ringing traditional Chinese medicine to Western practitioners

By Wang Yu

Although it was introduced to the West a long time ago, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) remains an “alternative” solution for Western patients. But TCM has also captured many foreigners’ imaginations and lured them to China for further exploration and study.

Michael FitzGerald is one of those people. Since arriving in Beijing in 2006, the American doctor has translated several Chinese medicine books into English, including The Clinical Application of Shang Han Lun Formulas. His translation covers sections of both herbal medicine and acupuncture.

The 44-year-old began learning Chinese in 1994. However, it was not until he entered the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco in 1998 that he embarked on his current career. After graduating in 2002, he passed California’s state medical exam and became a licensed acupuncturist.

With an educational background in ethnobotany – the study of the relationship between plants and people – FitzGerald has always preferred living a simple life that is close with nature. He naturally became interested in the connection between ethnobotany and Chinese medicine. Meanwhile, as FitzGerald’s mother is a long-time asthma sufferer, FitzGerald thought maybe TCM could offer a cure.

“If you told me Chinese medicine would take 10 to 20 years to learn, I would have been shocked at that time,” FitzGerald said.

He jumped in. FitzGerald’s first destination was China’s Taiwan, where he worked in one of his Chinese teachers’ clinics from 2002 to 2003 and continued to study under numerous respected practitioners. His work experience and years of study taught him that China has a long history of medicine that has only been partially uncovered by the West. Differences in language and culture were major barriers.

In 2006, he got the opportunity to go to the mainland to work as a translator for the People’s Medical Publishing House in Beijing. He got involved in a project translating 200 Chinese medicine books, but he and his colleague only finished 20 of them.

Eleven months later, FitzGerald returned to Taiwan as his Chinese wife was about to give birth to their first child. But he would return to Beijing, in 2009, drawn by his desire to encounter more forms of TCM. 

“Education in the States is very standardized, as it is now in China, but nevertheless there is still an opportunity here in China to learn from a wide variety of practitioners with an equally wide variety of styles,” FitzGerald said.

FitzGerald is currently a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and often gives introductory lessons on Chinese medicine at the Chinese Culture Center at Liangmaqiao. Every week he studies with an acupuncturist and an experienced herbalist.

One of his recent projects is a translation of the Bencao Jing (Compendium of Materia Medica) from classical Chinese language, which is hard to read even for native Chinese speakers. After years of translation, FitzGerald can now understand most of this archaic language.

“Translation is like a relationship. On one hand I love it but at the same time, it is always painful to find the best word that matches the medical term in Chinese,” he said. “Translating traditional text is like archaeology: you find a bone, you dust it and show people what it looks like, and that can sometimes be confusing.

“But I think I’m quite qualified now to interpret things and make them clear. I’m doing that because I plan to give my translations to people in clinics so they can diagnose others.”

FitzGerald said that though the Western mainstream tends to accept Chinese medicine, no one has done a thorough analysis of TCM, which can at times be like an art. He is currently preparing to start a Chinese medicine journal, which he hopes can explain Chinese medicine in a new way to Western readers.
 
FitzGerald used to see a Chinese doctor in Taiwan about back problems, and the doctor never asked for money. The Chinese man was once told to use his skills to help people, and FitzGerald admired his effort.

“There used to be a friend who told me to take Chinese medicine as a hobby, and I really like that idea: treat people two days a week, don’t worry about the money; think of the treatment as a gift to the people,” FitzGerald said. “I’ll make money in other ways, like painting works of art.”