Pronounced: sì shì tóng táng
Means: “four generations under the same roof” — a traditional Chinese dream of great-grandparents, grand-parents, children, and grandchildren all living together as one big family in one home. Also the name of a 20th century novel.

Maybe this technically doesn’t count since we usually don’t all live together. But at least for the few days surrounding 大妹妹‘s wedding we’re playing “four generations under the same roof” (四世同堂), a traditional Chinese ideal where four generations of a family all live together in peace and harmony in one house.

But being a bunch of Canadians and Americans, I’m not so sure that the idea of everyone living all together in one big house has ever seriously crossed any of our minds. Though I have to admit the last couple days have been really 热闹。

I google-image searched “四世同堂” and found both old and recent Chinese examples of four-generations-under-the-same-roof photos (here), if you’re into looking at other peoples’ family photos. The last one is from the TV drama adaptation of a novel by titled “四世同堂”.

After three years of:

• Our Chinese friends blaming everything from sore throats to acne on their bodies’ ‘fire’ being too hot,
• Discovering that they’re afraid to drink chilled water,
• Walking past acupuncture and reflexology charts in storefronts,
• Coming across medicine for apparently common ailments that I’d never heard of (like “receiving wind” and getting an upset stomach from going out in the cold?)
• Noticing how therapies like fire-cupping are normal and popular but being unable to imagine how giant hickeys could possibly be good for you,
• etc.,

…I’ve decided I want a basic understanding of Chinese medicine so I can at least have a clue about where our Chinese friends are coming from.

They all believe that traditional Chinese medicine and treatment works more or less, though they sometimes don’t believe in the theories behind it. One Mainlander I know in Vancouver says the explanations are nonsense, but that years of observation have led to some effective treatments. A friend in Taipei let us observe his visit to a traditional Chinese doctor and gave us a full debriefing afterward; he uses both Western and Chinese medicine.

I was running some questions past some medical friends while writing a “Fire-Cupping & Guasha for Dummies” article, and one of them put me on to Ted Kaptchuk’s The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine. This is supposedly the classic explain-Chinese-medicine-to-Westerners book, and I’ve started reading it.

I’m a couple chapters in and it’s definitely illuminating, but it’s not what I’d call an easy read. It’s not poorly written or too academic, but the author is trying to communicate concepts that are difficult to express outside of Chinese languages and worldview, especially using English within a Western worldview. Depending on the presentation, Chinese medical theory in English can either sound like total nonsense, or it can seem too easily understood and just look like a trendy, exotic branch of Western medicine. Neither does justice to Chinese medicine; they both miss the spirit of it.

For Westerners to “get” Chinese medicine, we have to think outside of our thought categories. But that’s not easy, because anything outside our thought categories naturally sounds like nonsense.

Our background in intercultural studies makes us sensitive to the cross-cultural dynamic where ideas can easily become “lost in translation,” and Kaptchuk seems to appreciate that as well. He starts his 500-plus page introduction to Chinese medicine by discussing basic Chinese philosophy and general worldview fundamentals.

Chinese and Western medicine are different at their respective roots, and highlighting points of contrast is helpful, as is explaining how Western medicine would interpret what Chinese medicine does in a given situation. Kaptchuk starts this process early on in Weaver:

To Western medicine, understanding an illness means uncovering a distinct entity that is separate from the patient’s being; to Chinese medicine, understanding means perceiving the relationships among all the patient’s signs and symptoms in the context of his or her life [p.6].

A Chinese physician examining the same patient must discern a pattern of disharmony made up of the entire accumulation of symptoms and signs.*

*From a biomedical [Western] standpoint, the Chinese physician is assessing the patient’s specific and general physiological and psychological response to a disease entity [p.7].

I suspect that a decent understanding of Chinese medicine — for a layman, at least — is something “better caught than taught;” you absorb the meaning and understanding implicitly over time through exposure to the ideas and practices, rather than only by reading a well-categorized explicit explanation of what everything means and how everything is supposed to work. Chinese medical theory seems by its very nature to resist the kind of definition and clarity that Western medicine considers essential to the entire medical enterprise.

Particular body parts and fluids like kidneys or blood can’t even be translated directly across. Kaptchuk capitalizes words like “Blood” to indicate when he’s writing of them in the distinct Chinese medical sense. For example (p.53):

Obviously, the Blood of Chinese medical terminology is not the same as what the West calls blood. Although it is sometimes identifiable with the red fluid of biomedicine, its characteristics and functions are not so identifiable.
…
Blood moves primarily through the Blood Vessels, but also through the Meridians. Chinese medicine does not make a clear distinction between Blood Vessels and Meridians. The Chinese rarely concern themselves about precise inner physical locations — the Stomach Qi “goes upward,” or the Blood “circulates,” but it is seldom entirely clear what internal paths they travel or where, precisely, they go. The physical pathway is less important than the function. This tendency not to fix sites for things is contrary to the Western approach, but it is inevitable with Chinese medical theorizing, which emphasizes process over fixed entities.

As a Westerner I hear ‘Chinese medicine‘ and I’m automatically subconsciously expecting, assuming, and looking for all kinds of things, like chemicals and cells and body parts and discrete, well-defined categories. But Chinese medicine apparently doesn’t care so much about that stuff, at least not in the ways that Western medicine does. Maybe rather than hear ‘Chinese medicine‘ I ought to think ‘Chinese medicine.’ This is less about medicine and medical stuff in any sense that I’m familiar with, and more about Chinese culture and worldview. I’ll see how my impressions change as I continue reading.

Related Posts:

• Fire-Cupping & Guasha for Dummies
• Getting guasha’d (刮痧) and octopussed (拔火罐) in a Tianjin bathhouse
• Getting fire cupped in a Tianjin bath house (or) Losing a wrestling match to a giant octopus
• Chinese Doctor Visit & Geeking out

John at Sinosplice shares some interesting reading about cross-cultural marriages, how couples choose which language to use, and what that means for their identities and their relationship.

Charles W. Hayford reviews “wolf’s milk” nationalism and the article that started the Bingdian controversy.

An executive in an African think-tank opines on China’s recent involvement in Africa.

China may be a lot of things, but boring aint one of them. The more language we learn, the more interesting this place gets.

From Rob Gifford, author of China Road:

I defy any reporter to make China boring. Almost everything about it is surprising and interesting, in part because it is so different from what you’re expecting. One of the great things about living here, quite apart from the opportunity to fill up the Q, X, and Z sections of your address book, is just going with the flow, walking out in the morning with only a vague plan and seeing where the day takes you. It’s almost always somewhere you’d never predicted.

When a newly-arrived language student says China is interesting, it’s one thing. When veteran reporter is still saying it even though he first set foot in China in 1987, it’s something else. Rob Gifford’s final gig in China was as an NPR correspondent from 1999 to 2005, and China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power is his swan song, combining insights from his work and experiences in China with his love and fascination of the country and its people. He chronicles one last epic journey along the Chinese equivalent of America’s Route 66, China’s “mother road” stretching from Shanghai all the way to the far Western border of Muslim China. The road and the people he meets become a map outlining where China is and where it’s going.

Hitchhiking much of the way and utilizing some sensitive contacts (at least one of whom is currently in prison), he talks to all kinds of people, from long-haul truckers to dying villagers that you aren’t supposed to know about. China Road shows both impressive and offensive aspects of today’s China, locating personal stories within the bigger context of China’s ongoing social and economic reforms. The country and people Gifford portrays will both endear and offend the reader. Aside from some occasionally getting overheated in parts, China Road is a smooth and passionate read.

You frequent taxi-takers out there might want to read this, especially if you live near Shenzhen. Fake currency is the People’s responsibility.

Shashi Tharoor uses the Olympics to contrast China and India, via CDT: Olympic Proof: India is Not China.

Just in case you wanted to know: “How to Learn to Speak and Read Fluent Mandarin.” (Hint: the first step is, “Make Learning Mandarin Your Mission in Life.”)