On the Direction of TCM Development from the Angle of Culture
Without its own national culture, no people can stand among the nations of the world.
By difference of environment and condition, peoples have created their cultures earlier or later, and unlike one another. The Chinese, from Yan and Huang opening the source of national culture, have continued some five thousand years. Other ancient civilizations have broken off: ancient Egyptian culture dimmed two thousand years ago; the Indus Harappan culture was swept away by Aryans; the Mayan culture that built sun pyramids fell in Central American jungles; Greece's brilliant culture was succeeded by Rome; Rome by Germanic invasion was largely destroyed. Only the East-Asian-mainland-born Chinese culture, through bumps and rises, has continued unbroken — a model of continuous culture of world history — unlike the breakthrough cultures (Sumerian by way of Babylon, Greece, Rome to modern Western culture) which jump.
Our traditional culture's passing from antiquity to today, five thousand years' continuity, is no accident — it shows the strong vitality of Chinese culture. Vast and deep, beautiful and thick, rich in content; with Chinese characters and books as carrier, Chinese cultural canon, despite many destructions and dispersals, still numbers at least 200,000 kinds — bearing the wisdom and language essence of millennia. Zhouyi, Laozi, Sunzi, Huangdi Neijing — wonders of world books. Chinese characters' pictograph, ideo-graphic, picto-phonetic, indicating structure opens the mind, mines potential, develops wisdom. From it came Kong-zi, Meng-zi, Lao-zi, Mo-zi, Qu Yuan, Sima Qian, Zhang Heng, Zu Chongzhi, Zhang Zhongjing, Li Shizhen, Wen Tianxiang, Yue Fei, Li Siguang — great thinkers, educators, writers, historians, scientists, physicians, and cultural giants and national heroes. The study of Yinxu oracle bones, the discovery of the Dunhuang grottoes, the appearance of Qin Shihuang's terracotta army, the bell-rack at Sui-zhou Leigudun, the excavation of Mawangdui — again and again astonished the world, showing the prosperity and advance of ancient Chinese culture. The inventions of compass, gunpowder, printing pushed ancient Chinese society forward and, transmitted West, changed the face of the world. Chinese alchemy was the precursor of world chemistry; variolation transmitted to Europe sparked Western immunology. The fine culture of the Chinese people played an active role in world civilization.
President Jiang Zemin, March 4, 2001, in his address at the joint session on education and health-pharmacology of the Ninth CPPCC, said: "TCM is the characteristic of our country's medical science, and an important part of our excellent culture." TCM, an important part of our excellent culture, derives from the direct experience of our people's life and production, deeply rooted in Chinese culture.
1. People-centered. Suwen · Baoming Quanxing Lun: "Heaven covers, Earth bears, the ten thousand things are all complete — yet the human is most precious." Lingshu · Yu Ban: "The human is the support of Heaven and Earth." The view that the human is most precious between Heaven and Earth establishes the human as the central theme of the medical world. In knowing the human, one first places the human within Heaven, Earth, and the ten thousand things, mixed in with them, to observe the relations and influences between, and the development of the human within. The concept Heaven-and-human as one is formed. And one also separates the human from the ten thousand things to observe specially. Lingshu · Jingshui: "The eight-foot person — skin and flesh here — outside one can measure and trace, after death one can dissect and look." On one side, by cadaveric dissection, one observes and records the position, shape, size, hardness, length of skin, flesh, channels, sinews, bones, brain marrow, fat membranes, liver, heart, spleen, lung, kidney, gallbladder, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, bladder, sanjiao, pao, female womb, male essence chamber, and the capacity of stomach and intestine for water and grain. On the other side, on the living, one measures the skin and flesh, and through long observation of eye, ear, mouth, nose, limbs, physiological development, and pathological change, recognizes the functional activities of the body's tissues — especially the functional activities of the five storehouses and six bowels under heart-spirit's guidance, mutual use of the twelve officials, with the ruler bright, all below are at peace; with the ruler unclear, the twelve officials are in danger — embodying Eastern culture's zàng-fu view.
2. Human participates with Heaven and Earth. The human is born of the qi of Heaven and Earth, completed by the laws of the four seasons, participating with Heaven and Earth, responding to sun and moon, paired with the four seasons. Heaven, Earth, and the ten thousand things are one; human and nature are a unified whole. Maintain the harmony, balance, unity, and coordination of the ecological environment, do without acting, do not violate objective law; thought calm, will quiet, breathe the essential qi, harmonize heat and cold, keep the spirit within, the true qi follows, and blood and qi, ying and wei, under heart-spirit's guidance, through the fourteen channels, circulate harmoniously to all parts — nourishing the five storehouses, six bowels, four limbs, hundred bones, five sense-organs, nine orifices, giving rise to shen-use and the proper function of each. Through the body's many orifices it stands in constant exchange with nature, guaranteeing and promoting the proper development of birth, growth, maturity, and aging. Always casting off the old, using the new — essence-qi daily renewed, in metabolic change — reaching the nourishment of the whole and the natural lifespan. The integrality and changefulness of the medical world.
3. Our ancestors also built the TCM theoretical system — yin-yang and five-phase, zàng-fu and jingluo, ying-wei and blood-qi, jing, shen, jin-ye, seven emotions, six excesses, plus the four qi five flavors, raising-lowering, floating-sinking of drugs — to explain physiology, pathology, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, prognosis, and yangsheng; with rich and varied treatment methods: decoction, medicinal wine, needling, moxa, anmo, yunfa (hot compress), xingqi, daoyin, paste application, nasal douche, bathing, fumigation, fire-cup, guasha, blood-letting, blistering, surgical excision, psychological therapy, etc.
In TCM no disease pattern is isolated, static; all are tied to surrounding things and constantly developing-and-changing. Treatment goes by the objective real — by time, by place, by person — biàn zhèng lùn zhì; disease changes ten thousand ways, medicine ten thousand ways too. This dialectical-thinking therapeutic thought makes the qualitative difference between TCM and other world medicines, the feature of Eastern medicine. In our country's long development, it has been tested in clinical practice that secured the flourishing of the Chinese nation, and consolidated and developed under that test. This shows it is a medicine consolidated-and-developed using sick humans as experimental subject — far more reasonable, accurate, effective, and scientific than medicine that uses artificially-diseased rats, rabbits, dogs as experimental subjects. Hence it long ago went abroad — to Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Southeast Asia — and now to 120+ countries and regions!
But after 1840, the great powers blasted open Qing China with gun-boats; their culture and goods filled the markets — foreign rifles, foreign cannons, foreign ships, foreign oil, foreign doctors, foreign drugs, foreign umbrellas, foreign cloth, foreign matches, foreign tobacco, foreign pens, foreign candles, foreign lamps, foreign thread, foreign shovels — countless. China fell into semi-feudal, semi-colonial status. The Chinese opened their eyes, saw the West's civilization and progress, felt ashamed of inferiority, and began to learn from the West. Some held to Chinese culture while learning from the West, proposing Chinese learning as essence, Western learning as use; founded schools, opened factories, built guns and bullets; in medicine emerged Chinese-Western junction-and-passage and hold to TCM, consult Western. Others fell into severe self-doubt, into national nihilism, fabricating Chinese culture from abroad — a colonial culture. They cried: what China has, foreigners have; what China lacks, foreigners alone have; even the foreign moon is rounder. They actively learned from the West, seeking truth in Western civilization. They suffered the left infantile disorder, blindly looking down on all national tradition, advocating wholesale westernization. They blamed our country's backwardness not on the rotten Qing politics but on our traditional culture, crying Chinese characters are backward, TCM is backward. Late-Qing Ding Fubao and some literati (Wu Zhifu, Wang Jingyi) did everything to slander TCM theory as empty and ineffective. In 1914 Beijing Education Minister Wang Daxie strongly advocated abolishing TCM; opposed by Yu Dexun and TCM unions, the plan failed. In 1922 Chiang Kai-shek's Republican government tried to outlaw acupuncture. In February 1929, at the first Central Health Committee Conference, Yu Yunxiu took the chance to propose Abolish the Old Medicine to Clear the Obstacle to Medical-and-Health Affairs, exhausting the slander of TCM: "Until the old medicine is gone, popular thought will not change; the new medicine will not rise; health administration will not advance." This proposal, under Wang Jingwei, Chu Minyi, was passed, set to ban TCM nationwide. The TCM and herbal world and forward-looking figures protested. Three-hundred-plus TCM-medicine representatives gathered at the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce hall to plan; six representatives (Jiang Wenfang, Zhang Mei'an, Zhang Zanchen, Cen Zhiliang, Xie Liheng, Chen Cunren) went to Nanjing to petition. KMT elders Wu Zhihui, Yu Youren, Chen Guofu, Jiao Yitang, Chen Lifu, Zhang Jingjiang lobbied Chiang Kai-shek, who under pressure rescinded all abolition orders. TCM won its right to live. To commemorate the success, the day, March 17, was set as Guoyi Festival. The Federation of TCM and Pharmaceutical Associations was, however, soon dissolved by the KMT. Under the establishment of the Central National Medical Hall, in the name of TCM scientization, a movement to remake TCM by Western theory and erase national-cultural character marched on.
In January 1940 Mao Zedong in On New Democracy said: "Chinese culture should have its own form — that is, national form." Also: "Scientific, national, popular — that is the new Chinese culture." After the founding of New China, Chairman Mao called: "Unite all old-new Chinese and Western medical-and-health personnel into our country's firm medical-health united front." "Unite Chinese and Western medicine" became one of four health-work guidelines. Yet at the first National Health Work Conference, 1950, Yu Yunxiu with Song Daren and Jiang Huiming put forth a Forty-year plan to wipe out TCM — the so-called Draft of Steps in Remaking the Old Medicine. Thereafter the chief manager of the Ministry of Health conducted nationwide TCM registration, exams (with Western-medicine subjects), and refresher courses — westernizing TCM, achieving eliminate the majority, retain the few, remake them into assistants, thoroughly wiping out TCM. The Center on finding this strictly criticized the bourgeois mind of slighting, discriminating, and excluding TCM in the Ministry of Health. People's Daily, October 25, 1954: Correctly Carry Out the Party's TCM Policy — the editorial preserved TCM culture's continuation. Because the influence of a hundred-plus years of semi-colonial thought has not been cleared in some, they still wear Western lenses, look down on national culture, take Western medicine as standard, hold TCM backward, unscientific. The living knowledge of TCM is in the TCM doctor; at every chance the doctor is struck — during the Cultural Revolution, in the wave of sweep away the four olds, the medical world's expelling spirits and tearing down shrines is a clear case. After the Cultural Revolution, the country corrected the chaos and TCM recovered. Today the world economy moves toward globalization; culture is plural; cultures clash and exchange; each people must hold and protect its tradition while selectively absorbing other peoples' advanced culture and merging them with its own. Watch against destruction. With our country's opening, Western progressive and decadent culture have poured in: on one side advancing science, technology, and management; on the other producing money-worship, extreme individualism, harm to others for self, profit-seeking, harm to public for private gain, name-and-profit-grabbing, indulgence — without standard, ideal, morality, faith, public spirit, national feeling — regardless of national interest, on their posts pushing wholesale westernization, twisting TCM modernization into TCM westernization. They do not, with materialism and historical materialism's standpoint, study TCM, but with Western mechanical-materialist view, peer at TCM's dialectical thinking and integral view; not with modern scientific knowledge and means by TCM's internal law, but with Western medicine's existing theory and principle frame TCM. Under TCM-is-not-science, they impose Western research methods on TCM, suppress TCM research; with Western theory they replace TCM theory — e.g. a TCM textbook TCM Basic Theory calls the qihen-fu (storehouse-yet-non-storehouse) gallbladder that stores and does not drain governing decision — the gallbladder secretes bile into the duodenum to aid digestion. So how does Wendan Tang cure startled palpitation and insomnia? How does Chaihu plus Longgu Muli Tang cure manic running? They use bian-bing (Western-style disease-discernment) to replace bian-zheng (TCM pattern-discernment), substituting the clinical thinking, removing TCM's soul, removing the special character of our medical science. By report, the State TCM Administration surveyed a TCM-pharmacy department with 16 research offices — not one researches yinpian; all develop new drugs. Yu Yunxiu's abolish the medicine, keep the herbs, remake them into Western drugs is being realized. They at the mention of TCM advantages call it self-display. As Mao said: "Speaking always of Greece — to our own ancestors, sorry, forgotten."
Marx and Engels Letters: "The old always tries to restore and consolidate itself in new forms."
Western medicine is a modern medical science. To develop it and research new drugs serving the people's health is right and unobjectionable. But if only Western new drugs are valued and TCM's full strengths ignored, that is wrong — especially within TCM's own education, treatment, research system to stress Western drugs and weaken TCM; even, under the banner of Chinese-Western integration, to draw out TCM's soul, eliminate TCM's character, leave it name without substance, realize wholesale westernization — is error. On New Democracy long ago pointed out: "The advocacy of 'wholesale westernization' is a wrong view. Taking foreign things in formalism — China has suffered greatly from it in the past." Why must we now repeat the mistake — push wholesale westernization in TCM institutions?
Sun Jinzhong and Chao Yongguo in Western Cultural Hegemony in the Age of Globalization tell us: "Western cultural hegemony — Western countries' use of their material life-form, view of life and values, as universal codes of conduct — gives themselves a dominant position in culture. The direct background is Western tech advantage and monopoly on info-revolution technology. Cultural hegemonism is the pose of looking down on others' cultures with a high posture, taking one's own as the measure of all. In its eyes, others' cultures are backward, savage; its own is civilized, advanced... The native cultures of the Third World are being suppressed, losing activity, in danger of being devoured. For the Third World, defending one's cultural sovereignty is urgent."
Some among us, in attitude toward Chinese and Western culture, share Western hegemonism's mind, holding only Western-culture Western medicine to be scientific, advanced; their own Chinese-culture TCM unscientific, backward — so within their administration they raise the Western, suppress the Chinese, replace the Chinese with the Western, weaken TCM culture, becoming volunteer salesmen for Western cultural hegemony. Today we cannot but recognize this clearly and treat it seriously. And by news report, "in 1976 at the G7 summit, they agreed to use the Internet for political propaganda and cultural infiltration of socialist and developing countries." "Some Western developed countries, on their info-network advantage, push by every means their own value standards, ideology, life-form, social system to our country, intending westernization and splitting." So we must heighten alertness, raise political-thinking level, raise the cultural quality of the whole nation, strengthen national feeling, raise national consciousness and ability to resist Western cultural-hegemony's penetration; ensure the security and development of the Chinese nation's tradition, and the character and strengths of TCM culture; and, by inner law, selectively take in other peoples' advanced cultures helpful to us, enrich ourselves, and confidently walk toward modernization in the form of Eastern culture.
July 15, 2002. Written at Hubei TCM Association.