Without Acupuncture and Tuina, One Is Only Half a TCM Doctor

When I was a child, my maternal aunt had a ganglion cyst on her wrist. The cyst was large and ached from time to time. She went to my village to be treated by my clansman, an older granduncle. My granduncle took out a long silver needle and gently punctured the cyst. Then, using the tip of a chopstick, he gently tapped her wrist, and the jelly-like cyst fluid flowed out. The next day, my aunt's wrist was smooth as before; it never recurred, and the treatment was essentially painless.

When I was around thirty, I developed a ganglion cyst on my left hand—hard, large, and painful. My granduncle had already been dead for years, so I could no longer go to an old TCM doctor like him as my aunt had. But by then I was already a TCM apprentice in a hospital and knew many doctors. A Western-medician senior fellow apprentice of mine was on good terms with me; he found a close friend who was a surgeon and did a "friendship operation" on me in the hospital operating room—"friendship" because I paid not a cent.

During the operation, I even assisted this general surgeon. It was my left hand being operated on, and I used my right hand to pass him instruments. He used a scalpel to open the skin and muscle on my wrist, found the cyst, cut it open, and drained the cyst fluid. The cyst wall was like a white fish maw; he trimmed the wall and then sutured.

My cyst had grown deep; what was planned as a half-hour minor operation ended up taking an hour and a half. The local anesthetic did not seem to work very well, so the second half was quite painful. My senior fellow apprentice's friend was inevitably nervous, sweat beading on his forehead. But I am by nature unafraid of pain; even without anesthetic, if someone cut open my skin I would not cry out, because I had myself cut open my own skin and muscle to treat a lipoma. To ease the surgeon's nervousness, I kept telling him jokes. When the operation was over, he was thoroughly impressed by my tolerance for pain. In his view, I was a tough guy like Guan Yu, able to bear the pain of scraping poison from bone.

Unfortunately, the suffering was for nothing. Less than half a month after surgery, my ganglion cyst recurred. On my wrist now there is not only still the cyst but also a surgical scar that will never go away.

I am very grateful to my senior fellow apprentice's surgeon friend; he treated me with all his heart and charged not a cent. What more could I say? It is just that, comparing the suffering and outcomes of my aunt's treatment and my own, I am not so favorably disposed toward the modern treatment of ganglion cysts. By the way, although this operation is minor, had it been done in Beijing it would have cost at least several thousand yuan.

I have long wanted to restore the medical skill of my ancestors, but my granduncle has been dead for years; no one inherited his skill, and the lineage has long been broken. Now I very much want to enter a TCM college and study the acupuncture-tuina specialty. I have already learned the TCM internal-medicine approach to treating disease, but I have not properly studied acupuncture and tuina. There are many conditions that oral medicines cannot solve, but which acupuncture and tuina resolve very well. Take ganglion cysts, for example: oral medicines treat them poorly, but with a thin silver needle, in the time it takes to eat a meal, the patient's problem is solved.

I have long felt ashamed that I do not know acupuncture and tuina. Without acupuncture and tuina, at best we can only be half a TCM doctor. So over the years I have always wanted to return to university to study the TCM acupuncture-tuina specialty and learn acupuncture and tuina properly.

In TCM clinical medicine there are two important specialties: the Chinese medicine specialty and the acupuncture-tuina (acupuncture and tuina) specialty. Nowadays, those trained in Chinese medicine rarely use acupuncture and tuina to treat disease and only write prescriptions; those trained in acupuncture-tuina are not skilled in using decoctions to treat disease. Whether in top-tier Grade-A hospitals or small local hospitals, there are very few TCM doctors skilled in both acupuncture-tuina and oral-herbal treatment. Compared with traditional TCM, most of our contemporary TCM doctors are only half-baked.

Those of us from the apprenticeship pathway, although we are legally recognized members of the TCM community, sit at the very bottom of the medical system's pecking order. Many procedures in the medical system are set not by medical effectiveness but by academic credentials. The way we are examined and the exam questions differ from those of formally schooled graduates; there are many exams we cannot take, and in professional promotion within the system, having a degree is better than not having one. If one wants to go further into integrated Chinese-Western medicine, formal academic education is a prerequisite. This is the main reason I am now burning my bridges and retaking the college entrance exam to study TCM acupuncture-tuina. With that academic foundation, one can continue studying in every field of Chinese and Western medicine.

I quite admire my own master. At my age, he was going everywhere for further training, learning new medical techniques, often away for half a year or more. His medical skill grew ever higher because of it, and in our local area most people respect him greatly. Government officials, businessmen, and ordinary folk alike greet him respectfully and address him as "Director," because most of them have been treated by my master.

My master also has a wish: he hopes I will organize his lifetime of medical experience and publish it as a book. Throughout the history of TCM there has been no lack of disciples who compiled their master's medical experience into books. For example, many of Li Dongyuan's medical writings were organized by his disciple Luo Qianfu. My master was the one who led me into the study and practice of medicine. We signed an apprenticeship agreement and had it notarized as required by the health and judicial systems (apprentices use this, together with study records, to sit the medical licensing exam), and we have also had a close master-apprentice relationship for over ten years. So my master's wish is also one of mine. My master knows acupuncture and tuina; I have learned only half his skill. To fulfill his wish, I too need a certain foundation in acupuncture and tuina.

Before, I felt there would be plenty of time later and that there would always be an opportunity to help him organize his lifelong experience. After last year's COVID outbreak, my master was infected and overworked, with severe symptoms, and took a long time to recover. Only then did I realize that my master is already an old man; if I do not organize his medical skill now, there may be no chance later. My master has spent his life helping countless people; as his disciple, it is my responsibility and duty to inherit and organize his medical experience.

My master has told me many times that he expects me to organize and inherit all his medical skill; if I do not fulfill the old man's wish, my heart will be uneasy. He has also always hoped that I would keep pace with the times, go for further training in many places, learn newer medical techniques, and improve myself; he wants to train a disciple who surpasses the master. At every meeting he repeatedly exhorts me to be aware of my shortcomings in medical skill and to rise a level higher. I always feel a sense of trepidation, feeling that if I cannot continue to progress, I do not deserve to keep cheekily sitting at my master's dining table.

The elder Ren Yingqiu said that a person must reach sixty before he can truly say he understands TCM. TCM has accumulated thousands of years of experience, and it holds many treasures; to learn it thoroughly and completely requires deep accumulation and long, sustained effort. A person who truly loves TCM should have a heart of learning until old age, continuing to pass down this medical experience handed down through generations and carrying it forward as far as possible, not stopping out of laziness or fear of difficulty.