Dr. Xu: A Chinese Medicine Novel

Evan has prescribed a warming formula. The driver still has questions.

Once Clara had measured out the herbs, she went to prepare the driver’s decoction.

The driver sat down, his anger much reduced. He glanced at Ben. “Let’s forget what happened before. I was at fault too. I lost my temper. Don’t take it to heart.”

Ben breathed a sigh of relief. This could have become a serious matter, or it could have blown over. Failing to cure a patient wasn’t such a big deal in itself, since no serious harm had been done.

The man had seen plenty of doctors who hadn’t cured him. Ben was hardly the only one. Still, Ben had pressured him into having tuina, therapeutic massage. He couldn’t claim to be entirely in the right.

Hospitals dreaded patients making a scene. Small private clinics like theirs were especially vulnerable. Once word of a bad reputation got out, business became very difficult.

And Mingxin Clinic was already fighting for survival. Layoffs were looming. If Ben caused a major incident now, how could he expect things to end well for him?

Thank goodness it was all right now.

Ben nodded. “It’s fine. I bear some responsibility too. But let me ask you something, buddy. Who told you I’d prescribed the wrong medicine? Which doctor?”

“The clinic next door. Dr. Gao told me.”

“Fuck!” Ben sprang up. “Brendan Gao, we’re not fucking done!” He charged out.

The driver stared after him. “Is he all right?”

Evan didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh. “He’s fine. They’re good friends. He’s probably gone for a friendly chat.”

“Oh.” The driver relaxed.

Sunshine Residential Community had two clinics at street level: Mingxin Clinic, their Chinese medicine practice, and a conventional medical clinic owned by Brendan Gao.

He and Ben were old buddies. They had a great deal in common. Neither had much skill, but both were very good at talking people into things and passing the buck.

Brendan probably hadn’t expected to land his old friend in trouble when he shifted the blame.

“Aaargh!”

Ben hadn’t been gone long before he came charging back, yelling. He grabbed his sister-in-law by the hand and hauled her toward the door.

Didn’t the silly girl have any sense? They’d been found out. Why was she still standing there?

She’d been trying to get friendly with Evan when Ben pulled her away.

“Hey, hey! What are you doing, brother-in-law? I… Dr. Xu, I’ll come back and see you next time…” Her voice faded into the distance.

Evan shook his head, half amused and half exasperated.

The driver had calmed down and was feeling embarrassed. “I was wrong to do that today. Please forgive me. These sores… they’re driving me… I’m going out of my mind!

“At home, my wife… ah… And at work, those ride-hailing drivers are taking all our business. I… I’m at my wits’ end.

“Then that doctor said someone had prescribed a load of nonsense for me. And when I thought about how haphazard he’d been before, I just got so angry… Ah, please forgive me.”

Evan took out a medical book and opened it. “It’s all right. I understand how patients feel. But you have to understand the doctor’s position too. No doctor can guarantee they’ll cure you.

“Even now, I can’t guarantee that this medicine will be a hundred percent effective. Often we need to be more understanding of each other. Though Dr. Song does bear some responsibility here.

“Next time something happens, don’t get so worked up. Sit down and talk it through. Anger harms the Liver. If Liver constraint turns into fire, you’ll have a whole new set of problems. Don’t you think?”[1]

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” the driver said sheepishly.

“Your Spleen and Stomach are very weak right now,” Evan told him. “Avoid cooling foods for the time being, or you’ll weaken them further. The Spleen and Stomach are the foundation of life after birth, the source of qi and blood. With Stomach qi, a person lives; without it, a person dies. Once the Spleen and Stomach weaken, all kinds of illnesses follow. Eat more regularly from now on.[2]

“And difficult as work may be, don’t worry too much. Too much brooding harms the Spleen. When something happens, don’t get anxious, impatient, angry, or bottled up. Anger and constraint harm the Liver, and Liver constraint turning into fire can also harm the Spleen and Stomach. Remember to keep your emotions steady.”

“All right, I’ll remember. But, Doctor… I keep getting diarrhea too, and my stomach keeps bloating. Do I need some medicine for that?”

“That’s caused by your Spleen deficiency too. The principle behind treating a Lizhong Tang pattern is this: the patient is ill above, below, to the left, and to the right. Rather than treating each of those areas, you treat only the qi in the center.

“Our body is like a car wheel. The Spleen and Stomach are the axle. You’re ill both above and below, but there’s no need to treat the two separately. Get the axle turning, and the wheel can turn properly. That’s the method of turning the axle to move the wheel.”

As he finished, Evan looked down at the book he’d opened: The Circular Movement of Ancient Chinese Medicine.[3]

“Oh.” The driver understood.

Some time later, Clara brought out the finished decoction and handed it to the driver.

Evan glanced at it. “Clara, bring this gentleman a blanket.”

“A blanket?” The driver was taken aback.

“Yes.” Evan nodded. “Cover your belly with it and drink the medicine. After a little while, we’ll give you a bowl of hot porridge.”

The driver was surprised again. “Porridge too?”

“Porridge is made from grain, the seeds of cereal plants, and has a warming effect,” Evan explained. “A bowl of hot porridge after the medicine helps strengthen Lizhong Tang’s warming action and prolong its effect. It supports the center and replenishes qi, helping your Spleen and Stomach.”

Taken from NovelPhoenix, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“All right,” the driver agreed.

He did as Evan instructed, drinking the medicine and eating the porridge.

“Don’t lift the blanket,” Evan added.

“All right.”

Evan gave a slight nod. This was the method of taking the medicine recorded in the Shanghan Lun, the Treatise on Cold Damage. It had been used for a thousand years and worked every time.[4]

Sure enough, not long after the hot porridge, the driver let out a long breath. “Oh, my… my belly feels so warm. It’s lovely. I haven’t felt this comfortable in ages. Just a little hot.”

“Bear with it a little longer. You need to sweat a little. After a while, you can take the blanket off and go.”

“All right.” The driver now followed Evan’s instructions to the letter.

A good while later, the driver finally left, feeling much more comfortable. He paid without any fuss.

Clara, of course, was very happy to take the money.

“Well, Dr. Xu, I’ll be going,” he said.

Evan nodded. “All right. Take this medicine for now. When you’ve finished it, come back and I’ll see how you’re doing.”

“Dr. Xu, you’re so young, but you’re a wonderful doctor! I’ll tell my cab-driver friends when I get back. I’ll put in a good word for you!”

Clara’s eyes lit up. “Yes, please! Make sure you tell lots of people!”

A clinic lived by its results. Get patients better, and more would keep coming.

“Of course!” the driver promised expansively. “Chinese medicine really is magic!”

“No, you’ve got that wrong,” Evan corrected him.

The driver looked startled.

“Chinese medicine is a rigorous medical discipline,” Evan said seriously. “Once you understand its principles, you’ll see there’s nothing magical about it.”

“Ah… yes, yes. Whatever you say.” With an awkward laugh, the driver said goodbye to them both.

Clara counted the banknotes, her eyes curved into crescents as she chuckled to herself. She gave Evan a thumbs-up. “Nice work! More money coming in.”

Evan only shook his head slightly. Without saying much, he lowered his gaze to The Circular Movement of Ancient Chinese Medicine again.

“Hey, do you think I’d get some attention if I explained how Chinese medicine identifies and treats the different patterns behind mouth sores?” Evan asked suddenly.[5]

Clara looked up from counting the money. “What was that?”

Evan shook his head. “Nothing.” He took out his phone and opened Weibo. The Chinese medicine basher had replied again.

MaxMaxMax:

You Chinese medicine people can’t cure anything, so you make excuses. You’ll even blame the herbs? What is it this time—pollution? The fact that they’re cultivated?

Evan frowned. This guy certainly had plenty of fight in him. In his earlier post, Evan had listed problems with medicinal herbs as one reason Chinese medicine could take time to work. Now the troll had latched onto that too.

But Evan wasn’t afraid. He had the goddess of online insults on his side.

He looked up. “Clara, I just saw someone saying Chinese medicine practitioners blame the herbs when they can’t cure people. He says we’ll claim the herbs aren’t potent enough because of pollution or because they’re cultivated. How do I hit back at that?”

Clara put the banknotes away. Without even thinking, she said, “Tell him it’s because Earth’s spiritual energy has run dry.”[6]

“Huh?” Evan laughed, then posted the goddess’s answer.

MaxMaxMax nearly spat blood with rage when he saw it. For all his online attacks on Chinese medicine, he couldn’t think of a reply for a long time.

Ding. Congratulations! Speed-up pack received.

The system had sent a notification. Evan tapped to use it.

Ding. Congratulations! Five-month speed-up awarded.

Evan was stunned. “Damn. So this is what you like?”

Reader Notes

↩︎ Emotions and organ systems. In the traditional account Evan is using, emotions and bodily functions can influence each other. Anger is associated with the Liver, while excessive brooding is associated with the Spleen. “Constraint turning into fire” describes a change in a traditional pattern, rather than literal burning. The capitalized organ names identify these functional systems. Evan’s warnings continue the emotional and digestive connections discussed earlier; they do not establish that the driver has a newly diagnosed anatomical liver injury. Source: Hong Kong Department of Health — Maintaining a healthy mental state in Chinese medicine (in Chinese).↩︎ The digestive center. Calling the Spleen and Stomach the “foundation of life after birth” gives food and digestion a central place in traditional accounts of sustaining life. Qi and blood here belong to that explanatory vocabulary. Stomach qi refers to digestive function, not air inside the stomach. The stark life-and-death saying is part of Evan’s explanation, not a prediction that the driver is about to die. Similarly, cooling foods refers to traditional food properties, not simply their serving temperature. Sources: The Chinese Medicine Hospital of Hong Kong — Zang-xiang; WHO — Chinese medicine terminology, entries 114 and 188.↩︎ The axle and the wheel. “Qi in the center,” or zhongqi, refers here to Spleen and Stomach function. Peng Ziyi’s Yuanyundong de Gu Zhongyixue, given a descriptive English title here, compares this center to an axle coordinating the body’s rising and descending functions. Its Lizhong section contains the passage Evan paraphrases. The section is headed “Lizhong Wan” and explicitly discusses both decoction and pill forms. Evan’s car wheel is an accessible version of that traditional analogy, rather than a description of abdominal anatomy. Sources: Peng Ziyi — Lizhong section, electronic transcription (in Chinese); WHO — Chinese medicine terminology, entry 243.↩︎ Lizhong Tang and the accompanying porridge. The Shanghan Lun, or Treatise on Cold Damage, describes pill and decoction forms of the Lizhong prescription. After the decoction, its instructions include hot porridge and keeping covered. The transcription consulted says to keep gently warm; it does not explicitly prescribe sweating in this passage. Evan’s later instruction to sweat is retained as his dialogue. The novel supplies no ingredients, doses, or exact waiting time. The narrator’s “worked every time” preserves the novel’s assertion; finding the historical instructions does not establish universal effectiveness or lasting recovery here. Source: Shanghan Lun — Section 13, Lizhong instructions after clause 386 (in Chinese).↩︎ Patterns and diagnosis. Pattern differentiation is the Chinese medicine practice of interpreting a patient’s combined findings within its traditional framework. A pattern is distinct from a biomedical disease name; patients with the same named condition can be assigned different patterns. Evan is considering an explanatory public post about that approach to mouth sores. The story has not shown him writing such a post, publishing a treatment guide, or supplying a new prescription. His present question is about attracting attention. Source: Hong Kong Department of Health — Diagnostic methods.↩︎ Earth’s spiritual energy. Clara’s reply borrows the language of Chinese cultivation fantasy, in which people gain extraordinary powers by gathering and refining a world-pervading energy. “Spiritual energy” translates lingqi in this joke; it is deliberately different in register from Evan’s earlier clinical discussion of qi. Clara offers an absurd comeback rather than a serious claim about medicinal plants. Evan copies her words, and the system’s response follows. The chapter does not explain the exact rule behind that reward. Source: Zhange Ni — Xiuzhen (Immortality Cultivation) Fantasy, author’s university copy, pp. 10–12.