Textbooks could be a tonic for TCM regard

The writer and thinker Lu Xun famously distrusted traditional Chinese medicine.

In his early life, he lost faith in the traditional medical practices of his homeland and took up the study of Western medicine in Japan.

Despite the prominent place Chinese culture accords Lu Xun, education authorities in Beijing are now trying to persuade students that he gave traditional Chinese medicine too little credit. In September, education authorities will publish new textbooks on the subject and distribute them to schools for use as teaching materials.

In announcing these plans, authorities were quick to say that no one will be required to take courses on the older medical practices.

As for those who would like to teach the course, they can receive training at the city administration for traditional Chinese medicine, which helped compile the textbook. They will also be required to have experience in teaching biology, Chinese language, history or Chinese traditional literature.

"China's education system is rather Westernized," said Mao Jialing, director of the Cultural Research and Propagation Center of Traditional Chinese Medicine under the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.

"Students learn mathematics, physics and chemistry at school. But the means of learning these subjects, as well as Western medicine, is to break them down into very small parts and to deal with each part one at a time."

Mao contributed to the textbooks.

"The logic inherent in traditional Chinese medicine and traditional Chinese culture is quite different," he said. "We do not pay an inordinate amount of attention to a particular body part that is diseased but instead place emphasis on the general state of a person's health."

"There are circumstances that Western medicine cannot deal with," he said. "For example, chemotherapy will destroy the immune systems of some cancer patients and kill them faster than their tumors."

The planned courses will not go over obscure treatment methods, only introduce basic notions such as yin and yang.

Meanwhile, the Beijing traditional Chinese medicine administration has organized sessions to allow students to practice planting herbal plants that are used in traditional medicine.

"The classes are meant to let students know that there are other ways to deal with these issues besides the methods they are already familiar with," Mao said.

Ju Baozhao, a professor of traditional Chinese medicine studies at Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said the ancient methods still provide good ways to cure chronic disorders.

"One of my patients was an 11-year-old boy who had been vomiting for weeks," he said. "The boy's parents took him to several hospitals and spent nearly 5,000 yuan ($784.6) putting him through all kinds of checks without finding any cause of the vomiting.

"Then they came to me and I gave them a prescription, which called for using ginger and the herbal banxia (the tuber of pinellia). It was very cheap but worked well on the boy."

He said people who use traditional Chinese medicine to treat some chronic disorders will find it is both effective and saves them a lot of money.

The Branch of Beijing No 5 Middle School will start offering courses in traditional Chinese medicine in the fall.

"We will invite practitioners of traditional medicine to offer courses in the coming semester," said Han Zhu, academic director of the school. "They will put a priority on basic ideas related to medicine and the students can share those with their parents."

Contact the writers at chengyingqi@chinadaily.com.cn and wuyong@chinadaily.com.cn