Dr. Xu: A Chinese Medicine Novel

Morning brings Evan back to Mingxin Clinic, and to Clara’s latest efforts.

Evan had received a formal university education in Chinese medicine. In every Chinese medicine program at those universities, nearly a third of the courses covered Western medicine.[1]

His thinking had been Westernized too. But in the years he had spent in the past through the system, the more patients he treated, the more he saw the advantages of practicing Chinese medicine alone. His teacher, Dr. Qian, had kept him on course. Dr. Qian himself practiced true Chinese medicine, in a family tradition going back several generations.

Both Evan and Oliver Liu had taken the path of Chinese medicine alone. The further they went, the better they became.

During those years in the past, both had become experts. In the present, Professor Oliver Liu had gone further still, becoming one of the country’s greatest physicians, renowned far and wide.

Evan had never wavered in his conviction. The further he went, the firmer it grew.

After he got home, he read for a while, then fell asleep, exhausted. It had been a long day.

…

The next morning, he got up and went to work.

At Mingxin Clinic, he found Clara. He was so angry he could have burst. He really wanted to give her a piece of his mind. What on earth had she been doing?

“Heh-heh. Look!” With a placating smile, Clara produced her phone and held it up in front of him as though showing off a treasure.

“What?” Evan frowned at the screen. It was the Zhihu app, filled with Clara’s arguments with people attacking Chinese medicine. He took the phone and scrolled through a few pages. The fighting had been fierce.[2]

At a glance, there were several thousand comments.

“You…” He stopped short.

Clara rubbed her eyes. The dark circles could have made her an honorary panda. She yawned again. “Wasn’t this what you asked me to do? How did I do?”

After that, Evan couldn’t bring himself to vent his anger at her.

“Forget it. Just don’t do it again.” He felt rather helpless.

“Heh-heh. Don’t worry. There won’t be a next time,” Clara said.

Evan shook his head and sat down. “Get to bed earlier from now on.”

“Okay,” Clara agreed.

Evan checked the system’s data. There were five years left before his third clinical mentorship. Clara was a formidable fighter. She had already helped him cut the wait in half.[3]

Without her, he really had no good way to complete the system’s tasks. She had stayed up so late, working so hard on his behalf. He couldn’t very well blame her too much.

He shook his head helplessly.

Then he checked the task to help Simon return to Chinese medicine. It still hadn’t been marked complete. Perhaps Simon still wasn’t willing to come back.

Everyone had their own path to follow. He couldn’t force anyone.

Evan went on living his life and following his own path. Each day was the same: attending to his patients during the day, reading and studying diligently at night. Half his day with patients, half with books.

A few more days passed. Business at Mingxin Clinic was steady. At this rate, it ought to stop losing money and stay open. Clara could finally relax.

She kept arguing with people attacking Chinese medicine, but Evan was receiving fewer and fewer acceleration packs from the system. It wasn’t that she wasn’t working hard enough. One approach could only take them so far.

There were now four years left in the buffering period. He would probably have to find other effective ways to publicize Chinese medicine. Several days had passed, and he had stopped concerning himself with Simon. Yet the system hadn’t withdrawn the task or marked it as failed.

That puzzled him.

One day, Evan had just finished seeing a patient.

Someone appeared at the entrance. It was Simon.

Evan was taken aback. It had been only a few days since they’d last met, but Simon looked much more haggard. He had lost a lot of weight, and his face was drawn with fatigue. His expression, though, was very calm.

Clara and Ben were startled too.

“Dr. Liu, you… What…” Evan was taken aback.

If the address bar doesn’t say , you’re looking at an unauthorised copy of someone’s work.

Simon smiled, which only made him look more worn. “Dr. Xu, I’ve come to say goodbye.”

“Oh…” Evan stared.

“I’m going to Beijing.” Simon smiled, then sighed softly, looking wistful. “I’m still confused. I still feel lost. I still don’t understand.

“But I don’t want to go on being confused. I’m going out to look for answers. I’ve done further training at quite a few Chinese medicine hospitals, but I didn’t find them there.

“I want to ask practitioners of true Chinese medicine to help me understand. I’m going to Mr. Zhang Xiaotong’s clinic. I know a doctor like me could never get into a clinic like that, but I’m willing to start as an apprentice.”

Evan was stunned. “But… you’re about to become deputy head of the department.”[4]

Simon shook his head with a smile. “I’ve spent half my life on this path. The further I go, the more confused I become. I used to think I couldn’t afford to lose. There were too many things I couldn’t bear to let go of.

“I struggled with it for a long time. I could have a perfectly good life at the Chinese medicine hospital. Everyone was doing things the same way. Everything we did was reasonable and legal. Why should I give up everything I had just to clear up the doubts in my mind?

“So you’ve seen what I’ve looked like lately. I’ve made a wreck of myself. Not a pretty sight, and certainly not very dignified.” Simon chuckled.

“I’d been about to give up,” he went on. “Then yesterday a patient came to see me. I remember him very well. I’d treated him not long after I joined the hospital. As it happens, he had adenovirus pneumonia too.

“He was only a little boy then. I cured him with Chinese medicines. His whole family came to trust me. Whenever they got sick afterward, they booked outpatient appointments with me. You could say I watched him grow up.[5]

“More than twenty years have gone by, just like that. He’s grown now, and he’s getting married. He brought me a wedding invitation. He said he wanted to bring his wife to thank the man who saved his life.”

Simon gave a deep sigh, then a self-mocking smile. “At that moment, I understood. Fame? Money? I’m a doctor. I studied medicine in the first place because I wanted to treat illness and save lives, not chase fame and money.

“Now I have doubts about my own medical skills, and I’m deliberately pretending not to see them because I want to hang on to the status and money I already have. Is that what a doctor should do?

“In all my years of practice, I’ve never shirked my responsibility to a patient. Am I going to start going against my conscience and medical ethics now?

“So I’ve made up my mind.”

He looked at Evan seriously. “I still can’t fully accept your theories about practicing Chinese medicine alone. But I’m going to see what true Chinese medicine is. I want to clear up my doubts. I want to find out who’s wrong.

“Maybe I’ll be back soon. Maybe it’ll take a few years. Maybe longer. But I won’t regret it. I just may not be able to make it to that boy’s wedding.”

Simon lowered his head, then raised it again and looked at Evan. Earnestly, he said, “Dr. Xu, thank you.”

He turned and left with a wave. It wasn’t a particularly graceful exit.

Evan watched him go with mixed feelings. He kept watching until Simon disappeared around the corner, without calling him back.

Even after Simon was gone, Evan kept looking down the street for a long time…

Beep… Task complete. Special reward received: Clinical Training Room—Pulse Examination unlocked.[6]

Reader Notes

Reader Notes

↩︎ University training and “Chinese medicine alone.” Chinese medicine degrees can include biomedical subjects as well as traditional theory and clinical practice. Beijing University of Chinese Medicine’s course description, for example, lists pathology, pharmacology, and Western clinical medicine alongside Chinese medicine courses. This supports the mixed educational background described here, without establishing the narrator’s “nearly a third” as a universal proportion. “Chinese medicine alone” describes the approach Evan favors in the novel, rather than a separate degree or license; “true Chinese medicine” expresses the story’s distinction between approaches. Source: Beijing University of Chinese Medicine — Core courses, section 1 (in Chinese).↩︎ Zhihu. The question-and-answer community introduced earlier in the serial is a public discussion platform, rather than a private messaging service. Clara’s exchanges here are online arguments; the comments and her exhaustion belong to the novel’s events. Source: Zhihu — 2022 ESG Report, section 4.1.1, p. 69.↩︎ Clinical mentorship. Learning by following an experienced practitioner can include observing clinical work, studying the teacher’s reasoning, and recording cases. Experienced doctors can continue learning this way; becoming an apprentice does not necessarily mean starting a medical degree. Evan’s waiting period and acceleration packs belong to his supernatural system. They are distinct from real training requirements and do not measure his physical age. Source: National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine — Mentorship education measures, articles 2–6 and 15–16 (in Chinese).↩︎ A department post. Chapter 63 distinguished Simon’s existing professional rank, associate chief physician, from his expected appointment as deputy head of the department. Evan refers to that management post here. The shared Chinese word zhuren can occur in both professional titles and department leadership positions; the two are not interchangeable. Simon has not yet taken up the new post. Source: Beijing municipal government — Medical professional title structure, section III(1), item 1 (in Chinese).↩︎ The earlier pneumonia case. Adenoviruses can cause pneumonia, the biomedical diagnosis discussed in the preceding chapters. Simon’s account of curing this childhood patient is his recollection within the story. It is not a clinical study establishing the effectiveness of a particular herbal treatment; he gives no formula or prescription here. The CDC’s clinical overview describes care directed at symptoms and complications. Source: CDC — Clinical Overview of Adenovirus, Testing and diagnosis; Treatment and recovery.↩︎ Pulse examination. In Chinese medicine, feeling the pulse is part of palpation, one of the four diagnostic methods. It involves interpreting pulse qualities, rather than merely counting heartbeats. The clinical training room is a fictional system feature. Source: Hong Kong Department of Health — Diagnostic Methods and Features.