Dr. Xu: A Chinese Medicine Novel

At Mingxin Clinic, a quiet morning leaves plenty of room for worry.

After taking the medicine, Lily Li went back to work. Her company handled social media accounts and was not far from the clinic. She took the elevator up, slipped back to her desk, and whispered to the woman beside her, “April, the Abbess isn’t here yet, is she?”[1]

“She’s here,” April whispered back. “She asked whether you were late.”

Lily’s face changed at once. “What? What did you tell her?”

“I said you’d clocked in this morning, then gone out to see a client.”

Only then did Lily relax.

“So, how did it go?” April asked. “Does your belly still hurt?”

“Yes,” Lily said miserably. “Being a woman is awful.”

“Being a woman is awful,” April agreed. She knew exactly how it felt.

“Every time I get my period, it’s like I’m pregnant with Donnie Yen,” Lily complained. “Or Wu Jing’s filming Wolf Warrior 3 in my belly.”[2]

April covered her mouth and laughed. “You’re ridiculous. Hey, didn’t you say that young Chinese medicine doctor was no good? Why did you go back to him?”

“Because I thought… I thought…” Lily said indignantly.

April laughed. “What, is that young doctor just like him?”

“Oh, no. I can’t—”

Lily had been about to argue, but her expression suddenly changed. She grabbed a sanitary pad and ran to the restroom.

“Hey!”

April could only watch her go. Then she, too, clutched her belly. It hurt. Being a woman was awful.

A while later, Lily came back looking astonished.

“What happened?” April asked.

“I passed the clots,” Lily whispered.

April’s expression turned envious. “Well, congratulations.”

Women knew that the hardest part was the wait before the clots came out. Women without blood stasis were, of course, outside the scope of this discussion.[3]

Then April looked puzzled. “Wait, didn’t your period only start around midnight last night?”

“Yes. It’s never happened this quickly before. Usually the pain practically kills me. I didn’t think they’d come out so soon this time. And I just had a bowel movement, too. I feel so much better now. I’m not even as tired.”

“It worked that well? Does it still hurt?”

“A little,” Lily said happily, “but it’s so much better than before.”

April held her belly and looked envious.

Anyone who had never had menstrual cramps could not understand how they felt. When it hurt, you wanted to cut your belly open. Again and again, you asked what terrible thing you had done in a past life to deserve being a woman in this one.

Now Lily was no longer in pain, and April couldn’t have been more envious. April had barely taken the first step of her own Long March.[4]

Her body felt lighter and her lower belly barely hurt. Lily was her lively self again. She excitedly pulled April to her feet. “April, he’s amazing. I’ll take you to see him!”

April cried out in pain. “Don’t pull me! My back’s going to break. It’s going to break!”

Business at Mingxin Clinic was still astonishingly bad. They had had only one patient all morning, and Evan Xu had called her back himself.

Ben Song had spent another entire morning playing Dou Dizhu. He had built up a supply of game credits, gone into a room for players with large balances, and lost them all in just two games. Now the game wanted him to buy more. He was swearing at it.[5]

Clara Zhang had spent the whole morning thinking, without coming up with a good solution. A clinic, especially a small private clinic like theirs, was rather like a restaurant.

If a restaurant wanted to thrive, the food had to be good. The chef was certainly its most important person. It was the same with a clinic. A doctor who could actually treat illness was the key to a Chinese medicine clinic’s success or failure.

There were hardly any doctors of Chinese medicine these days who could actually treat illness. Those who could were all prominent figures. Where would Clara find the money to hire one of them to see patients here?

There really seemed to be no way out for Mingxin Clinic…

Clara looked at the two men in the clinic. One was a Dou Dizhu fanatic who could do nothing but massage and tuina, like a worker at a massage parlor. The other was a no-name dud who knew only how to prescribe Siwu Tang.[6]

Evan, especially. Clara looked at the man she had hired herself and clenched her teeth several times.

Evan had also spent the whole morning thinking, trying to work out how to promote his account. He had tried several times, but in total he had sped things up by less than two minutes. He was at his wits’ end.

He searched Baidu for Oliver Liu again. After a long search, he still could not find out who Professor Liu’s wife was. He did not know whether it was that young nurse, Rose Wang.

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At last it was noon, time for lunch. Ben took out the lunch box he had brought from home. He had just put it in the microwave when he turned and saw the woman from that morning coming back with someone else.

His heart sank. “We’re done for. She’s come to make trouble.”

Clara had not seen Evan treat her that morning. “What do you mean?”

Ben explained quickly. “Evan called yesterday’s patient back and prescribed more medicine. She drank one batch before leaving earlier. He even boasted that it would work as promptly as a drum sounding when struck. The medicine must have caused a problem. She’s come to complain.”

Clara’s expression changed at once. When it rained, it poured. They had not solved the clinic’s financial crisis, and now they had a dispute over treatment on their hands—or so she thought.

Evan, Evan, why did you have to make a boast like that? Clara fretted inwardly.

It never occurred to her that this might be a returning patient. Since her mother died, when had Mingxin Clinic had any of those? If patients had kept coming back, her family would not have lost all their savings.

As for the patient who had come to Ben yesterday with mouth ulcers, that person had returned because the first treatment had not worked. That did not count as a returning patient.

And a patient bringing friends or relatives because Mingxin’s treatment had worked so well? Ha. That was even less imaginable.

So both Clara and Ben assumed the medicine had caused a problem and the patient had come to make trouble.

Clara looked around, then whispered hurriedly to Ben, “Go and find Evan. Tell him not to come back.”

“Huh?” Ben was taken aback.

By then, Lily and April had already come through the door.

Clara hurried forward. “Hello. Are you here to collect your medicine? It isn’t ready yet. You can pick it up after five.”

“I’m not here for the medicine. I’m looking for Dr. Xu.”

We’re done for!

Clara’s and Ben’s hearts sank at the same time. She really had come to complain. Neither had much confidence in the King of Siwu Tang’s medical skills.

Clara bit her lip, frowned, and quickly signaled to Ben with her eyes.

Clara’s worried glance.

But Ben did not go out to look for Evan. In ten years of practicing medicine, he had not learned much medical skill. Bluffing, though—he had mastered that. He cleared his throat and began.

“Ms. Li, well… When you use herbal medicine to restore your health, changing your constitution takes a long time.

“One or two batches certainly won’t do anything. You need to take it for at least a month or two before there’s even a little change. As for working as promptly as a drum sounding when struck, that was just a figure of speech. You can’t come here and give Dr. Xu trouble over that.”[7]

Lily looked puzzled. “No, it worked very quickly. It barely hurts anymore.”

“Huh?”

Clara and Ben were both taken aback.

Lily pointed to April, who was bent over beside her, holding her belly. “This is my friend. I brought her here to see Dr. Xu.”

A returning patient? Really?

Clara and Ben were stunned.

Reader Notes

↩︎ The Abbess. The nickname borrows Miejue Shitai from Jin Yong’s martial-arts fiction, using a formidable female character to suggest a severe boss. The nun-like title is represented here by “the Abbess”; it is a teasing label for the office supervisor. Her religious status is not literal. Lily and April’s worried whispers, and the need for a cover story, supply the joke’s practical meaning even for readers unfamiliar with Jin Yong. Source: Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival — Jin Yong character exhibition, including Miejue Shitai (in Chinese).↩︎ An action movie in her belly. Donnie Yen and Wu Jing are actors associated with martial-arts and action films. Yen stars in Ip Man; Wu directs and stars in the Wolf Warrior films. Lily imagines their violent screen action inside her abdomen to describe her cramps. Her mention of Wolf Warrior 3 belongs to the joke: she is imagining a film being made in her belly, not reporting a release or an actual production. Sources: Well Go USA — Ip Man, synopsis and cast; Well Go USA — Wolf Warrior 2, synopsis, director and cast.↩︎ Clots and blood stasis. Blood stasis is a traditional Chinese medicine concept describing blood whose circulation is slowed or obstructed. Here the narrator links that framework to menstrual clots and the women’s experience of pain. The visible clots and the traditional label are distinct kinds of description. Lily reports what happened to her; this episode does not establish a general rule that passing clots always ends menstrual pain, or identify a biomedical cause of her symptoms. Sources: WHO — Chinese medicine terminology, entry 428, printed p. 37; NHS — Heavy periods, menstrual clots among the described signs.↩︎ Her own Long March. The expression invokes the Red Army’s historic Long March, remembered as a demanding journey, to suggest a long ordeal still ahead. The Chinese wording says April has taken only its first step. In this scene the scale of that historical image is applied humorously to getting through a painful period: Lily feels better, while April is still at the beginning of her suffering. It supplies no precise duration for either woman’s symptoms. Source: National Museum of China — A Soviet government seal carried during the Long March.↩︎ Dou Dizhu and game credits. Ben is again playing the card game whose usual three-player version pits a “landlord” against two other players. The source calls his in-game credits “Happy Beans.” His losses and the prompt to buy more concern that game balance; the passage does not say he actually makes a purchase. Sources: JJ Games — Dou Dizhu, general rules (in Chinese); Tencent — Happy Dou Dizhu, Happy Beans in the new-player gift list (in Chinese).↩︎ Tuina and Siwu Tang. Tuina is a Chinese manual therapy using massage techniques; Siwu Tang is the named formula also called Four Substances Decoction. Both have appeared earlier. Clara’s comparison of Ben to a massage-parlor worker and her dismissal of Evan’s one-formula repertoire express her frustration. The later “King of Siwu Tang” is the same mocking nickname, not a qualification. Sources: Hong Kong Health Bureau — Chinese medicine interventions, tui-na; Hong Kong Baptist University — Si Wu Tang, F00073.↩︎ Changing a constitution. In Chinese medicine, body constitution refers to a person’s relatively stable physical, functional, and psychological characteristics. “Restoring your health” renders the broader idea of tiaoli, regulating or conditioning health with treatment. Ben invokes that language to explain why effects should take time. His asserted month or two is his attempted excuse in this conversation, not a duration established by the terminology standard. The drum comparison recalls Evan’s promise of a prompt response; it specifies no measured interval. Source: WHO — Chinese medicine terminology, entry 2239, printed p. 322.