Dr. Xu: A Chinese Medicine Novel

A new lesson opens while a repost carries Evan’s work to a wider audience.

Task complete. The Inheritor has used his knowledge of Chinese medicine to change an opponent’s view, earning genuine respect for Chinese medicine. Special reward granted. Distributing reward…

Curious, Evan opened it.

Clinical Training Room unlocked. Lesson One: Acupuncture and Moxibustion.

Learning objectives: acquire clinical treatment skills in acupuncture and moxibustion; gain a basic command of the compound tonifying and draining techniques “Setting the Mountain on Fire” and “Heaven-Penetrating Coolness.”[1]

“Wow.” Evan’s eyes lit up. Were there any more Chinese medicine bashers out there? Send him a whole basketful!

Acupuncture and moxibustion were indispensable tools of Chinese medicine. Their unusual methods had also led people to turn them into something mythical.

Films and television were full of miracle doctors, absurd magic needles, and all manner of ridiculous needling.

Then there were the miracle-doctor novels. The hero took out a silver needle, stuck it in, and cured whatever illness happened to be at hand. Then he declared his acupuncture unrivaled.

First, the needles used today were stainless steel. Second, dammit, that was just needling—not the whole of zhenjiu!

Zhenjiu covered two different things: needle treatment and moxibustion.[2]

One major reason Chinese medicine had declined was the sheer number of frauds. Every one of them was a miracle doctor who could cure anything. Films and television spread that nonsense too.

Genuine practitioners of Chinese medicine hated the label “miracle doctor.” No doctor could guarantee, with absolute certainty, to cure an illness in a single treatment. Not even Zhang Zhongjing.

Chinese medicine was a practical medical art. It had its strengths, and it had areas where it fell short.

No medical art was perfect.

I’ve always thought the people who blindly hype Chinese medicine do it as much harm as those who attack it!

What part, then, did acupuncture and moxibustion play in Chinese medicine as a whole? Their greatest strength came down to one word: speed.

In the past, acupuncture and moxibustion were the methods most often used in emergencies. For urgent treatment, nothing worked faster than needling.

It was the quickest treatment to take effect.[3]

Chinese medicine prized four qualities: simplicity, convenience, low cost, and effectiveness. Acupuncture and moxibustion exemplified all four.

That was why, in earlier times, doctors traveling from place to place always carried an acupuncture kit in their medicine chests, alongside a few prepared remedies.

Today, acupuncture was popular worldwide, and acupuncturists in Europe and America earned very high salaries. Six months was enough to learn the technique.

Learning to treat illness, though, took at least five or six years of work. A lifetime might not be enough to master it.

Needling wasn’t just a matter of sticking a needle in. Someone who could only insert needles and apply moxa was a needle-and-moxa technician. Wellness clubs offered those services too.

To actually treat illness, you had to learn the four diagnostic methods and pattern differentiation. That was why many students spent five years studying acupuncture at Chinese medicine colleges and still graduated without much ability to treat disease. It wasn’t easy.

Treating illness and providing wellness care were two different things. Treatment meant distinguishing yin from yang, exterior from interior, deficiency from excess, and cold from heat, and determining which channel or vessel was affected. Just as Evan had done with Max’s roommate: he first had to identify qi stagnation and blood stasis before deciding how to needle.[4]

An excess pattern required a draining technique. Finding the right point and inserting a needle wasn’t enough.

So a patient might seek out a practitioner for a strained back and receive the whole package: acupuncture, tuina, fire cupping, everything. It felt better at the time. Then the patient went home, slept, and woke in so much pain the next morning that getting out of bed was impossible.[5]

Why? The practitioner didn’t know how to treat illness!

The same package was fine for a healthy person seeking wellness care. They weren’t ill in the first place. After a comfortable session, they could go home and sleep well.

That was why more and more people spoke of seeing a Chinese medicine practitioner to improve their general health, rather than to treat an illness. Too many practitioners couldn’t treat illness.

What were acupuncture and moxibustion’s greatest advantages? Effectiveness, and speed. Some of the finest practitioners could make the illness vanish as soon as the needle went in or the moxa was applied.

Of all the needling techniques, two had been especially celebrated by generations of masters: Setting the Mountain on Fire and Heaven-Penetrating Coolness.

Patterns could be deficient or excessive. Deficiency called for tonifying; excess called for draining. Setting the Mountain on Fire was a powerful tonifying method; Heaven-Penetrating Coolness was a powerful draining method. These compound techniques were exceptionally quick and effective![1]

When acupuncturists from Japan and South Korea once came to China for an exchange, they looked down on Chinese acupuncture. They thought the Chinese ought to be learning from them.

It was only when the Chinese practitioners demonstrated these two special techniques that the visitors were left speechless.

Yet only a handful of people could perform them now.

Evan knew only ordinary acupuncture and moxibustion. He had never imagined he would get a chance to learn these techniques…

Without hesitation, he chose to enter the clinical training room.

Suddenly, his surroundings changed.

He was in a consulting room. A treatment bed stood in the center. Two people stood facing him on the other side.

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Evan looked around, then closed his eyes to check the system’s prompts. Nothing was displayed. Was there no story this time? No traveling into the past or future—just medical practice?

“Hello, Comrade Evan Xu. I’m your instructor. I will be teaching you acupuncture and moxibustion techniques.” The scholarly-looking man opposite him wore round glasses and spoke slowly.

Evan looked up and froze. “You’re…”

“Hello. My name is Cheng Dan’an. You may call me Instructor Cheng.”[6]

Evan was utterly stunned.

Charlie Chen, “JiangMed Senior,” had more than three hundred thousand followers, after all. His repost of Evan’s Weibo post immediately brought it plenty of views.

It helped that Charlie was handsome and had a large following of young women.

Senior Chen, you’re amazing! Promoting Chinese medicine too!

If Senior Chen thinks this doctor is good, he must be really good!

Wow, Senior Chen is so handsome! (Photo attached.)

The comments under Charlie’s post had gone a little off course.

Evan’s Weibo account was gaining followers too, all sent his way by Charlie. He’d started with a thousand bought followers; now his total was heading straight for three thousand.

His few posts were getting plenty of comments.

Especially the video of him drinking the medicine.

The young women weren’t interested in a doctor whose face was hidden behind a mask. But Charlie also had plenty of followers in the medical profession, and they got excited when they saw it.

Holy shit! Chinese medicine is awesome!

Come watch a fellow Fire Spirit cultivator court death!

The Fire Spirit school rules!

You Fire Spirit people can take fuzi recklessly yourselves, but don’t teach kids to do it!

And so on.[7]

The comments were all over the place. Chinese medicine wasn’t a united front either. The divisions between its schools ran deep, and their disputes had lasted for centuries.

Whatever else happened, Evan was getting more exposure.

The internet was a remarkable place. As soon as someone promoted Chinese medicine, the bashers were sure to arrive.

Especially on Weibo, where they congregated. Like flies catching the scent of meat, they could find it from a thousand miles away.

Within a few hours, they had arrived on the battlefield. Several major accounts were cheering them on. The attackers overran one position after another and soon took over the comments on both JiangMed Senior’s account and Evan’s.[8]

Abuse, questions, and mockery poured in, burying both accounts…

Evan hadn’t even become famous yet, and a whole crowd was already beating him up…

Reader Notes

↩︎ Two compound needling methods. Setting the Mountain on Fire, shaoshanhuo, is a traditional reinforcing or tonifying manipulation associated with a warming sensation. Heaven-Penetrating Coolness, toutianliang, is a reducing or draining manipulation associated with a cooling sensation. “Compound” means that several aspects of needle manipulation are combined; the names do not describe flames or supernatural cold. The system promises Evan a basic command of both. The account of a visiting delegation gives no date, participants, or source, and is retained as the narrator’s anecdote rather than an independently verified historical event. Source for the terminology: WHO — Chinese medicine terminology, entries 3045 and 3053–3054, printed pp. 411–412. ↩︎↩︎ Two parts of zhenjiu. The Chinese word joins zhen, needle treatment, and jiu, moxibustion: applying heat using smoldering moxa, made from mugwort. The joke depends on the Chinese umbrella term; ordinary English “acupuncture” usually refers to needling. “Silver needles” is a familiar literary image. Stainless steel is the common modern material, although WHO also lists silver and gold needles. The narrator’s “all” is a generalization. Here the text criticizes a fictional one-needle cure; it gives Evan no new procedure to perform. Sources: Hong Kong Health Bureau — Chinese medicine interventions; WHO — Chinese medicine terminology, entries 3008–3010 and 3138.↩︎ Speed, results, and training. The narrator is making a case for acupuncture’s place within Chinese medicine. The claims about being the fastest treatment, immediate cures, high earnings abroad, and the time needed to learn are the source text’s broad assertions. Modern clinical evidence is assessed for particular conditions and outcomes; a result for one condition does not establish the same result for all illnesses. The six-month remark distinguishes learning a technique from clinical mastery, and gives no professional qualification or licensing requirement. Source for the evidence distinction: NCCIH — Acupuncture: Effectiveness and Safety.↩︎ Diagnosis before choosing a point. The four methods are inspection, listening and smelling, inquiry, and palpation. Pattern differentiation combines their findings within a traditional framework. The four pairs listed here are the eight principles; “deficiency” and “excess” describe patterns, rather than whether an illness is real. Channels and vessels belong to that framework. Qi stagnation and blood stasis repeat Evan’s explanation of the roommate’s back pain, without establishing a biomedical blood clot. His choice of a draining method follows that earlier reasoning. Sources: Hong Kong Department of Health — Diagnostic methods; WHO — Chinese medicine terminology, entries 440 and 989–997.↩︎ Tuina and fire cupping. Tuina is Chinese therapeutic manual treatment. Cupping places a cup against the skin and creates suction; fire cupping uses heat to establish that suction. Neither is another name for inserting an acupuncture needle. The narrator criticizes applying a standard package without properly identifying the patient’s condition. This is a general example, not another treatment of Max’s roommate. “Needle-and-moxa technician” is the narrator’s dismissive label for limited skills, rather than a formal professional credential. Sources: Hong Kong Health Bureau — Chinese medicine interventions; NCCIH — Cupping.↩︎ Cheng Dan’an. Cheng (1899–1957) was a real physician and educator important to the development of modern Chinese acupuncture and its teaching institutions. This historical background explains Evan’s shock at hearing his name. The encounter belongs to the novel’s fictional system: Cheng’s dates do not establish a calendar year for the training room or an age for the instructor. “Comrade” preserves a form of address associated with China’s socialist-era public life, already heard during Evan’s earlier training. Source for Cheng’s life and work: Journal of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine — Study of Cheng Dan’an’s academic thought, 2024, pp. 1039–1041 (in Chinese).↩︎ The Fire Spirit school. This is the medical school discussed earlier, associated with warming yang and using fuzi, the processed lateral root of aconite. The “fellow cultivator” and “courting death” language borrows the grand register of cultivation fantasy for an online joke. These commenters are assigning Evan to a school; he has not declared that affiliation here. Their praise and criticism also show disagreement within Chinese medicine. Fuzi contains toxic aconite alkaloids, and the video is not proof of general safety. Sources: Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine — Lecture on the Fire Spirit school (in Chinese); Hong Kong Department of Health — Safe use of medicines containing aconitum alkaloids (in Chinese).↩︎ Accounts, influence, and comments. A da V, literally a “big V,” is a prominent social-media account, with the V associated with platform verification. It does not by itself identify a medical qualification. Following an account, reposting its content, and commenting are different activities; Charlie’s repost brings Evan a new audience. “Senior Chen” is the fans’ familiar, admiring address, not a claim of family or formal apprenticeship. The attack described here takes place through posts and comments. Source for platform functions and verification: Weibo Corporation — 2017 annual report, “Individual Page” and “Repost, Comment, Favorite, Like,” printed pp. 48–49.