If You Cannot Avoid It, Get It Done Early

An elder of mine has finally persuaded me to commit wholeheartedly to preparing for the college entrance exam, so that I can get a junior-college (zhuanke) degree in TCM, then sit the assistant-physician exam, and then the full licensed-physician exam. No more illusions about shortcuts like apprenticeship or specialty-physician certification.

He said one thing to me on the phone today that I will remember for the rest of my life. He said: if you cannot avoid something, get it done early. No matter how good your medical skill, no matter how little your patients care, in a society that values the rule of law and educational credentials, a medical education is a stage a doctor can hardly skip. Only by closing these loopholes can we practice medicine safely for a lifetime, and possibly become an expert recognized by both patients and the profession.

My path into TCM was entirely a matter of fate. If my mother had been healthy, I would now be a comfortably off import-export trader. My mother's illness pulled me off the road to quick riches and into medicine in one stroke.

Looking back, my life has never been conventional. I had originally planned to enter a medical university, but by some quirk of fate I ended up at an engineering university. The school and major were both good, yet I threw them away like an old shoe. Having once been admitted to a key national university, now in middle age I find myself striving to pass the exam for a TCM junior college, and hoping the cutoff score is as low as possible. Already over forty, with high-school textbooks put aside for more than twenty years, and the high-school curriculum changed a great deal in the interim, I dare not be arrogant enough to assume I can still pass the junior-college exam.

At twenty, after leaving university, I read freely at the National Library until I was forty. No degree, no professional title, no papers to write; I read whatever I liked. I truly enjoyed the purest of earthly pleasures, pleasures probably few people in the whole country have known. For years, reading was my profession and making a living my avocation. In my twenties, on the side, I did some business and wrote some articles to earn a living, and before thirty I had already settled down and bought a home in Beijing.

Back then, because of my writing ability, I was brought into Zhongnanhai and saw the working environment of national leaders. I became an off-staff writer for the Development Research Center of the State Council, responsible for drafting economic-development survey reports for several regions, and I also contributed for years to a CCTV program.

But in the end I felt none of this was the work I loved, so I chose business, going into import-export trade. In the course of that work I taught myself programming; even now I can modify my own code, and I build and maintain my own website.

I have little to complain about in life. Aside from the regret that my mother died young of illness, everything else has been smooth sailing. I never dreamed I would practice TCM, nor that I would become the last stop on the survival road for many cancer patients.

After my mother fell ill, I exchanged notes on seeking medical care in many patient groups, while also teaching myself TCM to help my mother, and occasionally helping other patients with their problems. Because the results were reasonably good, my reputation grew step by step. Many people who have practiced medicine all their lives may never have my kind of influence. At this point it is impossible for me to go back to business and getting rich, because without my noticing, quite a few people have already survived five or more years under my care. I can set aside the practice of medicine, but they cannot set me aside; they still want to go on living, and I am their hope of survival.

To solve the problem of practicing legally, ten years ago my high-school teacher and his wife helped me find a shifu. In accordance with the law, I registered a traditional-apprenticeship relationship with my shifu and notarized it at the notary office, preparing to take the certification exams.

But I never expected that, while I obeyed the law, the TCM Administration would not. They kept refusing to schedule our graduation exam. The law requires each provincial TCM administration to hold the apprenticeship graduation exam every year. I waited six years, and they held it not even once.

Once we pass the graduation exam, we can sit the assistant-physician exam; once we pass that, we can sit the licensed-physician exam. On the path I envisioned back in 2012, I would already have obtained my licensed-physician certificate by now. Actually, once we have the assistant-physician certificate, we can already practice legally in township-level health institutions. By law I should have graduated in 2015 and obtained the assistant-physician certificate in 2016.

The arm cannot twist the thigh; we cannot fight those deadbeat officials. I genuinely applaud the central government's anti-corruption campaign, and I hope the disciplinary sword of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection will soon fall on these derelict officials. I have recently wanted to report their inaction, to improve the efficiency of our provincial TCM Administration and spare other TCM apprentices from the same harm. I have put up with them for many years and have had enough, but I lack the time and energy to bicker with them. Those who repeatedly do wrong will destroy themselves; the anti-corruption campaign is intensifying, and I refuse to believe the central government will let these derelict people off.

But now, for me personally, none of that matters anymore. Fate has pushed me to where I am today, and I must leave my comfort zone and walk another unconventional road, completing formal degree education at some TCM school. Because the Physicians Law has also been revised over the past decade: after an apprentice graduates and passes the assistant-physician exam, he now needs five more years before sitting the licensed-physician exam, while someone who completes formal medical education needs even less time. So I do not want to waste more of my precious life on that road.

Many people know about the TCM (specialty) physician certificate, but for those of us who want to accomplish something in TCM, it is a chicken rib—neither fish nor fowl. It has too many restrictions on both place and scope of practice, and it is riddled with discrimination. What we need most is the ordinary TCM physician license.

No one can be comfortable all their life, but it is certain that if I retake the college entrance exam and get into a TCM university, whether undergraduate or junior college, I will most likely rent a room not far from campus, find a vegetable plot, study while gardening, and continue the pastoral life I love. I am also no longer suited to living in a dormitory with other students; after all, those kids are the same age as my son, and they do not need a dad-like roommate.

I plan to register next year (this year's registration for social candidates has already closed) and take the exam the year after. So for the coming period I will spend more time reviewing. I will try to keep updating this public account; I will not reply to irrelevant inquiries, and I hope everyone understands.

Patients whose lives depend on me need not worry; I will make reasonable arrangements and collaborate with other physicians to help you beat your illness.

I ask everyone to understand that over the coming year and a half I cannot, as before, have ample time to talk with you—especially for casual chat. I cannot avoid this hurdle, so I will just grit my teeth and take it on.