese medicine after their understanding to the science become better. I think such opinions all will fall failure. Many scientific predictions and so termed reasoning thinking come to failure again and again.

 

No matter how deep the study to the H2O, it cannot replace the study to the flood and sea wave. In sociology, the study to the individual cannot replace that to the group. In medicine, the study on the local cannot replace that on the whole body, and study on the still part cannot replace that of dynamic action.

 

Deep understanding of Chinese to the relationship between the local individual and the collective, the whole, help them to understand the relationship between western medicine and Chinese medicine. Why should human life in a collective and society? Why would a Chinese consider and care the whole society or the whole nation, even if he stays alone in a single room? That the Chinese chase for a group is to chase for the potential of a group or of a collective. The “potential” does not exist with the individual. Study on the individual would never reach this “potential”.  

The “Qi” and the “potential” (imposing manner) is the commonly used terms in the Chinese mathematics and physics.

 

 

Einstein eventually pursued a large unified field. And Chinese culture is always the pursuit of a large unified field. The universe, the Dao, etc. represents this large unified field. The study of individual thing must be compared and adjusted from time to time to the large unified field. Chinese medicine theory is established in such continuous comparison and adjustment with the large unified field. How could we say it is not science or not reasoning? To have a systematic observation to propose a theory; to use the theory to explain the phenomenon to predict and change the future, which of steps commonly used in scientific research has been lost in the Chinese medicine? If the Yin-Yang and Five-element model in Chinese medicine can bear the examination and test for a long time of history, if it is excellent in the prediction and treatment of disease, and if it allows us to find a clear view of the body, emotion and spirit, find a way to dominate the healthcare and disease treatment, how could we say it is not a science or not reasoning? To study the water nature through H2O and the water in a sea, though they seem no common aspects, which one is more close to the nature of water from the water nature point of view?

 

Chapter 58: Pseudo-boxing

 

The daughter walked through a garden and saw one of them practiced Taiji Quan. After watching for a while, she went to talk to that man. Sure enough, this person's Taiji Quan is a family biography (handed down from the older generations of the family). She consulted with him and showed what the style she was practicing. The man said, what you are practicing is a Taiji gym, not Taiji Quan. My daughter disagreed. The man said, practicing as your way, you would have an illness, feel cold in hands and feet…I was stunned when she told me this. For the late two years, she was indeed, cold in hands and feet. She tended to pose her feet to my chest to warm when she went to bed at night. We have discussed several times for the reason.  

 

During my pregnancy with her, I did not get cold. When she was young, her small hands and feet are commonly warm. So where comes the cold? We never thought that it is due to the practice of Taiji for a competitive match. I felt awkward to understand. Even if what she practiced is not Taiji Quan, but a gym, how could it cause sick? Could we get sick when we do exercise with radio music? My daughter said she asked so. The man said the Taiji Quan is using the mind to control the action. It asks the unity of the mind and the action. If we only do action but not its mind part, it would be harmful to health. After heard this, I opposed: action is a form, it is empty. What’s a matter if we practice an empty? My daughter, who appeared understood, said that: is the form in the Taiji Quan the same in the gym? Why is it such form but not the form in the gym? How could we say that the form in the Taiji Quan is empty? What about the sequence of the actions? How could we say that the sequence of the action has no meaning? Once we start the action of Taiji Quan, our body meridians would have the corresponding reaction. The uncontrolled reaction would not cause harm to the body?

 

My daughter wanted to adjust the body condition to normal, so expressed willingness to learn from him. The man said, he would teach a person who has never learned Taiji Quan, than teach a person as my daughter who has gone a reverse road. My daughter said, why not give me a chance to try a while? Later, the man sighed to other students: “Your guys, no one has higher realization ability as this girl to learn fast.”

 

From this story, I thought, not to speak of Chinese medicine, even if for a Taiji Quan, which looks as simple as a gym, how could it be so mysterious in Chinese mind? Since my daughter followed the guidance of a gym master, practiced Taiji as a match, she got hurt, according to her own words.  This made her think if the sudden death during exercise also the result of a kind of “hurt”? Currently, it is so common that people doing exercise being damaged. Including the author of the book << The Complete Book of Running>>, he died from sudden death during the exercise. Is this not against the original aim of the physical exercise? Western style of Taiji Quan could hurt people. Deducing it to more, would the practice of Chinese medicine by the western medicine manner also hurt the Chinese medicine and make it withered?

 

My daughter learned the Taiji Quan very hard, and she learned it with her heart. I said, do you need to learn in that way? She answered Gongfu, Gongfu, what it needs is the Gongfu (practice hard). She said, understating the Chinese culture during the practice of Taiji Quan, many things in the Chinese culture can be linked and melted each other. Not only the Chinese medicine, the military, the 36 tricks… I asked, what is the relationship between the exercise with the 36 tricks? She said this is boxing. Boxing is march art. It is a force. Is the force not factor in a military? Taiji Quan focuses on cotton-soft. Cotton, there would be able to hide a needle. Soft, there would be a solid-hard in it. Taiji Quan can also be used for a body-to-body fight in a war. It has mind law but no action law. She said, from the Taiji Quan, she realized the use of herbs. For example, the herb Gancao is used in 93 classical formulas. Every of the herbal formula has the herb Gancao. What’s the role of the herb Gancao in each herb formula? The current text-book said it is to consciliate the natures of other herbs in it. In fact, its role varies in each formula, depending on its couple with different other herbs. I asked: “By this way, the herb Gancao works like me. My function varies in different person groups?” She said: “En, somehow yes. Therefore, Chinese medicine work is not boring You would always have a new experience, have your own findings. Your own heart feels it. If you want to teach others, their hearts are different from yours, so it is not easy to pass to them since it is not replaceable. Therefore the Chinese medicine teaching needs inducing, inspiring, and needs a different way for different students…”

 

Mr. Zhang Gongyao read the Chinese medicine books for 33 years. He cured his grandfather’s disease with Chinese herbs. His wife is also a Chinese medicine doctor, but he opposed the Chinese medicine crazily. His story makes me remember my father. I grew up in the voice of my father’s opposing against Chinese medicine. The current opposing voice against Chinese medicine, to me, sounds like the same voice from my father. When I was young, I stood at the side of my father, since science meets the taste of young generations. It is easy to attack others. It is funny to do so. I thought if there were no young generations, and no the western thinking, would the “Culture Revolution” really happen? My father regards the not counteract and not argue of my mother as the reasonless of Chinese medicine. He therefore always gave a lesson to my mother, wishing to change her with his truth. My mother always listened smiling. Many years later, my father admitted to me his failure in his correction project, since my mother changed nothing. He summarized it is due to woman’s unreasonable.. He thought a woman could not accept the truth.  

 

Now I think, my father’s attitude against Chinese medicine, and just denying the women, all in all, is due to his eyes towards outside not inside. Man needs to feel no anything he does not know, no anything he cannot do. He needs to feel he has the truth, has dignity, is very strong and fears nothing. He needs to feel he is powerful; nothing can beat him. As to her son, my mother protected my father’s such feeling and needs. It is needed for a family, a clan and a country since what we face the universe is so broad to measure. We need the man who feels very strong and has a brave to open a survive road for the human being upon disaster.

 

For this reason, when I grow up, and when I stand on the side of my mother, I also, as a mother, protected the dignity feeling of my father, as a man.  I thought, the wife of Mr. Zhang Gongyao did not refute him, most probably with the similar psychology. After 33 years of reading Chinese medicine, fail to really understand Chinese medicine, then turn to attack the Chinese medicine, I understand such feelings. I also feel sympathy for him. It is not his own error or mistake. Just like the detour I took, it is the historical error. It is the penalty of history.

 

My daughter said: “My grandmother did not allow you to learn Chinese medicine. She was right. If you do not learn it with your heart, but with your brain, it is not good for both you and  Chinese medicine”.

 

I guess if I have had learned Chinese medicine at that time, I would also have learned it from the science point of view. Most possibly I would not be able to change my mind, the result of which is not better than Mr. Zhang Gongyao. The example of Mr. Zhang Gongyao can only happen in China. Watching him, I feel a kind feeling. It is the mistake of Chinese style. One Chinese medicine doctor told Mr. Zhang Gongyao: “You said the herb Renshen (ginseng) has no herbal effect. It is simply a piece of a turnip. It is not as nutritious as the turnip. Now, I invite you to eat it. Dare you?” I think, if Mr. Zhang is a western people, he will follow. Now, don’t see that he is so opposed to the Chinese medicine, he dares not to eat the Renshen (ginseng). This is really the humor of Chinese. Being a Chinese means living in a comic dialogue. Very interesting.

 

Chapter 59: Woman movement

 

All in all, people said they do not oppose Chinese medicine, but it is hard to understand the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory in Chinese Medicine. In fact, anyone who has had modern education is hard to accept the Yin-Yang and Five-element theory. I felt difficult too. If one wears a suit, he needs to wear leather shoes. No one will wear Beijing cotton shoes. I did not think that I would accept Chinese medicine either. However, I accepted it very natural and very simple. For example, during the years in which I worked for women benefit, I needed to study the direction of women movement. According to western theory, women are lack of spiritual value. Besides multiplying human generations biologically, women had almost no significant role in human history. Therefore women are the second, who follow and adhere to men. In modern times, the arising women movement in the western world made the women standing in the opposite position of men, causing conflict, resulting in a difficult task for a human being. In the studying of the comparison for the women movement between the western and the Chinese women, it was found that the western style women movement has never grown up in China. The reason for it is the function of the Chinese Yin-Yang theory. In a thinking that man dominates outside, woman dominates inside (home); that the Yin and Yang help and nourishes each other; that men govern the public, and women govern the home issue; all things in the public are like in a single family, women have much role to play in the field of the land (man is sky). The dignity and the self-confidence of women were not hurt or damaged. In the Yin-Yang theory, we can find many “new” clues to solve the confusions that occur in the western women’s movement.

 

In a study of criminal psychology, it was found that similar results. According to the western theory, and according to the body constitution classifications based on psychology, any people would have both merit or defect sides. The defect ones would be classified into psychological disorders. This makes the prevention of the crime into the correction of the human “defect”, resulting in a very poor effect in the correction of human psychologic diversion. However, the harvest is poor though we have worked hard on it. Under such case, if we care the specific body constitution, separate the person according to the Five-element theory, it can create much more methods for the prevention works, than the simple body constitution according to the western psychology. It can be said that my understanding and accept Chinese medicine is due to my return from the western world.

 

Chinese care the “root”. The root is the history, is the tradition. The history buried in the soil is without branch or leaves. It needs the current sunshine and rain, to have its new branch and leaves. When its leaves and branches become rich, we could then understand its relationship with the current time, but not with root. Only when this generation of branch and leaves got withered, we then found the meaning of the root through the falling of the leaves.

 

Chinese Yin-Yang is regarded as the two sides of the conflict, in the view of the western theory. The transfer of the Yin and Yang is also regarded as the conflict-reunite. However, the western thinking does not consider five-element as the power to push the Yin-Yang transfer. It terms the Yin and Yang into the “Water” and “Fire” two elements only. The ‘water” and the “fire”  has no “wood” to conduct each other. So, in their mind, there would have only “combat”, no “nourish”; only “struggle against”, no “reconcile” or “compromise”; only deny the deny, no confirm the confirm. Only paying attention to the two elements but not five elements, the water, and the fire would only come to fight, to conflict, to struggle against each other. Without the help by the wood, without the expanding and suppress by the metal and soil, there would have no circle running of the five elements, no “long-running machine” mechanism for the universe, there would have neither the “water-fire co-assistance”.

 

 If we allocated the people with the Fire constitution into the western gallbladder type, then the fast reaction, strong action, and active is the merit of people of this group, and pushing, irritable, easy to get upset would be their defect. However, in reality, how could we separate the merit and the defect of a person apart? Is there any necessary to separate them? If we remove the risk of the fire off, is there any function of the fire? To separate one thing into two, it can be done in theory, but cannot succeed in reality. To it is separated with great effort, it would create confusion.

 

Either the western or eastern, both make the thing that can be seen easily as the starting point of thinking. Both start the study by exploring the nature of the things. The difference is: Chinese believe that the nature of thing belongs to a “hidden”. We should follow its “hidden”. Western believes that the not-showing things should be shown out. I said, the human usually has no choice. What he chooses is his nature. During the solution of mathematics by mathematicians, it does not mean that they cannot solve the math, but that they want to find a way to solve it, which he believes the most beautiful. From this point of view, the solution has already in his mind. He is not seeking an outside solution but seeking from his inner side.

 

Yin-Yang and Five-element are also such inner nature, inner own. So, when we are seeking an explanation to the world, we seek not only the correct one but also a happy one. Otherwise, even if all agree it is correct, we still feel not a beauty, not satisfied. I agree that the western things are advanced, the scientific. I agree on it no matter how all of you admire it. However, I disagree as a woman the theory in which a woman is looked down to no use, or no dignity, or the theory in which women bring to the opposite side of man. I neither agree, once there is some crime or jumping down a building (to suicide), to kick off the question by saying “he is sick”. In fact, if we apply the Yin-Yang theory to cover the Contradiction theory, separate the two conflict sides as two elements, add additional three elements, make the theory more complete, nothing is to waste time. Why not can we not do this way?

 

I feel the Yin-Yang theory can also be used in the internet discussion. It is common on the internet that there occur conflict and abuse due to hard to understand each other. It is actually a small obstacle set by Nature by propose. It asks us to turn a small curve to connect. For example, if we connect the fire and water directly, they would be a conflict with each other. If we allow the wood to connect the fire and water, it works well. Chinese chase the personal relations, just because the nature set up the person relation there. If we regard the western thinking as Yang, the Chinese thinking would be the Yin. People can be separated into five major groups, according to the five elements. Though the fire person is hard to co-operate with the water person, with the presence of the wood person, harmony by the soil person and metal person, the conflict relations can be changed into power for the group. Such as the connection of material with different conduct ability could produce the “electric potential”. The Five-element “electric potential” is the “Forever running machine” of the Yin-Yang running. If we build up the five element association in the internet society with this propose, the internet would be full of growing power, not crisis.

 

Chapter 60: Healthcare reform

 

There will have a new turn of medical reform in China. From the plan for the reform this time, it is to re-build the medical net that has been broken before. However, the designer of the new reform said: “ The new reform plan is the truck of the England, arm, and leg of German, Head of the United States, a combination of the three plans.” We, ordinary people, have not forgotten the healthcare system in the year 1970s’. We will see what may happen, see if this new one would be better than the Chairman Mao’s model.

 

No matter how you say, we need to see the nature and the result. The designer said: “The direction of future is: the government pays the treatment of small illness; general severe disease depends on the social insurance system; very severe disease depends on the commercial medical insurance.” “The practical procedure is: in the city, in the community healthcare system, such as in the community clinic, it is free. In the countryside, such as in the town clinic, the treatment is also free.”

 

I shook my head while I read this plan/proposal. “According to the preliminary calculation from the healthcare reform, the Ministry of Health, China, to reach the goal of the free healthcare coverage for the whole nation, there needs 2000 billion RMB. The Ministry of Finance doubts the figure.” The money, I wonder it may go for vain. It seems that we are not poor. To be able to spend 2000 billion means poor? The point is that we cannot live a poor life. “Eating would not make you poor, wearing would not make you poor, but if it would not calculate carefully for spending, you would get poor.” Old Chinese said so. I worry would this 2000 billion be spent on a proper place?

 

With a very little consideration, you would be able to know if this plan works or not. To leave the mild disease in the community clinic to treat is a nice idea. However, what disease, to which level the disease would be mild? Appendicitis, hypertension, birth delivery is mild disease or not? I think it is not a severe disease. But a surgical operation as appendicitis can be performed in town clinic? If yes, they can. But they need a B ultrasound. Should we buy it for them? If not, the patient needs to go the city, then turns back for surgery? For birth delivery, right now, each family has only one child. Who dares to have the birth-giving in the small town clinic? If on the halfway to the delivery, do the Cesarean section in the small town clinic? Should we have a surgical operation room in the small town clinic too? For high blood pressure, sometimes the patient needs to have CT to see the blood vessel block condition in the brain. Deduced from this, who dares to take the responsibility to determine which is small and which is a severe disease? Would it be more conflict between the doctor and the patient?

 

For the real severe disease, such as cancer, some patients are waiting to die. They only need little bit maintenance treatment. The community clinic can well deal with such a case. However, current people live so close and crowded; people feel not good to leave the patient die at home, so the patient is left in the hospital to wait for death, at least with the aim to use mortuary in the hospital. Should the community clinic prepare a mortuary? Also, if the community clinic is set as a final place for life, is it good for the emotion of other patients? The defects caused by many of such problems would not make 2000 billion as a new warm tent for corrupt?

 

Invest for 2000 billion, but no care the severe disease. Small and mild disease can be endured or can be treated, but severe disease can cause disaster and total loss for a family. Since it is said that 2000 billion is to express the concern of the government as “send fire in snow weather”, it would be better to invest the money to severe diseases, to those of diseases that can be cured, but ordinary people cannot afford. That is the way to save a life.

 

Think about why ordinary people try to save money but dare not to spend money. It is because they worry possible big need during life. What’s the biggest worry of them? Is a mild disease? No. They do not save for mild disease, but a severe disease. If the government helps them in the treatment of severe diseases, it will remove the burden in the mind of the ordinary people. Good metal should be used on the edge of a knife. It would be better to think as such, rather than spend 2000 billion for nothing. Think, if the government takes the responsibility to pay for the treatment of severe disease, the expenses of scientific research, training, development on the medicine, would not fall into the ordinary people. The cost for such as bypass surgery on the heart will reduce dramatically.

 

My daughter and I went to the hospital to see her grandmother, who is to have bypass surgery in the heart. The old lady was not in the ward. She went to a general ward for visiting. I brought her back and asked: “What are you doing there?” She said I let them see how success my operation is. I said: “You are stimulating them. How do they not know that their disease also needs such bypass surgery? How do they not want to do this surgery? But can they afford the operation? They cannot afford the operation that costs 60,000 RMB for a bypass branch. They, therefore, have to endure the short of breath and palpitation, and move to an ordinary ward, bearing not only physical pain but also the emotional suffering for possible death anytime. You go to them to show your success. Is that stimulating their suffering?”

 

Later I got know that the reason for the high cost of heart bypass branch surgery is the result of monopoly and control. The force behind it is the market economy. Generally, marketing competition makes the price goes down; it is however not so. When the market becomes a monopoly, the price goes up. If the government inserts into the treatment of severe disease, the whole room of the patients who look at my stepmother with painful, desperate and envy eyes, would have a chance to survive (to have such a surgical operation). Should the government first save these patients? If the government supports 100 patients who need the bypass surgery, would the cost come to 6,000,000 RMB? Not. It might even not be as half. Because the state's intervention, the price of the virtual high will be greatly reduced, and the effect of getting twice the result with half the effort will also enable a large number of doctors to get the opportunity to refine so that the surgical technique is no longer monopolized by a few people.

 

Of course, for the long run, it is needed to set up a medical network. The western style healthcare system, big and whole, makes this idea hardly work even if in the western developed countries. The combined western and Chinese medicine healthcare network is proposed to be considered.

 

We have had such a healthcare network before, but we stop it as a backward thing. We thought the way of life by the old generation is not right. We do not want to live in a poor life, but rich life. Once the amount of money is limited, there would be a question about how to calculate and how to plan the spending. In rich life, the planning is critical. We admit its usefulness of Chinese medicine. It can be used and is helpful in the living. Since it looks primitive and straightforward, it is therefore refused by those of people who wish to live in a rich life. It appears that they would rather die than use Chinese medicine. It makes us doubt what our aim of life is.  

 

The summer this year, a couple retired doctors came to visit us and to escape the hot summer. The man is an expert in brain surgery. Many years ago, he was sent to one of town clinic here as a hospital president. He had an excellent relationship with the ordinary people here. For 30 years when he worked here, the ordinary people from the area in which he was in charge before had severe diseases, still went to the provincial hospital to visit him for help. He was a channel of medicine for them.

 

My daughter went to the home of her grandmother to see this couple. They chatted for a long time. I knew them as well since they came here once every one to two years. Though they went abroad quite often, they still kept contact with the ordinary people here closely. That is the doctor-patient relationship of thirty years!

 

Anyway, it is for the benefit of ordinary people that the government pays much attention to primary healthcare. I feel happy for my daughter. In this way, her idea to go to the countryside to open clinic can get help through the government authority. She can spend more time on medical skill improvement. I think, in the town clinic, the combination of western medicine and Chinese medicine, that is her objective, would be better than only Chinese medicine or only western medicine. In the medicine, there need someone for study DNA, some for surgery, also someone for dealing with various need in healthcare by many families, with flexible manner. Western medicine is needed, so is Chinese medicine. How can we develop one end but throw off another end? 

 

Chapter 61: Chinese medicine: poor people need it

 

The reason for the existence and continuation of Chinese medicine is as for the existing of a General who usurps the throne of a kind king (Chinese medicine likes the king). The God would not hold the justice. The forcing power of the science is so strong that bring the human being to a no-return road. Look at the behavior of Mr. Zhang Gongyao, you would know that the cruel act of the science and the “Cultural Revolution” is the same. But I look such cruel act as the youth anxiety of the human being. It follows the growth of the human being. No one wants the youth stop to grow up for their anxiety that bears kind of risks.

 

I support Chinese medicine, but I do not deny western medicine, or to stop western medicine. However, I do not want to improve Chinese medicine to a too high level. I want to use Chinese medicine to brake the speed of the history, don’t want it to go too fast to turn off. Whenever one day, the science turns the human body nearly all as metal or plastic material, there would have no use for the Chinese medicine to work.

 

My daughter might feel sometimes confused when she felt a pulse. Found her confusing feeling, her Great master would come to check. He asked the patient: “Did you have a surgical operation before?” “Have you had a car accident?” He told my daughter, surgical operation or car accident can change the body’s original circulation pattern of the Qi and Blood. In these cases, it causes difficulties in the pulse feeling. Nowadays, the use of surgical operations is so widespread. It would eventually make the Yunqi theory not work in the human body. When there are many organs cut or removed off, and when there are many transplantations, insert of plastics or metal, how Chinese medicine could diagnose, and how it can treat a disease? At that time, why will the Chinese medicine not die?

 

Once the gene project breaks the barrier between the living things, the human would say goodby to the earth with which the human body has been in good harmony for a long history. That time will be the time the Chinese medicine dies. On that day, would human feel regret? Of course, he will. But to regret the mistakes at a young age is a law in human life. The curiosity of human cannot make it slow the step of science exploration. An individual is willing to pay his life for his adventure; the whole human being will also need to pay for the loss of valuable things including Chinese medicine. This might be the money our human being has to pay for a pass?

 

From this point of view, the idea of Mr. Zhang Gongyao is a pretty early prediction. Chinese medicine indeed not follows the narrow science theory. Chinese medicine should and will go to death later. Chinese medicine is as the country level treasure panda in China. It is of very valuable but does not match the current living conditions for it. It is not suitable to teach in school, not suitable to practice in the hospital, not suitable to have an exam as the western medicine, even not match the thinking and view of current people. We cannot prepare a social environment for the survival of Chinese medicine in a new place and with a new way, right? Chinese medicine wishes to be protected as the panda, no wonder why the people as Mr. Zhang Gongyao are so angry. I would say, however, Chinese medicine should not be destroyed today since it is needed in current time. China needs it, and western medicine needs it too. The reason that the Chinese medicine should not be thrown away now is apparent and known even by those who oppose it.

 

Those who oppose the Chinese medicine said, the reason that the Minister of Heath of China stood out to support  Chinese medicine is due to the fact that there is no proper condition in China to popularize the western medicine yet. They said it is as the same as Chairman Mao did before. He did not agree to delete Chinese medicine in China since it would make the large population in the countryside have no any medicine, no any healthcare; and the population in the city cannot afford the healthcare either. Those people cited the word of a western person: Herbal therapy is the base of poor medicine. They said the reason that the state healthcare authority cannot admit the Chinese medicine is pseudo-science is that, once they admit it, they cannot explain to those of people who cannot afford the western medicine. It is the poor that supports the lie. They said that to use the Chinese medicine to cheat the farmers, ordinary people, and poor people is to make sure the rich people and the officers can use the western medicine facility for themselves so that they induce out a political nature of the conflict between the two kinds of medical systems.

 

I am not talking about politic, but I admit that Chinese medicine is medicine for poor people. We all know it is impossible to let the people in the whole of the world live in the same way as those in the USA since the USA that has only 0.3 billions of population occupies more than half of the natural resources in the world. It does not leave more space for other countries. The healthcare cost in the US is 13000 billion per year. The GDP in China is only about 35000 billion per year. If we use all of the GDP to solve the need of drugs for the 1.3 billion Chinese, the total sum of the drug would also be only one-fifth of that in the US. How could the western medicine ensure the healthcare need of all Chinese? How could we ban Chinese medicine in this situation?

 

If my daughter blames me because I am not rich, if she blamed me for the reason when she got common cold, I did not bring her to hospital for intravenous infusion, but let her drink ginger soup, if she believes that I cheat her, thinks that it is a very pity thing for her, how could I defense myself? Could I denounce her, as my parents denounce me in my early years? If the ginger soup can solve the common cold, I think it is not necessary to bring her to a hospital for infusion.

 

I do not envy that rich people go to a hospital for treatment. I know that the development of western medicine also bases on the trying and experimenting on a living body, again and again. Even within western medicine, the traditional way of treatment is safe and cheap. Why not let the rich people get the hospital as an experiment volunteer, I myself chose the conservative way of treatment? Chinese know that old formula can treat severe diseases. They know that 500 gram of force may turn 1000 kg stuff to turn. They know that the inner nature of a person cannot be read from his face. They know that there is always more clever people than this given smart people. They know that under an ordinary grass there may hide a tiger or a lion. They know that anything in the world there must have another thing to beat it, to combat it, or to win it. They know that there could be a power to let the sunshine again by removing the cloud and that there could be mysterious in the world in the disease treatment. Therefore, they do not despise the herbs because the herbs are picked up from the yard in front of the door. They do not think this is a cheat so to feel sad, to look the whole world as a dark, so to get depression inevitably. They do not blame China because China is not as rich as the US, as you do not blame your parents because they are not rich. To me, it is the slave of the US spirit and it is a pity that someone refuses to drink ginger soup since he cannot go to hospital for intravenous infusion, refuses to eat cornbread since he cannot afford fine bread, feels depression since there is no 13000 billions of healthcare money to us; or wants suicide since not pass the exam for a famous university.

 

 

Chapter 62: Patient = experimental sample

 

In Chinese medicine, it does not mean that the Chinese medicine refuses to use logic assessment but that the result is far away from the aim of the assessment. For example in Chinese medicine textbooks, in the chapter on the property of herbs, the herbs that can be used to reduce body temperature are grouped. Many herbs have such function, such as Shigao and Dilong. The herbs in this group have only one common property: reduce fever. Whats their difference? No explanation at all, since it is hard to be classified with a logical way of thinking. This is why the student will feel hard to use the knowledge in their later clinic work, though they feel clear in mind during the class learning and easy to pass the exam. Therefore, using the teaching materials to learn the medicinal properties of traditional Chinese medicine does not achieve the purpose of using traditional Chinese medicine.

 

According to the express and understand in Chinese medicine per se, there is a vast difference among those herbs in the same group. If we regard the fever as a Fire, there are many different ways to reduce the Fire. Some herbs work to reduce the Fire as to pour water over the Fire. Some as to remove the woods from under the pot; some as to blow off the Fire or to blow over the boiling water (if the heat is due to the mixture of the wet and the fire); also some as to lift the water, then pour it down, repeatedly. In different clinic condition, the herbs needed are entirely different. If there are lots of woods with big fire, would blowing not cause a stronger fire? If the Fire is in the grass, how can we remove the woods under the fire? So, it is a way of using herbs that determines the way of expression in Chinese medicine. If we talk about the function of chess, we can talk about the function of the general, the cannon, the horse in the chess with logic thinking. If we talk about go, how can we talk about the function of each point or whole points with the logic thinking? Only in the relationship with other points, the function of the specific points can be talked.

 

I never say that Chinese medicine is "esoteric", "big" and "magic". As there is no great philosopher in China, Chinese medicine is also a Cinderella. If it needs to be admired, it needs more outside conditions, such as a castle, slaver, liege subjects, and a title of queen consort. If Cinderella is shopping with a basket, I praise her for being noble, beautiful, and elegant. How can she not be laughed at by people?

 

Chinese medicine is like the go match. It cannot be abstracted or objectified. Its vitality lies in its replacement of objectivity with reality. From the reality, from the relationship between the top, bottom, left and right, from a situation, and stripped out, it loses the certain meaning and value. To talk about Chinese medicine from an objective point of view, like to talk go out of the go plate. To do this way, there is no way to talk or no meaning. Not everything can be clearly defined. Not everything can be evaluated or analyzed with the way of if not this, it would be that, such substantial evidence. In today's era, it is indeed tough to let people admit that a theory cannot be objectified. It needs many efforts. In fact, the purpose of my interpretation of Chinese medicine is not to let people admit it, as long as people do not believe logic absolutely.  

 

Chinese medicine does not objectify itself. It does not define objects or define itself. It interprets itself in the process of interpreting pathology. Chinese medicine interprets itself in a modern environment; it is the realization of its modern value, and also the expression of its modern existence. Chinese medicine does not exist out of the human body. Human body per se is medicine. Human and medicine is the same body. Once the human body becomes stuff, Chinese medicine will lose its condition to exist too. The theory of the Yin-Yang and Five-elements might not be so perfect, but it is the only theory to combine the human and the stuff, rather than to separate them. The high value of Chinese medicine is: it is the medicine of human, not medicine for the human. It might be good to be able to objectify stuff, but the pre-condition is that such objectification bears meaning. The meaning means to the human being.

 

To explain the world from the human point of view is better than from the material point of view. The world becomes meaningful after explained. I have consulted an expert in western medicine in Beijing: why a straightforward question has no commonly suitable solution, such as common cold, birth control… He told me, no any medical method can be used for every person. There would always some “fish that escapes of fishnet”. Therefore, it is needed to develop a new method. By this way, the methods to a single disease, used by western medicine, become more and more. However, the current problem with western medicine is: it is impossible to know which method works which not. It needs to be tested one by one. It might be that, after testing ten, then find one eventually. I said: Is it true that we all are like an experimental guinea pig? Experts say that in a sense it is like this. I asked, if I experimented all of the methods, and failed, does that mean that I am a victim of the experiment? The expert said in a smile: just because there is the “victim”, the medicine can continue to develop and invent new methods.

 

Western medicine has given us forever hope in medicine. For example, the killing power of the penicillin many years ago. However, very soon the bacteria developed resistance to the biotic. The forever hope broken. Currently, the difficulty for western medicine is that it does not know which method works, among so many methods. Next, would the western medicine learn to “treatment based on an overall evaluation of the illness”? The use of the various biotic drugs should also be classified into the Chinese style: “watering”, “remove woods”, “blowing off” and so on? One of my colleagues had a fever. She was tested tens of kinds of antibiotic without any use. Now, western medicine can do bacteria culture. Pick up little bacteria sample from the body, try to test in the lab, not in the body. Spray various antibiotic to the culture dishes, see the bacteria in which dish would die. When the western medicine takes the heavy responsibility of healthcare for the whole human being, we found that it tends to use the similar manner as the Chinese medicine, independent of whether it wants or not, no matter if the current people admit this or not openly. When western medicine faces ten patients with ten methods in doctors' hands, the doctor does not know how to avoid to use the ten methods in each patient so to spend the costs for the hundred trying. In this case, should the western medicine learn from Chinese medicine, to try to find the specific co-relationship between each patient (his condition) and each antibiotic (method), rather than to force every patient being like an experimental mouse, and waste a lot of healthcare facility (such as bacterial culture)?

 

 

Chapter 63: A psychology doctor

 

These days, I am helping some students to apply for university. Some students do not know which subject is good for them. Since it is hard for them to make a decision, I left a form for them to sign: psychology test, to see what subject suits for them. When my daughter studied psychology, she brought back a thick of forms. It makes me sigh with emotion, the development of psychology is so much and so fast. However, when I choose the subject for these students, I was refused again and again: “I am not going to learn psychology, I do not want to deal with mad people.” “No lawyer, I do not want to deal with criminals.” “I do not want to learn medicine, I do not want to deal with patients.”… I cannot understand, where comes so many taboos? If exclude all of the “people with trouble”, are any there any people left? We do not want to deal with a human? Generally speaking, the major difference between ordinary people and people with mental disorders might be the loss of the reasoning in those patients. The value of reason may be the most obvious when compared with mental patients? However, a human can be indeed "reason", so "reason" can allow people to escape from mental disorders?

 

Since my mother has many patients with mental disorders, I have lots of chance to meet such patients. Later, I also have met and had some friends who are doctors in psychology, one of which is an expert. His teacher is a researcher in “731” troop. He was not “suppressed” for some academic reasons. When I first met him, I asked him: “Excuse me, how could I feel that you are the same as your patients, in any aspects?” He told me frankly: he himself is a patient with a mental disorder indeed. I know from him, the occupational disease for the doctor in psychology is a mental disorder. He brought off a lot of thick books from his bookshelves and pointed out one to me the names of the authors. There were black frames around each name. He said they are all his teachers and great masters. “Know how they died?” He asked me. Of course, I do not know. He told me: “All died from suicide.” This made me hard to understand. Expert in mental disease died of suicide. Their learning and theory cannot solve their own problem? He told me, these people were very reasoning. They brought the posthumous papers and work certificate and so on and tried the best to prepare everything ready before they died. They did not die due to mad or to the loss of reasoning, but died very “reasoning”. This expert was also very “reasoning”. He is knowledgeable, thoughtful and logical.

 

During the conversation with him, I found that he hardly endured human language. Make a conclusion? Wrong. Description? Not correct. No matter how you speak, you cannot meet his logic need. It made my fear to talk. No way, I told him: I am not going to describe, I show to you.. He, however, was happy, believing that was the best way to communicate since by this way, he could conclude by himself through his observation and finding.  At that time, there was a young doctor following him. The young doctor is a nurse in an army. Later he was sent to the Mental hospital to work. The young doctor wanted to learn the real skill of the expert. He would like to serve the expert, to see how the expert works. After twenty years, this young doctor became an expert too, with his hair turned gray.

 

There are a lot of anti-mental disorder drugs in the table drawers in my office. With several tablets, one would see God. That young doctor prescribes all for several of my friends. I asked him to do so and kept the drugs in my place. If you see that I hurried up walking or running, morning or night, it is not that I am exercising but to send the medicine to my friends. Many patients with mental disease refused to go to the mental hospital. So, sometimes, I need to invite that young doctor to my office as a quest. Others may see that I am talking with two friends, but in fact, I am covering the young doctor to work. See this young doctor, I thought the expert before. This young doctor is as same reasoning as that expert. I admit that his current level has reached the level of an expert.

 

My friends with mental disorder are all sly and capricious. They regarded the young mental doctor not as a doctor whom I invited to see their disease but an enemy whom I found for them. They tried their best to make thing difficult for him, but it did not beat him. When he made the condition stable for my friends, my friends usually invited him to a party. During the party, he did not eat or drink at all. He even did not drink a mouth of water. From the beginning to the end, he even did not lift the chopsticks. What I needed to do is to make all of the things appeared natural and normal. What he did was only one thing: talk. That mouth could not stop for eating. My friends found that I was so “natural”. They all appeared “sensible” too, not suggesting the doctor stopping talk and having somehing to eat. They did not disturb the doctor from talking. After the party, they asked me: “Why I find that the doctor is more severe for his own mental disorder than mine?” The young doctor got the same professional disease as his expert master.

 

Sometime, when I passed through the mental hospital, I would come in to visit the doctors there. One time, I knocked on the door. A young man with a white coat came, stared me with a typical nervous eye. He was testing my level of emotional normality. I said hello to him, smiled but he moved no one inch, did not open the door for me. I thought that he was a patient, so take out the doctor's posture on the patient, blinked of an eye, and he opened the door to me. After coming in, I went into the office for doctors and said: How could you let a patient watching the door, and allow him to wear a white color working coat? All doctors there laughed. They said: That is the new undergraduate college student, who was new here. I felt strange with hearing what they explained. How could he get the occupational disease when he just started his occupation?

 

During chatting, doctors like to make thoughtful analysis for people. They also assessed me sometimes. They conclude that I also have a mental disease. I was not angry since, in their eyes, no one is not a patient with a mental disease. I listened they said that Hitler is slight mania syndrome. I nodded. They said Lenin is also slight mania, and I thought, Jesus, Devadatta, no one can escape the mental disease in their eyes. Since no one is not a mental disease, how about me?

 

Then, from Chinese medicine, in fact from my mother, I do not feel that a mental disorder is some disease that changes the nature of human. From western medicine, there is neither a clear definition for the mental disease either. Now, the western world also changed its idea about mental disease. There is a film with the name of << Beauty Heart >. It admired a beautiful brain. The owner of the brain is Nobel Price owner Hohn Nash a patient with a lifelong mental disease. When he came to China for an international conference of the mathematician, the Chinese journalists were told not to flashlight towards him. At the end of the film, when showing that he accepted the Price, he saw his fans were there too for the party. He looked at them If the mad person is perceptual, then the mental doctor is very reasoning. How could the doctors also have the disorder in their minds? Often, a doctor does not worry about not being able to cure the disease. He worries that these patients, after cure, cannot live in a normal way in society. The reality is the reason for many people to get a mental disorder.

 

The reason for a person becomes mad, is just that the body activates the self-protection mechanism. Man is not a rational animal. I have a friend. When he drove a car and tried to avoid another car that showed suddenly in his front, he turned the wheel to the left subconsciously. This resulted in the death of his mother, who sat beside him. He saw by his eyes that his mother died in front of him, but he lost memory. He only lost the memory for this period, nothing else. He firmly believes that it was his older brother who made his mother died. He so cared his older brother from time to time, with the aim to reduce his brother’s “guilty feeling”. I stayed with him every day. I found that, apart from the memory loss for this period, he had nothing else wrong. Just from this point, I feel a pity very much that university student jumped from building for suicide. I oppose that people do nothing about them, but say that the student has “mental disorder”. The person with a mental health condition can also have beauty brain. We should not give up our care and love for them with the excuse of some medical reasons.

 

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