Discussion what is it with chinese novels and their traditional medicine?

Discussion in 'Novel Discussion' started by mio, Sep 3, 2019.

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  1. Epsea

    Epsea Well-Known Member

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    Some readers in this forum have pointed out that the TCM was heavily promoted during Mao's time. I'm wondering, is it still being promoted by the current government? Or do they not care what kind of medicine the citizens use?

    I have no doubt that some TCM work. After all, everything in the world is made of chemicals, and some of those herbs will have chemicals that are affective for certain illnesses. What really bothers me is that the other chemicals in the herbs may cause adverse impacts on the human body. Sure, specific symptoms are cured, but other problems may be created unintentionally. My main concern here is the lack of scientific research into the properties of all chemicals present in each herb could cause some adverse side-effects of TCM to slip through unnoticed.

    I'm a Malaysian Chinese, so I've also had lots of opportunities to see TCM in action.

    I've seen relatives self-prescribe TCM to an ill and elderly relative based on rumours of the effectiveness of this 'medicine'. That was really worrying because that relative was on other western medication and there was no way of knowing how the western and TCM would interact. Not to mention, it's near impossible to verify if the 'medicine' was exactly what it was claimed to be! I wouldn't be surprised if other stuff was mixed in. Thankfully, the apparent medicine didn't have any adverse effects on my elderly relative, but I can't help but be amazed by my relative's confidence in TCM.

    Question two for the Chinese folks on this forum: is this kind of self-prescribing behaviour prevalent in China too?

    AND there's more! When my relatives take TCM they don't tell their western doctor about it! They just take both TCM and western medicine without a care in the world! They assume things will be perfectly fine. It's all fine and well when things work out, but that kind of behaviour is like playing russian roulette - you never know when you might end up with a bad combo of western medicine and TCM. -.-

    Question three: Is this also normal in China?
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2019
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  2. Nightow1

    Nightow1 Well-Known Member

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    I think it's because people died before cancer could become an issue. Cancer, when boiled down to the basics, is the body malfunctioning and this is often age related wear and tear. This is why countries that have a lower life expectency tend to have less cancer cases, they die before body malfunctions could go on long enough to become a problem.

    I'd also be careful taking bf's post at total face value, he does make a few general assumptions like the Chinese system making people stupid. The reality is that Imperial China was very heavily education based. The old "Imperial Exams" are famous worldwide and if you wanted to become even a low level government functionary, you had to study. Not really a system that sounds like it breeds stupidity.

    Good point.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2019
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  3. Nightow1

    Nightow1 Well-Known Member

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    Look up Apple Cider Vinegar.

    As for the cancer thing, as someone who did oncology, I have to point out that talk is cheap, to "cure" cancer you need to manipulate your own DNA and all our current techniques for gene modification is like using a shotgun to do surgery. And no, that was not an analogy, go look up "projectile bombardment" DNA manipulation. Now tell me if you want to use it on any human being, much less yourself. And I disagree that you need to take cancer medication for the rest of your life, you're mixing up cancer with organ transplants. Chemo and radiotheraphy and even amputation takes care of problems PERMANANTLY. The problem is not with the methods but with the fact that once any cancer cells metastasize, it flows through your blood all throughout your body which makes it a bitch to chase down. Hard to amputate your whole body you know. And those things hide in the worst nooks and crannies to pop back out after treatment.
     
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  4. justmehere

    justmehere Well-Known Member

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    Yeah ... this is a big problem...

    One doctor told me he had a problem once, the patient had TCM after he operated on her, and she bled profusely... Turns out her TCM actually contained blood thinner properties ...
     
  5. Saikyi

    Saikyi Well-Known Member

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    I feel like many countries moved away from herbal/traditional medicine once modern medicine came about so it's not normal for those countries...

    But many parts of China still follow tcm... Especially poorer rural parts that are barely modernized... And it's is very ingrained in the culture even now... Although i feel the younger generation is becoming less so,
    Also, TCM is also a lot broader then just herbs. Many Foods is also included under TCM, thus it's something you think about when cooking

    And it's not like western medicine doesn't have very bad side effects either... What i was told was Western medicine works faster and is stronger... But the side effects are also worst. Tcm may work slower, but the side effects are more mild. Like a normal , educated person obviously won't believe it's going to cure cancer, but if you just have a stomachache or something... Theres no reason why tcm isn't a good choice
     
  6. Jadecherries

    Jadecherries Active Member

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    ooo my parents told me to keep quiet about TCM to my doctor as well LOL. From what they told me, a lot of TCM isnt isnt scienally proven so most modern doctors dont believe in it. When they hear youve been taking medicine from TCM, they'll try to convince you its all BS and etc... My parents dont want to deal with doctors telling them their belief in chinese medicine is shit so they just dont ever mention it.
     
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  7. Brungles

    Brungles Well-Known Member

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    Very different in the amounts of respect paid to homeopathic remedies by the majority of each nation though. Comparing people who believe in crystal healing and honey curing cancer in America is no where near the percentage or amount of people in china who believe different old roots and ground up animal bones are cure all's.
     
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  8. bf

    bf Well-Known Member

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    I was already actively avoiding justmehere's insisting upon using his lived experience over a more rational and sceptical search for the truth of the actual matter. But you literally summoning me; you are a glutton for refutations, aren't you? :D

    Your views on the imperial exams are very far off point.

    But first things first. I never claimed that studying is not needed.
    In fact, I will shortly tell you how to actually herd cats.

    Let us start, again, with things that are not controversial. In this case, literally written in books. One relevant book here is the Confucian Analects. The relevant political philosophy concept is obscurantism. The Wiki page in English for obscurantism differs from the C version; the C version includes a bit relevant to C, obviously. In it, they cite the 8th chapter of Analects, in which a line from the Master said "The populace should be ordered to do stuff; do not explain why." They also claim that the particular statement is controversial; Confucius predated punctuation, so the verse could be punctuated into "The population should be ordered to do stuff, but if that fails, tell them why." If there is a statement that has no reason to exist, the latter one certainly fits. It is very clear that this latter version is a post-facto whitewashing; especially when you consider the contextual whole of Confucianism, which is more about govt officials should be like parents herding children, caring for their needs but not burdening the children with responsibilities and headaches, the original reading is _far_ more likely to be true.

    If that is too old for you, let's talk about what the C Nobel laureates say about their own upbringing. CN Yang repeatedly talked about how the training he received at school was very good for deriving consequences from postulates. However, it is very bad for trying to come up with new postulates to try; this, he learnt when he studied in USA. (It does not fit fully well with an analogy on deep logical thinking v.s. lateral thinking, but the analogy is not that bad.)

    Other than the Confucian view, the Taoists are even more of "Let us all return to simplicity." Of the 4 major schools of thought, that is already the biggest two (the other two are legalism and Mohism). Under legalism, you don't expect the general populace to know every single stupid law, so you have at least 3 out of 4 against teaching the populace.

    But that is a short form. Nobody is seriously suggesting that, in a place as large as C, to not teach kids. That would be stupid; For political stability, you really do not want to have a huge underlying resentment. You, instead, want to preach a version of meritocracy (which Mohism is surprisingly modern to fully endorse). This is helpful because it opens up a route for social mobility that allows anger with circumstances to be channelled towards self-help rather than fester. If you do not like your lot in life, go study. If you do not do well in exams, that is because you did not study well, and thus you have nobody else to blame but yourself. This is the ethos that you also see in the prosperity gospel.

    No part of the above examination system is yet about stupidity. You literally have to study until you cough blood to do well in these exams, or else it would have no point (and corruption in these exams is simultaneously hated by both the emperor and the populace, yet as inevitable as syphilis).

    But the _content_ of the exams is something you can play with. It is also where you can bake in qualities you want.

    One surprisingly uncontroversial part, is the language itself. It might sound very much like a maoist ploy to decry all the traditions, but HK, T, and others all agree about this: The C language is designed partly for population control. As in, there is no possibility for language to avoid having crass parts. Gangsters will always debase any language for the mundane uses. I am actually in support of having language that allows for elegance, because elegant languages are both difficult to produce and are vastly more fun to play with.

    But the C takes it to a whole totally impossible level. As in, I thoroughly enjoy the beautiful parts that I can understand, but for the most part of the language, it is just impossible to learn to understand. Ancient C is split into two; one is for everyday use and literal reading is acceptable. But the poems and all are examples of the referential branch of the language. By that, I mean that in order to understand what a statement is saying, you must first study the source material it is referencing. That source material is also a poetic (i.e. needs decoding) stanza that references another source. This means that you may have to unravel >2000 years of C history just to understand what a given text is trying to say. The blood, it coughs itself.

    All imperial work has to be conducted in referential language.

    Ponder the consequences of that. It is vastly easier to comprehend a beautifully constructed poem than to compose one. So, the emperor does not need to know how to do the latter. He just needs to employ a whole team of scribes. After deliberating upon various policies, the emperor will come to a decision. The scribes' job is to take the decision, dress it up as some astrological divine inspiration of some sort, write the decision as tied to some ancient preordained fairy tale, in an encrypted way---it must be a poem fitting a certain tune, it must be such that adding one word would ruin it, subtracting one would also ruin it, etc, so that it would be difficult to alter the message as the edict travels to the edges of the empire.

    The fun of the language is also very important. If a language is fun, then, in an age where there are no computer games, you simply play with the language, similar to how there used to be mathematical challenges in pubs such that cubic root solution was found, and Galois could get into a duel. The imperial court literally spends most of its time arguing about really unimportant things.

    This is important because then you will be left with far fewer actual movers and doers to enact real policy. All that work, just to herd the cats into distracting themselves, so that there will not be too many cooks to spoil the broth. It also helps that Confucianism, Taoism, et al, are quite easily used to create silly fake conflicts like these. It is also why the state had always embraced Confucianism, even the communists came back to it. It is simply too useful as a population control method.

    And the scary thing is that nobody is hiding this as if it were a conspiracy to hide. It is an open secret, and that nobody is guillotined on this topic. There are even indications that the ancient C officials knew this too. Like, these are the smartest people anyway, so you kind of expect this.

    So, no, you really are not understanding the implications of what it means to keep the population dumb. Give a thought as to why it has always been the case that the smartest Americans feel that it is stupid waste of their time to wade into politics. What you see around you is not an accident, and the liberal elitist's disdainful looks at how the working class tends to vote against their interests is ironic. High IQ does not mean that everything is done better. All it takes is some moderately smart person to nudge the alignments towards certain directions.

    Don't you just have to love modal logic?

    Note that the ancestral wisdom worship is literally bred into the genes. This then applies to tcm, amongst other things.

    You can be successful spinning scams targetting the stupid. But if you want to keep it up over millennia and millions of people, you had better have an elaborate scam with multiple layers for all the spectra on wisdom, such that every agent thinks of themselves as a protagonist, Game of Thrones style.
     
  9. Epsea

    Epsea Well-Known Member

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    Wow, that's worrying. I've never thought of this type of reason before. But in hindsight, this could be why my relatives didn't mention their use of TCM to their doctors.

    justmehere gave an example of why mixing TCM and modern medicine can be dangerous. Older people can be stuborn as heck, but I hope you'll be more careful and never mix the two medicines.
     
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  10. Sabruness

    Sabruness Cultured Yuri Connoisseur

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    For minor and mild stuff, yeah it can work pretty good. I think (dont quote me on it though) some of the more "common" parts of TCM, the real basic stuff, has been tested before and found to actually work because they can be found in supplements alongside western herbal medicine equivalents. The more esoteric stuff is probably just wishful thinking and cultural bias.
     
  11. Westeller

    Westeller Smokin' Sexy Style!! Staff Member

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    Well, to begin with there are just flat out more people in China, and a lot of the big-ass country is still a backwater. So. Yeah. That kind of does have to be kept in mind when making any kind of direct comparison with a more developed country. With that in mind, you may be surprised by just how many people in the U.S. believe in natural cures. It's a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooot more common than you'd expect.
     
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  12. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    Sometimes I really do wonder what kind of books people on NU are reading. I read a lot of Chinese books but I don't recall ever reading anything like this. The books which have Western medicine will give it the preeminent position so anyone with serious problems or injuries will go to proper Western-styled hospitals. Chinese medication is only seen as a supplement to this unless the book in question has magic.

    In the books where only TCM is available, it's still presented in a relatively realistic manner. And these books will still point out the limitations of what TCM can and cannot do. This impression seems to be completely at odds with what the OP is claiming, so I ask again, what kind of strange books are people reading?
     
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  13. Kadmos1

    Kadmos1 Well-Known Member

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    No real or fictional person should accept any medicine from the following: an SJW and nagging Flat-Earth mother-in-law who lives in a van down by the river with Seymour, a silent film-watching and Chris Walken-sounding vegan cannibal zombie moose.
     
  14. Nightow1

    Nightow1 Well-Known Member

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    Why do you keep calling them C? It's not like they do not have a perfectly functional racial or national name. Chinese. Go on, try saying it. It's only a few seconds more to type. Chinese. Chinese. See? That's how easy it is. They are Chinese, not C. C is a programming language.

    The fact that you can't even bring yourself to type "Chinese" is very telling.
     
  15. bf

    bf Well-Known Member

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    Because I live in a place with a one-party democracy that is rather cooperative with that place, and that I also sometimes visit that place? Have you even been keeping up with the news? I mean, of course, if you are inside then you cannot be expected to know the crazy stuff happening, but otherwise, you should know what is happening near India, right?

    When I use the letter, you precisely know what I am referring to. But our computer overlords would have to develop an understanding of human languages before it can reliably separate the references to the programming language v.s. winnie the pooh's wonderland.

    Totally not disagreeing with you, just adding on that the flip side, Alex Jones and Mike Adams, too.

    Hippies are already intolerable. Right wing nutjobs somehow manage to be even worse.

    Maybe it is also a difference between countries, but if you have any doctor friends, be kind and take them out for food. Prepare some tissues and encourage them to unload their latest stress from woo. 3 hours later, you will learn all about patient non-compliance and how dangerous they are.

    Especially in countries where tcm is just everywhere, doctors literally are told to ask if patients are eating something else. Drug interactions are all over the place; the consequences include plenty of internal bleeding.

    As much as I really hate that party, in recent years the (material)
    progress literally cannot be denied. There is this amazing Quora asking why C is spending so much money overseas as international aid. The replies are epic, and shows precisely how much more advanced even rural C currently is, than what people's imagination of them are.

    Also, it is kind of unfair to single out USA. That 3rd world country does not even have single payer healthcare, let alone universal healthcare. When trips to the ER costs hundreds of dollars and up, avoidance of medical help becomes the norm. It is literally more crazy for Europeans, who do have access to cheap and good healthcare, to be rejecting the proper healthcare for stupidity.

    I highly doubt you.

    Not that I read a lot of CN here; I would just read the source material, and for reasons given later, I just cannot stomach much anyway. But consider Douluo Dalu. It is popular enough to have serialised sequels. I sometimes wonder if the smooth flirting lines could even be translated, but still, you can see the tcm+miraculous ingredients working instantly. The manga, however, censored even the food chants, so, I doubt the nuances are translated.

    There are so many out there, that I cannot remember even the titles, but one of the most testicle-pulling ones was one where the ancient wisdom worship was explained as the hero attained godhood, that the entire series was a dream of a fallen god disintegrating, hoping that the dream world would birth a new god to take over, and also take revenge for the fallen god. These cultivation stories always include some element of meditating in random ingredient goop and absorbing the nutrients through the skin.

    It is too painful to read through that nonsense, so I basically stopped. In a sense, I suppose the grandmaster of it all, Jin Yong, was the one to set the standard (which he did also inherit bits from earlier writers), so he has to shoulder some of the blame. But he is definitely NOT to blame for the continuous "set-up for face slapping" loop. Face slapping can sometimes be fun, but that is an unnatural and base form of enjoyment that quickly gets tiring. If there is one thing to learn from Jin Yong, it is precisely that conflict just for the sake of conflict is how to lose readers. Random conflicts should be rare, and instead plot should progress through the discovery, evolution, and resolution of actual contradictions that could easily have arisen in real life.

    I soldiered through Omni-Magician, hoping the story would become readable, only for it to be another testicle buster. Even the premise is very close---an OP character created the hero's universe by stealing a finite resource, hence ancient worship. Worse, the hero wins partly because of breaking the 4th wall.

    Instead, I hope to learn something new or be wholesomely entertained when I read, and when the storylines are so rigid that I can predict way in advance what appears, I stop. It is the same reason why I have zero tolerance for stupid movies like Mission Impossible. It is like the difference between Superman and Spiderman. At the moment, the highly distorted C landscape makes it difficult to have, nor find, thoughtful narratives. So I actively resist myself from reading more C novels, lest it worsens my overall impression of people. Even when they do something nice for once, like Half-Prince, because of how repressed C is, it cannot properly depict the LGBTQ+ situation at all. It reads as way more awkward than Brokeback Mountain. Not to say that other countries do it much better e.g. Welcome to Room 305 shows you how the Koreans are dealing with the topic in their own awkward way, but you can feel the empathy and the much more realistic clashes.

    I actually wonder the opposite. What novels are you reading that don't give an exaggerated treatment of tcm?
     
  16. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    There's no need to doubt or believe. All you have to do is to check out the books for yourself. I'd suggest just about any novel set in the modern world, although the transmigration stories with female protagonists who were medical professionals would also work.

    I haven't read this book, but it feels like the kind of book where remedies have magical ingredients and provide magical results. That's all good and fine, but there's nothing traditional about this, it's not Chinese, and it probably doesn't even qualify as medicine.
     
  17. Nightow1

    Nightow1 Well-Known Member

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    Just fucking call them Chinese and China already. No one cares enough to oppress you or monitor your internet, you're just not that important and neither is most of us unless you happen to be a President or Prime Minister or work for a government setting policy, which I strongly doubt. Conspiracy theorists very often think of themselves more highly than how other people really see them.

    India, the only big spat I'm hearing is the Mohdi party going all stormtrooper on Kashmir and Pakistan and China taking advantage of that to smeer India's name. Not that India did not help with a self inflicted wound. Was that what you were referring to?
     
  18. bf

    bf Well-Known Member

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    Let me guess. You do not know people around you who have disappeared. You might think that only celebrities might suddenly disappear for weeks for "tax evasion".[1] You might think it is amusing that some random dude was jailed for making a stand and denouncing a medicinal liquour scam.[2] He then went viral even within the firewall, and even had a video response thanking the widespread support. Before, of course, apologising for hurting the feelings of the people of the great republic.

    You do not face any prospect of reeducation because of some unfortunate religious beliefs and geographical upbringing.[3] You do not live in a place where the population welcomes "social credit", where everybody is facial recognised by street cameras and prescribed credit for cleaning the streets, or denied train tickets for bad behaviour.[4]

    You do not live in a place where the govt strikes a deal with gangs, such that the police disappear moments before masked thugs appear and inflict violence upon peaceful protesters, even the pregnant. But maybe your police isn't worth boasting about either. [5]

    [1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywoo...nce-of-fan-bingbing-worlds-biggest-movie-star

    [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ng-traditional-medicine-poison-issues-apology

    [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

    [4]: https://gizmodo.com/report-chinas-social-credit-system-has-blocked-tens-of-1833010772

    [5]: No links because this is an ongoing thing that is still being actively monitored.

    Technically, every little step is made by people with good intentions, not as a conspiracy. But on an unreflective and mal-informed population there is no chance to defend oneself.

    Let's end it here. Your position is indefensible and privileged. I openly envy the ease of your life.
     
  19. tides

    tides Well-Known Member

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    what are you reading because you're either a person who loves everything western or just reading things that are different from us

    in every urban xianxia i've read that has the mc using trad medicine, everyone in the entire novel will scorn and spit at him

    but you also have to remember and mention that the MC literally only knows alchemy/dan medicine/trad medicine and also not to mention that it's illegal to treat patients without being a DR(western doctor) so yea the MC HAS to use trad medicine due to the simple fact that it's the only bloody way he knows and also even IRL there are many traditional methods of treatment that are better at treating certain types of illnesses than western medicine

    besides why the fuck are you even trying to talk about politics here. this isn't a political forum nor do we want to talk about politics here

    whats even more ironic is that while you are showing so much hate on china, why are you even reading or bitching about cn novels?

    also if you are so scared that u cant even write china, then you should probably stop posting on a site where nobody cares and will not make a difference because you'll probably disappear (according to you) and nobody here will even care.
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2019
  20. Westeller

    Westeller Smokin' Sexy Style!! Staff Member

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    This thread has gotten far off topic and political, and it's difficult to completely separate the political posts from those trying to explain the cultural significance of traditional medicine. I'm locking the thread.

    Please refrain from posting about politics on the forums.
     
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