Century Magazine, Issue 3 (2020): A Tribute to the First to Call for 'Reviving Chinese Medicine' (Cui Yueli excerpt)
This page carries only the Cui Yueli-related portion of the magazine issue. Other sections are available in the original publication.
During the 2020 COVID outbreak, Chinese medicine and Chinese herbs took part at every stage of prevention and treatment — playing a significant role. The latest issue of Century magazine (the 2020 May / third issue), jointly published by the Central Research Institute of Culture and History and the Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History, looks back at the winding history of Chinese medicine since Reform and Opening, and salutes the man the Chinese-medicine field calls "a singular figure in the hall of Qi-Huang" — the first to call out, in the clear voice, "Revive Chinese Medicine": Cui Yueli.
Chinese medicine, one would assume, is always taken seriously in the national register as a cultural inheritance — but it is not so. "We must value Chinese medicine" has long been a cliché. For a long stretch of the last century Chinese medicine went through an awkward "reform," cut from its own developmental laws, and has been stuck in a choke-point that will not loosen. In 1978, Cui Yueli assumed the post of Vice-Minister of Health and formally took over Chinese-medicine affairs. Under his tenure he led the Ministry of Health and the Chinese-medicine community in developing the field, calling out the slogan Revive Chinese Medicine; and during his time in office, China's Chinese-medicine enterprise step by step found its feet. This year marks the centenary of Cui Yueli's birth, and the magazine's feature publishes, by his daughter Zhang Xiaoping, My Father Cui Yueli: The First to Call Out 'Revive Chinese Medicine' — looking back at the arduous journey by which her father led the Chinese-medicine enterprise back from near-collapse.
Photo: November 1983 — Deng Xiaoping at the reception marking the fiftieth anniversary of the work in China of the internationalist fighter and physician Ma Haide (left, in frame). Raising a glass, center, is Cui Yueli. (Cover photograph, Century magazine, 2020 issue 3.)