Insights and Updates

On the morning of May 22, 2021, the news was that earthquakes had struck Qinghai and Yunnan; after my midday nap, the news was that Academicians Yuan Longping and Wu Mengchao had both passed away, as if departing together. That day saw sorrow: national treasures…

Zhou, female, 73, mother of Dr. Liu, a chief physician at a Grade-A tertiary hospital in Yueyang, Hunan. On December 18, 2020, Dr. Liu for the first time invited me to a video consultation for his mother. The patient had advanced schistosomiasis, liver cirrhosis with…

Lately many ask me how the pandemic will go and whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine. A unified reply: the pandemic will not end; the vaccine can and must be taken. I finished my second dose on March 1; my seventy-something father with coronary disease…

Today a family member of a cancer patient I have long known consulted me by video about her mother. The mother has leukemia, gallstones, viral warts, and more. Children always worry about their parents; every time the hospital diagnoses something new she grows tense. Often…

Yesterday in Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao I read a report that Jameel, chair of the scientific advisory group of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium, had resigned. Although Jameel would not state his reason openly, in a May 13 op-ed for The New York Times summarizing India's…

Can-Zhe Pei-Qi Tang (Ginseng-Ochre Qi-Supplementing Decoction) is an empirical formula of Zhang Xichun from the late Qing and early Republican period. The original formula: Lu Dangshen (Codonopsis) six qian, Tiandong (Asparagus) four qian, raw Zheshi (Hematitum) eight qian (ground fine), clear Banxia (Pinellia) three qian,…

The two longest-lived elders in Chinese academia, Zhou Youguang and Professor Zheng Ji, were both tuberculosis patients; they lived to 112 and 111. Besides TB, Zhou had depression and prostate problems; Zheng had chronic gastric disease and three surgeries. None of this affected their longevity.

Humanity has progressed largely because the younger generation does not always listen to the older one. — a recent viral quote on the internet From the time my son entered kindergarten, I have been instilling in him this idea: parents and teachers are not always…

The Chinese herb Zhenzhucao (pearl grass) is the dried whole herb, or whole herb with root, of Phyllanthus urinaria L. of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), produced mainly in Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Fujian and Zhejiang. It is named for its pearl-like fruits beneath the leaves.

Before I knew it, my son is sixteen; today is his sixteenth birthday. I am a little slow to react to age; to this day I still feel I am myself only a teenager, about the same age as my son, full of curiosity about…