Xu Wenbing: Abandoning our excellent cultural traditions, how should we deal with the cultural colonization in the West?

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Xu Wenbing: Abandoning our excellent cultural traditions, how should we deal with the cultural colonization in the West?

Text | Zhang Jianfeng

Produced by Netease News "Why Star People"

Shooting | Netease News Live Center Team

Xu Wenbing, from a family of traditional Chinese medicine, 1984 was admitted to Beijing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the predecessor of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. 1997 was sent to the United States to give lectures, and returned to China the following year, resigning from public office and setting up a research institution of traditional Chinese medicine, aiming at restoring the education and medical model of traditional Chinese medicine.

"As a Chinese medicine practitioner, my job is to restore and awaken people's self-healing ability. As a Chinese medicine teacher, my task is to export our (Chinese medicine) thoughts and values to the outside world and restore and awaken the self-esteem and self-confidence of China people internally. "

Xu Wenbing said.

Xu Wenbing

Chinese medicine education expert is a title he values more. 14 years ago, he had a series of conversations with Dong Liang, a well-known host, in the column of Sinology in china national radio, explaining Huangdi's Neijing, which was deeply loved by people. According to today's internet celebrities, he was a "radio star" at that time. Since then, he has been sitting in the clinic to treat diseases, while writing books and making statements, and has become a representative of Chinese medicine who is quite active in public opinion.

In 20 19, Huangdi Neijing, a classic of traditional Chinese medicine supplemented by his school magazine, was officially published. Xu Wenbing wrote beautiful calligraphy and buried it in a pile of old documents. He spent a year and eight months transcribing 400,000 words of First Secretary of Xuan Yin, including Huangdi Neijing. It's famous, and meditation is good.

"The somebody else always say you want to carry the banner of revitalizing Chinese medicine, saving lives, don't give me a top hat. We will live a good life, sit down and train students in a down-to-earth manner, and don't be arrogant. "

The following is an interview record:

First, cultural export, Chinese medicine can be a pioneer.

Why Star People: You are an expert in TCM education. We know that Chinese medicine is seriously misunderstood and controversial. What do you feel from your educational practice for so many years?

Xu Wenbing: I left the system from 1999 and went to the United States for internship and development. Later, he returned to China to do Chinese medicine education. It has been 23 years now. The first people who studied with me were foreigners in Beijing. I gave a series of lectures. I remember the first lecture was called "Renzuguizong". Since the New Culture Movement, many people in China think that their ancestors were wrong and everything abroad was right.

A country or nation is faced with land being plundered by others, people being slaughtered by others and resources being plundered by others. This is called semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism. Although sovereignty is independent now, there is a potential thing that people don't realize. If you are spiritually and culturally colonized, your country is independent, but it is still a vassal of others, or a "slave" who provides cheap labor and cheap resources to others.

On this issue, I think we are talking about cultural self-confidence, national self-confidence, road self-confidence and institutional self-confidence. It is the right time to ask people to have backbone and spirit. We can't see that other countries seem to be more developed than us economically and militarily, so we throw away our parents and throw them into the arms of others.

Traditional Chinese medicine is actually a microcosm of China's traditional culture. Has its own unique theory and treatment system, completely independent of modern science and medicine. The performance of our current cultural colonization is that if you don't conform to their theoretical system of western medicine, you should be eliminated.

If Chinese medicine is eliminated, western medicine can monopolize this market, because there is only one voice, only their family. If you have any diseases now, your first thought is to see western medicine. They will say that they have no choice but to see Chinese medicine. The problem is that this set of western medicine has existed for 100 years. How did we China people survive for thousands of years without western medicine and reproduce? This is a very simple question that many people have not thought of. We should seek truth from facts and face up to our traditional culture and traditional medicine. What our ancestors handed down has stood the test of time and is an accumulation. Don't arbitrarily deny it.

Why Star Man: You said in your book that we should export our thoughts and values to the outside world and restore and awaken the self-confidence and self-esteem of China people at home. Why do you say that? Is this your self-orientation?

Xu Wenbing: If a nation doesn't want to be enslaved or colonized, and doesn't want to live like a pig or a dog, it should have its own independent spirit. The great man said: people should have a little spirit. Without this spirit, everyone will be an animal. The development of traditional Chinese medicine needs this.

This is the current situation. Our culture has been invaded by the west, and some people have thought about exporting it, but the effect is not good. Some practices are often excluded from heterogeneous cultural symbols.

Western medicine has a history of more than 65,438+000 years in China. At the earliest, it was in the form of missionaries building churches to distribute medicine to the people free of charge, which won the hearts and markets. If our culture in China wants to go abroad, we should also learn this method, with Chinese medicine as the pioneer. If you spread Chinese medicine, even if you can solve the pain that western medicine can't solve, everyone will be interested in the medical theory and system behind you and your medical thoughts, and will have more understanding and acceptance.

Do you think China has so much influence in Africa? One of the main reasons is that we donated a lot of things for free. In the early days of the People's Republic of China, we sent medical teams to Africa, and many malignant infectious diseases were treated with Chinese medicine. At present, Chinese medicine should be the forerunner in restoring national cultural self-confidence. Does not contain any ideological issues. There is no ideology of treating diseases and saving lives. This is a good starting point.

I think there will be such a day in the future Many of my Chinese medicine colleagues have made a living overseas and developed very well. The medical system abroad is also good. If you engage in pure Chinese medicine and don't touch western medicine, Chinese medicine will have room. Unlike in our country, many places sell dog meat in the name of combining traditional Chinese and western medicine. When I walked into the Chinese medicine hospital, I found that it was all western medicine, and Chinese medicine was a decoration.

Second, what is the only criterion for testing truth?

"Why Star Man": Some people question Chinese medicine because it is unscientific, unable to produce quantifiable data like western medicine and unconvincing.

Xu Wenbing: According to their logic, science is the only criterion for testing truth, right? But we all know that practice is the only criterion for testing truth. He changed it to science as the only criterion for testing truth. For example, if you cure this patient, you have to have big data; For example, if I give you 10 patients, you can cure them in the same way. How foolish it is to make such a request.

People's physique is different from people's, just like many people had yang in the COVID-19 epidemic, and their symptoms are different. Traditional Chinese medicine pays attention to syndrome differentiation, symptomatic treatment and respect for individual differences. In our eyes, the 10 people you gave me are different, but these people are the same in your eyes. Is it possible for you to let me apply the treatment scheme to one person and make it applicable to all 10 people? If this standard is used, Chinese medicine will never develop.

At present, western medicine is both an athlete and a referee, so it is wrong to judge Chinese medicine with its own set. You can just be an athlete. Let's compare patients who are also 10, such as patients with depression. I treat them my way, and you treat them your way. First, observe the curative effect of 10, and see who has a good effect. Don't limit me with your rules and plans, and finally prove that I don't conform to your theory, otherwise it will be ridiculous.

Why Star Man: Do you mean that Chinese medicine is effective and treatable in treating depression?

Xu Wenbing: Treating depression is not the patent of western medicine. After returning to China for more than 20 years, he has treated hundreds of patients with depression. Everyone thinks that depression seems to be a new disease. No, it existed in ancient times. In Huangdi Neijing with a history of two or three thousand years, there is an article devoted to depression. Its name is crazy. Everyone knows these two Chinese characters, but they don't necessarily know their original meaning. Epilepsy is a state of depression and mania is a state of mania, and they can be transformed into each other. One day depressed, the next day manic. Western medicine regards it as a very new disease. I don't know that this disease was recorded by Chinese medicine thousands of years ago, and there are solutions and my own understanding: why does depression produce suicidal tendencies? Why do you think so? We all know why some people don't realize their ideas, while others do.

Therefore, Chinese medicine is not an antique, not something that can only be seen in museums, but a very fashionable thing that can solve many problems of people now.

Why Star Man: Why did Chinese medicine spread in China for thousands of years, but it was popular in modern times by western medicine?

Xu Wenbing: By the way, how old is Chinese food? Thousands of years. How many years have McDonald's and KFC entered the China market? Just a few decades. They have spread all over the world and are successful cases of commercial marketing. Chinese medicine and western medicine can also look at it from this perspective.

In the past, there was a couplet in Chinese medicine shops: I hope everyone in the world will be sick, even if there is dust on the shelves. What kind of heart is this? This is the heart of the saints of heaven and earth. As a doctor, I hope everyone in the world will not get sick, even if I don't earn money myself.

The current medical model is not like this. Doctors are not pure medicine, but actually a business science. What is good about its profit model? It is not surprising that the Xiangya Hospital incident (Liu Xiangfeng incident) broke out not long ago. It has a profit model. If you get sick and he cures you, he won't make any money. If he kills you, he won't make money, will he? You have an acute disease, make it your chronic disease. Does he make money? (Is this an extreme case? Xiangya Hospital is not an extreme thing. Remember, physics is the tip of the iceberg, and there are nine times the volume underwater. As long as its profit model is like this, you should not test human nature, even if you have been there for a long time, you will do such a thing.

Acute diseases treat you as chronic diseases, and chronic diseases treat you as diseases that require lifelong medication. Will it become a gear in its industrial chain as long as it is alive? You used to have hyperthyroidism, so you can treat it according to hypothyroidism. He cut off your thyroid, or destroyed it with radioactive isotopes, leaving you with no thyroid function for the rest of your life and eating Eupatorium adenophorum for the rest of your life. Other depression and diabetes are the same. To what extent are some people brainwashed? Lifelong medication for hypertension, diabetes and depression. You can't stop, but if you stop, you will rebound.

This profit model kidnapped all doctors and became a screw in the interest chain of pharmaceutical companies. Some people know that he is doing bad things, and some people don't know it themselves. As a doctor, he finally got sick. Because he believed it, he had to be treated like this.

At this time, if Chinese medicine says that hypertension seems to be curable, depression seems to be curable without taking medicine for life. People will say that this is a liar and will not believe it.

So I say that Chinese medicine is not competitive in the face of this profit model. The starting point of Chinese medicine is how to make people suffer less and spend less money. Moreover, they say that no disease is a disease, a minor illness is a serious illness, and good organs and tissues are simply cut for you, saying that you are cancer. How can you compete with others?

Third, birth, old age, illness and death are natural laws, and Chinese medicine does not regard itself as a god.

"Why Star Man": Is it impossible to realize the standardized treatment of western medicine because of the individual differences of patients?

Xu Wenbing: Chinese medicine is standardized, but it has the standard of Chinese medicine, not your western medicine. Don't use your standards to measure Chinese medicine, and don't use your basketball rules to set my tennis, because Chinese medicine has a weak voice and is not qualified to set standards, so we all use western medicine standards to measure.

Many people think that Chinese medicine is backward because it doesn't understand Chinese medicine. For example, you have surgery in western medicine and Chinese medicine. Our Chinese medicine surgery technology is very high. For example, the castration of pigs and sheep is very delicate, including the prevention and healing of wound infection. We all have good methods.

The biggest difference between Chinese medicine and western medicine is not that you use instruments, I use three fingers, you use scissors and I use a knife. Not at this level. The biggest difference lies in medical ethics. Western medicine conducts animal experiments and then applies the results to the human body. I don't really accept it.

We know that animals are different from animals, and animals are different from people. We should have different treatment plans. As I said before, animals also have meridians, acupoints and needles, but we are opposed to mechanically applying what animals use to people.

If your experiments on mice prove to be effective, then inference is also effective on humans. Ethically speaking, it is not human, and scientific facts also prove that many medical experiments are effective in the animal stage, but they are useless when applied to humans, and most of them fail.

For example, croton in traditional Chinese medicine will cause diarrhea, vomiting and diarrhea, and mice will gain weight after eating it. It doesn't have diarrhea, so you can't say that people will gain weight after eating croton.

In addition, there have been many discussions in the medical field in recent years. The alienation of modern medicine has made patients less and less regarded as human beings, and only cold indicators and a pile of data are seen in treating diseases. To put it to the extreme, as long as you look at the indicators, even a pig lying in a hospital bed can treat it like this. As for how old you are, how your family environment is, whether you got the disease because of anger or improper diet, he often doesn't care much.

So now many people blame TCM for the lack of scientific data, but we don't know that after thousands of years of practice, TCM's treatment of people is a real experimental accumulation. Shennong tasting a hundred herbs is an example. Chinese medicine is a big data that has been practiced for thousands of years. You don't believe this, and then tell me with the data from the mouse experiment. How can this be said together?

Why Star Man: Is it true that after listening to some people, there is no disease that cannot be cured by traditional Chinese medicine?

Xu Wenbing: This is complete nonsense. There is no incurable disease, so let's not die, is it possible? Controversy about TCM has always been divided into low-level red and senior black, which belong to senior black. Birth, old age, illness and death are natural laws, and Chinese medicine respects them. How can there be a disease that cannot be cured by traditional Chinese medicine?

However, some diseases could have been cured, but some people are confused and avoid medical treatment. When Bian Que saw Cai Huangong, he began to think that he could be saved. He advised him that there is something wrong with you, and if you don't treat him, he will be afraid. After repeated persuasion, he just wouldn't listen. Why did Bian Que turn away when he saw Huan Hou for the last time? Your illness has entered the bone marrow, your life belongs to you, but there is nothing you can do. This is a terrorist matter. I can't do it. Please remember this sentence and don't listen to some people with ulterior motives. There is nothing in the world that can cure all diseases.

"Why Star Man": In Chinese medicine, the teaching method is natural, and the treatment is not happening. So what is the relationship between man and nature?

Xu Wenbing: Basically, there is a popular view that people can conquer nature, which is contrary to the values in Huangdi Neijing. Huangdi Neijing advocates that people should conform to nature and adjust their spirits in four seasons. If you believe that man can conquer nature, you must be looking for death.

Behind Chinese medicine is actually Taoist thought, which has been passed down from Fuxi, Nu Wa, Shennong to Huangdi. The core value is to tell everyone not to go against nature. Adapting to nature is the best way to solve the problem, which saves a lot of trouble and has a good effect. However, in the later period, under the influence of western thought, blindly believing that man can conquer nature and everything should be left for intervention often backfired and even paid a price.

Many people see Chinese medicine, and there is a view that all the diseases you treat seem to heal themselves, ironically, our medical skills are not good. He doesn't know what he scolded, which is precisely the highest evaluation of us. A Chinese doctor can successfully induce and help patients, mobilize his self-healing function and cure his own disease. It seems that he is doing nothing, but this is actually the highest realm of medicine. The human body has self-healing ability, and medicine often helps patients to recover this self-healing ability, which is also recognized by western medicine.

I still believe what Bian Que said. After Bian Que saved Prince Guo, he was saved. People always say that Bian Que is a god who can save the dead. He said, "For those who can't live or die, because they were born by themselves, Bian Que made them rise." Where is the patient's natural vitality and self-healing ability? I just helped him. The main reason for his survival is not me, but himself.

You see, in ancient times, we had such an advanced concept of putting doctors in the right position, but one of the most disgusting concepts in modern medicine is the God complex. Your heart suddenly stopped beating. I gave you cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I helped you stop the bleeding. The operation sewed you up and kept you alive. He always thought my doctor saved this man. The problem is, if you think of yourself as God, it will be terrible in the future. According to your subjective understanding, if you make war decisions, you will do many bad things in the name of God or in the name of treating diseases, because your knowledge is limited, and in the end you will make many mistakes and hurt many people.

Thirty years ago, I treated some foreign guests in the foreign guest clinic of Dongzhimen Hospital and found that many of their family members took estrogen tablets during menopause. After taking estrogen tablets, hot flashes, night sweats and bad temper all eased, and menstruation came again. These women in their fifties feel as if they are still young as long as they have menstruation. This is a general therapy recognized by western medicine in the 1990s.

At that time, someone asked me, I said that this thing is unnatural, you should be menopausal, you should be amenorrhea, and the problems after menopause should be solved by natural methods, instead of letting you resume menstruation. This is an overdraft for your essence.

In 2000, it was suddenly reported that a large number of women who used estrogen to treat menopausal syndrome suffered from breast cancer, and now this treatment has changed. So when you do these things from God's point of view, are you committing a crime?

The biggest difference between Chinese medicine and doctors is that we don't regard ourselves as God. We think he has vitality and self-healing ability. We helped him, and it was himself who saved his life in the end. So we won't carry a psychological burden. What will you do if some people are hopeless? Do you have a psychological burden? But you're not God. Let nature decide what is natural, we just do it artificially.

I have a point that everyone should get what he wants. I don't force anyone. If you believe that man can conquer nature, then do what man can conquer nature. If you believe that we should conform to nature, let us remain humble and follow the way of nature.

"Why Star Man": According to the classics of traditional Chinese medicine, it is not only a medical skill, but also a philosophical view. In real life, many people will pursue a question: what is the meaning of living a lifetime? Does TCM have its own answer to this question?

Xu Wenbing: The meaning of life is the simplest. We are machines that make excrement. We ate and pulled, that's all. Taoism is very philosophical. Know life, who is called Datian, knows the laws of the operation of heaven and earth, and knows that we are the products of heaven and earth, and then conforms to nature, fate, and does not fight against fate, because it is futile.

Our current social education often requires you to become a person who is needed or useful by society. Taoist views are different. For example, if you look at those useful trees and columns, they will all be cut down in the end. Instead, it will grow into a crooked melon and a cracked jujube, which is useless. In the end, they will all survive and even become precious ancient trees. Therefore, I don't think it is necessary to be too persistent about life and death.

Fourth, modern people don't know traditional Chinese characters and our cultural origins.

Why Star Man: One of your opinions is that it is impossible to really understand the traditional culture of China without understanding astronomy? Some people say that medicine (traditional Chinese medicine) is homologous to the Book of Changes. What is the relationship between Chinese medicine and astronomy?

Xu Wenbing: There is a saying that astronomy is the mother of all knowledge. Our TCM theory is called Yin-Yang and Five Elements, which comes from astronomy.

When it comes to Yin-Yang and Five Elements, everyone says that they are unscientific and superstitious, and they typically don't understand China astronomical calendar. When we talk about science, modern science doesn't know where it is. You can check it. Many western civilization histories compiled now are forged. We didn't forge them in China, but we have preserved the complete astronomical records from Sima Qian to the present and the times below the Zhou Dynasty for more than two thousand years.

Our ancient calendar is based on the observation of the stars. According to Huangdi's Neijing, "law is based on Yin and Yang". At the earliest, our calendar was not1February, but a year was divided into1February, which was called ten calendars. The ancients divided a year into 10, and this month of 10 was divided into five. Party A and Party B belong to wood for two months, that is, the trees are lush, and the weather in Ding Bing is hot. In summer, we named it fire, and Wuji entered the dog days, wet and hot. We named it Earth, and then it landed in beginning of autumn, Geng Xin, and then it arrived. Wood, fire, earth, gold and water are our five elements.

In other words, heaven and earth have jointly influenced the earth, resulting in five seasons and climate. The climate in spring encourages people to keep their hair. In the long summer, people become mature. In autumn, they become harvest. In winter, they will be hidden. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are hidden, and the five elements of yin and yang come from here.

As a product of heaven and earth, Chinese medicine knows how to live. For example, keep cats warm in winter, and encourage hair growth in spring. Don't kill or cut down trees. In ancient times, criminals were usually sentenced in the autumn, which means I follow the way of heaven and earth, and I don't choke.

"Why Star Man": You also have a point that modern people are often "illiterate". Only by studying hard can we understand the essence of TCM. How do you say this?

Xu Wenbing: Traditional Chinese medicine literature is often traditional Chinese characters. Many of us don't know traditional Chinese characters now. In modern times, we have simplified characters several times, which is tantamount to abandoning martial arts. Not knowing traditional Chinese characters has caused a big problem, that is, cultural self-castration. For example, if you go to a famous mountain and see an inscription, you find that you don't know it. This is your country. You are from China, and you can't even recognize the words written by your ancestors. Is it sad? Similarly, if you don't know the meaning of traditional Chinese characters, you can't really understand the essence of Chinese medicine.

The original intention of simplifying Chinese characters is that Chinese characters are backward. To what extent are they simplified? For example, "corpse" of a corpse, one is "corpse" and the other is "corpse", which are two words with different meanings. The "corpse" without the word "death" is a living person, which means that in ancient times, a living person was put in the middle to represent the victim. This person did not move, leaving an idiom called corpse vegetarian. Another "corpse" is a corpse, not a dead person. Now we simplify and unify these two words into a "corpse". You don't know that we still have this special sacrificial culture in ancient times.

There is also dirty "dirty", which is unified with the "dirty" of internal organs, but dirty in traditional Chinese characters is dirty, and dirty in traditional Chinese characters is dirty. If these two words are unified as "dirty", it means that the internal organs are also dirty.

Related to our Chinese medicine, the human body has acupuncture points called "Taixi point". When you look up ancient books, the stream is this "stream". It talks about the joints of muscles, which are very wide and called valleys. Muscle joint stenosis has nothing to do with water. Don't you think it's ridiculous that the meat meeting is a valley and the meat meeting is a flow?

The word "doctor" is traditionally called "doctor" in medicine, which actually represents a process of saving patients. The word "doctor" in the small square in the upper left corner means that the man was shot by an arrow, and the arrow was in the meat. The "death" at the top right refers to surgical tools such as tweezers and pliers, and the "unitary" at the bottom refers to the wine used for disinfection, analgesia and anesthesia. See how simplified it is now?

Our culture was beaten to death by our own people, and everyone could not read. Ask him if he knows this word? Yes, what do you mean? I started talking nonsense. I wrote a book called Tibetan medicine in writing to solve this problem.

We discussed Chinese medicine there, but the problem is that everyone's understanding of the basic concepts of Chinese medicine is inaccurate and chaotic. The problems discussed are all told by chickens and ducks, so we can't communicate.

"Why Star Man": You said that reading books before Qin and Han Dynasties can reveal that we humans are actually degenerating, not evolving? Can it be understood that with the increasing complexity of knowledge and thinking, our cognition of things tends to deviate from the essence and become more chaotic?

Xu Wenbing: Our current understanding of natural things and the world is based on intelligence and consciousness. In the past, people did not rely on intelligence, but on understanding, consciousness and perception. For example, when we sit quietly and stand on a stake, you can feel the flow of your blood and the sound of your body. This is how we found the meridians and acupoints. If people can't calm down now, they will lose their knowledge of natural things or themselves. In this case, if you say you know nature, it becomes a joke.

Before Qin and Han Dynasties, people lived innocently, but later people lived hypocritically. Everyone wants to solve all the problems on the level of consciousness. The biggest difference between Taoism and modern civilization is that people give up consciousness, but now people are asking people to strengthen your consciousness and think hard. The result is that people are going crazy, and you can't solve this problem, because in this state, you will be farther and farther away from the truth.

Now science has also discovered this problem, that is, the observer (dominated by consciousness) will affect the observation results. For example, when Liang Dong and I were talking about Huangdi Neijing, Liang Dong asked me what color the bone marrow was. According to the five elements, wood, fire, earth, gold, water, blue, red, yellow, white and black, the kidney dominates the bone and the bone marrow should be black, but do you see whether the bone marrow is yellow or white? Because you opened it, your method affected the observation results. If it is surrounded by bones, it is black. It is because you want to observe it that this cruel method has led you to a conclusion that it is white, so you should be aware of it.