What Is He Zuoxiu's Real Aim in Shouting *Abolish TCM*?
I recently read the online conversation between World Persons reporter Lu Yan and He Zuoxiu, which has further made clear to me how He Zuoxiu, by worshipping the foreign and slighting his own, attacks, defames, and slanders our Chinese nation's fine traditional TCM culture — to meet the need of Western cultural hegemony — exposing his slave-like, stubborn, nihilist mind. Let me analyze He's main views and conduct in negating TCM.
1. He Zuoxiu says: "The yin-yang and five-phase in TCM is simply unintelligible — the more I listen, the more confused. TCM's yin-yang and five-phase is typical pseudo-science." "What I oppose is precisely this TCM yin-yang and five-phase theory. This is the core of TCM, the most important theoretical base. But in my view, in TCM the yin-yang and five-phase theory is pseudo-science." He twice labels it pseudo-science. But whether something is true or false science is not decided by what He Zuoxiu subjectively feels. Let us see the dictionary's definition of science. Zhonghua Shuju's 1940 Ci Hai: "Broadly: any organized, systematic knowledge can be called science; narrowly, it refers to natural science." The 1979 Shanghai Lexicographical Publishers' Ci Hai: "Science: a system of knowledge about nature, society, and thought ... Science divides into natural and social science; philosophy is the synthesis. Science's task is to uncover the objective laws of development, to seek objective truth, as a guide for people in transforming the world." The 2003 Liaohai Press' modern Chinese Ci Hai: "Science: a system of knowledge that reflects the objective laws of nature, society, thought, etc. — branched." TCM's yin-yang and five-phase doctrine — both the philosophical thought of TCM and a component of its theoretical system — over its millennia of clinical practice has been strictly tested by experience and shown to be a knowledge system fitting medical science's objective laws. It is science without doubt. Where is the pseudo?
It is well known that yin-yang and five-phase are two pre-Qin philosophical schools; only in the late Warring States did Zou Yan combine them. Yin-yang doctrine elucidates the law of opposing-and-unifying in the medical world (I have discussed this in my 2005 piece "Integrative theory" is the philosophical base of TCM, debating with He Zuoxiu; will not repeat). The reporter Zhang Shenghua of China Education News gave a fair appraisal of five-phase doctrine: *"Five-phase is the ancients' way of grouping the ten thousand things by their most prominent features into five kinds of integral category — a method asking only for the essential and the common, not heeding the fine differences. Without scientific instruments, this macro-classification opened the door to inferential thinking — it opened the door of human civilization, giving people a simple-and-effective way to observe, analyze, and reason about the world. We cannot say it is perfect; but it shines with the light of wisdom. Some say five-phase is a hypothesis; I do not agree. There are many ways to classify the world's things — provided the logic is consistent, all stand. As people may be good or bad, or man or woman, fat or thin, big-eyed or small-eyed. Were one to classify by science, the categories would have no end. Five-phase classification is close to daily life; the common person can grasp its idea fast. So with five-phase, common people can communicate easily. This Chinese invention of two thousand years ago is of importance for the building of the Chinese civilizational system. Five-phase, even today, is irreplaceable; it makes very complex problems simple and clear, and easier to handle.
Five-phase was first formally brought into TCM in the Huangdi Neijing ...
Fact shows: five-phase is by no means a hypothesis, much less a delusion. To bring five-phase into TCM is a great creation by the Chinese." (China Education News, Dec 10, 2006, Cultural Rescue for TCM) Five-phase doctrine, by the natures of wood, fire, earth, metal, water, classifies all things in the medical world by the law of like attracts like, making the complex simple — a great creation of our ancestors' wisdom. By the generation-and-restraint of the five, it describes mutual checking and promoting, keeping the medical world in dynamic-balanced development. Yin-yang and five-phase give TCM its dialectical thinking, mark TCM with Eastern cultural feature, and make it the special character of our medical science. It is this very character that guarantees TCM's special clinical effects. Modern biology experts find the male-female natural ratio across the world's populations is always at relative balance — also the workings of yin-yang. In nearly 50 years of teaching TCM, including yin-yang and five-phase, I have taught audiences of TCM and Western-medicine, young students and middle-aged and 60-plus elders — they can understand yin-yang and five-phase. Only He Zuoxiu says he "becomes more confused the more he listens." Is it the lecturer's clumsiness, or He Zuoxiu's stubborn thought? Yet this same He flaunts: "This man takes science seriously, has no bias"; "if anyone can prove yin-yang and five-phase right, he will believe it true science." With his worship-of-foreign servile philosophy, no matter how clearly yin-yang and five-phase are explained, he will not believe, will not receive. In June 2005 I advised him to read Engels' Dialectics of Nature and Mao Zedong's On Contradiction to lessen his misunderstanding. He could not hear; would not read, would not listen, stubborn — denying national TCM culture, his thought rigidified to the point of unreason. He has reached to peep at heaven through a tube, Yelang's vain pride, taking himself as the embodiment of absolute truth. Whatever knowledge system he does not understand he slanders as pseudo-science. His slander of TCM yin-yang and five-phase is a typical case. He says: "Yin-yang and five-phase, dark beyond dark"; "the more I listen, the more confused"; "what I cannot understand is pseudo-science." He has not — and cannot — give a convincing theoretical analysis of TCM yin-yang and five-phase. He simply, with crude rudeness, slaps the unfit hat pseudo-science on them — showing the scholastic warlord's posture, putting on airs, bullying by station. In truth he is the mountain bamboo shoot — sharp at the tip, thick of skin, empty within. Though he worships the foreign, he has no large foreign knowledge. Mao Zedong in Reform Our Study already pointed it out: "Some, ignorant of their own things, are left only Greek and foreign tales — pitiable, picked up piecemeal from foreign waste."* This describes him.
2. He says: "TCM's whole-thinking is very vague, without concrete analysis. They criticize Western medicine for lacking whole-thinking — that does not stand. When I see a Western doctor in the US, they give me a thorough head-to-toe exam using modern technology. How is this not whole-thinking? Western medicine's strength is having both whole and concrete thinking." Here He uses taking right as wrong and taking wrong as right — inverting black and white — to give a non-objective and ignorant distortion of Chinese and Western philosophy. Engels in Dialectics of Nature: "Natural researchers may take whatever attitude they wish; they still come under the rule of philosophy." TCM's philosophical base is integrative theory; Western medicine's is reductionism — common consensus of Chinese and foreign scholars. Yet He, to court Western hegemony's splitting and westernizing of our culture, against conscience twists TCM's integrative-view approach to concrete things as vague and not analytic. If TCM truly did no concrete analysis, how could it carry out bianzheng shizhi and cure? Renaissance of Eastern Science and Culture has long shown: "TCM is the synthesis of ancient Chinese integrative thought in both theory and practice — a wonder of human civilization ... With the rise of complex science in recent decades, the world has come to deeper recognition of TCM. TCM, on the basis of ancient Chinese integrative thought, will greatly advance world medicine, and its line of thought and method can apply to the exploration of life phenomena and other complex phenomena, even to explain cosmic origin and evolution." (Beijing Science Press, Feb 2004, p. 250). Integrative theory — great is its use! TCM holds "the cosmos is a harmonious, unified organic whole; the human body is also a harmonious, unified organic whole." TCM contains true integrative thought. Western medicine has Western cultural features; rooted in reductionism, strong in analysis but lacking in integrative thought. Renaissance of Eastern Science and Culture: "Reductionism holds: all phenomena can be reduced to a set of basic elements, independent of each other and unchanged by external factors. By research on these basic elements, the property of the whole can be inferred. Reductionism is the soul of Western science." (Beijing Science and Technology Press, Feb 2004, p. 59) He says: "In the US they give me head-to-toe checks — how is this not whole-thinking?" Regardless of whether treatment focus is whole or local, He, by this head-to-toe check, prettifies Western medicine as integrative-thinking — showing his subservience to Western hegemony and his lack of philosophical sense. As Zhong Nanshan, Western specialist and Academician of the CAE, said: "TCM's great feature is whole change; Western medicine values local system and organ. For example, in the past Western medicine treated tumor by destruction; now it asks how the person can live better with the tumor. This whole-view it learned from TCM." Zhong's frank admission slaps the worship-of-foreign He.
3. He says: "TCM's pretending-to-be-science has another disgraceful trick — quietly changing 'bian zheng shi zhi' to 'bian zheng shi zhi' (different character). Note these two words differ. One is 'discern,' the other 'argue.' Early TCM books wrote 'discerning patterns'; after Liberation, to fit the CCP's materialist dialectics, they secretly changed it to 'dialectics.' This is deception ..." When the reporter asked: "Where have you seen this 'bian' changed?" He produced no evidence and said only: "Many places." He further slanders TCM as "using an indecent trick to sell TCM", "a common trick of pseudo-science promoters." He gives no real evidence — so the slander is rumor against TCM! This is the indecent trick — used by He against TCM for fame. He thought a baseless rant would knock TCM down, but the stone he lifted falls on his own foot; people see his soul. As all know, in TCM the content of dialectics is rich. From the Huangdi Neijing: Suwen · Yinyang Yingxiang Da Lun: "Yin-yang is the Way of Heaven and Earth, the principle of the ten thousand things ... treatment must seek the root"; "Yang produces, yin grows; yang kills, yin stores"; "Cold to the limit produces heat; heat to the limit produces cold"; Suwen · Tianyuan Jida Lun: "Yin or yang, soft or hard, the hidden and the manifest take their positions; cold and heat run and shift; production-and-engendering, things show"; "Motion-and-stillness call each other; above and below face each other; yin and yang interweave; thus change is born"; Suwen · Liuwei Zhida Lun: "Without exit and entry, no birth-and-old; without rising-and-descending, no engender-grow-transform-store-collect"; Suwen · Zangqi Fa Shi Lun: "Five-phase: metal, wood, water, fire, earth — alternately precious, alternately base..." And TCM's bianzheng shizhi approach is precisely the application of "concrete analysis of concrete problems" in medicine. Where the need to change a character to pretend dialectics? Even if any did write 辨 as 辯, this is not deliberate counterfeiting. Bian (discern) and bian (argue) can substitute for each other anciently — Lüshi Chunqiu · Shen Da Lan · Shun Shuo: "Discerning indeed — guest, with this you have persuaded me." Huainanzi · Daoying Xun with same passage: "Arguing indeed — guest, with this you have prevailed over me." — written 辯. Xunzi · Yi Bing: "Rites: the height of governing-discerning." Hanshi Waizhuan vol. 4, ch. 10: "Rites: the height of governing-arguing." — 辯. Shiji · Yueshu: "Their governing-discerning, rites complete." Liji · Yueji: "Their governing-arguing, rites complete." — 辯. Shiji · Pinghuai Shu: "The Hedong Governor did not expect the going, did not discern (辨), killed himself." Hanshu · Shihuo Zhi with same passage: "... did not argue (辯), killed himself." Shiji · Fengshan Shu: "The Confucians could not discern the fengshan matter clearly." Shiji · Xiao Wu Benji with same passage: "... could not argue ... clearly." — 辯. Zhouyi · Xici Xia: "By the well one discerns rightness." Li Dingzuo's collected explanation quotes Yu Fan: "Kun is right; using qian to distinguish kun, hence one argues right." — 辯. Suwen · Shanggu Tianzhen Lun: "discern (辯) and array the stars." Wang Bing: "To discern-and-array — to fix the seats of inner and outer stars at the 365 degrees of the heaven." — i.e., the Suwen itself uses 辯 for 辨. The Ci Yuan's entry for 辨 says 辨, same as 辯. So 辨 and 辯 anciently interchange. He, not knowing, slanders TCM of secret alteration — showing his thorough ignorance of the Six Books of our writing.
He can make up the myth of a secret character change; can he not make up that a relative was killed by TCM, to vilify it? Even if a relative did die, analyze: was it under a quack's hand, or by TCM itself? A two-year-old recounting his relative's illness 60–70 years later, claiming to know the level of Chinese and Western medicine at the time and the details of death — itself suspect. Still less can one let personal grief deny our whole national fine culture and irrationally beautify Western medicine. Does Western medicine cure without death? (It can do no more than: those who should not die do not.) Why must hospitals build a morgue? Western abuse of antibiotics caused 300,000 hearing-impaired Chinese children under seven — 30–40% of all deaf-mute children (see China Student Health News, Jan 13, 2007, p. 10). To this He is blind, deaf, mute — plays dumb. Where is his medical rationality? Where is his national feeling? Further: the relative's illness was not the TCM shanghan (cold-damage) at the depth of winter, but the bacterial intestinal typhoid (chang shanghan) of summer-autumn spread by flies. It was around 1938, when He was two, before the first antibiotic (penicillin) had reached clinic. Yet He says "typhoid is no difficult disease ... not hard to treat." What did Western medicine then have to easily cure this illness? He talks nonsense — ignorance laughable!
By a December 4, 2006 Press Digest report, He compared himself to Fan Zhongyan in Yueyang Lou Ji: "In the high temple, worry for the people; in the wide riverways, worry for the prince" — an inappropriate self-flattery. To get a name, he stops at nothing: talking back to the MOST, MOH, NDRC, Environmental Protection Agency, Beijing Municipal Committee; opposing the South-to-North Water Diversion; calling for the abolition of TCM; criticizing railway construction — stirring up disquiet. In his own particle-physics field he gets no result. Such a non-professional — can he compare with Fan Zhongyan's worrying for state and people? No. Quite the opposite. He fits the saying of Jin's Huan Wen: "The hero who cannot leave a good name through the ages must at least leave a stench through ten thousand years." Even a stench would do — so long as the name comes. This is why he speaks always of America, in medicine speaks always of the West, slanders 90% of Chinese traditional culture as dross, and stirs trouble everywhere.
February 2, 2007. Written at Hubei TCM College.