Guo Boxin, an experienced Chinese medicine practitioner

From working in a textile factory to becoming a celebrated medical practitioner, Guo Boxin has taken an unconventional route. Liu Zhihua reports.

Zheng Shiyuan regards Guo Boxin as her family's savior. The 77-year-old resident of Weihai, Shandong province, was diagnosed with coronary heart disease in 2006. Doctors then suggested she undergo an operation to implant two heart stents.

Zheng decided to seek help from Guo, who was her friend and an experienced traditional Chinese medicine practitioner.

After taking herbal medicines for a few months, Zheng says her condition became much better. She later had a full recovery. Zheng also says that her daughter and husband also owe their lives to Guo.

Her daughter was diagnosed with a severely premature heartbeat in 2014. Her husband was found to have late-stage gastric cancer in 2015.

Under Guo's treatment, Zheng's daughter has recovered, while her husband is managing well.

Zheng and her family are just a few of the many patients Guo has helped. The conditions that Guo has treated include aplastic anemia, chronic cardiovascular disease and cancer, says Huang Yun, Guo's wife.

Unlike some TCM practitioners, who rely on medical tests and symptoms, the 73-year-old sticks to the traditional TCM method of "wang (observation), wen (smell), wen (listen) and qie (examination)" to diagnose and treat patients.

He is especially good at zhenmai, or identifying the causes of patients' problems through checking their pulses with his fingers, which he says was a basic technique used by TCM practitioners in the past.

Born in Tangshan, Hebei province, Guo moved to Shanxi province with his family as a little boy.

During his childhood, he did not encounter much TCM, except when his mother would seek help from a relative in Hebei who practiced it.

The turning point for him came when he was assigned to live in a village as part of his work at the ideology department in a textile factory in 1970.

He joined the factory, then the largest in Shanxi, in 1969, after working at a military farm for a while.

He had graduated from Shanxi University with a bachelor's degree in Chinese language and literature in 1968.

Life in the village was boring. But he found his elderly landlord was a great conversation partner, because he was well-versed in TCM.

The old man lent Gao ancient books on TCM, and he then developed an interest in TCM, which was still popular in rural areas where access to Western medicine was very limited at that time.

"At first, I just read the books, but gradually I got fascinated by TCM," says Guo.

"Before China adopted Western medicine, our ancestors used TCM to stay healthy. TCM is our national treasure."

Given Guo's academic background, it was quite easy to understand the texts written in ancient Chinese, which also contributed to his growing interest in the subject.

Later, he was transferred to the factory's hospital to work as a doctor, and in 1978, he passed a national exam to get a certificate to practice TCM.

His first master teacher appeared around this time. Guo had heard about a TCM doctor who was able to treat patients with such diseases as cancer.

He then visited the doctor, Liang Xiuqing, whose family had practiced TCM for nine generations.

"For the first time, I saw how a TCM doctor took a patient's pulse, and I felt that all the books I was reading were nothing compared with what I could learn from a master," says Guo, adding that Liang started learning about zhenmai at age 7.

It used to take Guo at least two hours to reach Liang's house, but Guo visited Liang regularly to learn from him. The two maintained close links until Liang died in the 1990s.

In 1984, Guo was transferred to a publishing house in Shanxi to work as an editor, and was able to find more TCM practitioners through editing books on the subject.

In 1987, he met celebrated TCM doctor Li Ke.

Li, who died in 2013, was also able to treat difficult conditions using TCM. But, despite his fame in Lingshi county where he lived, he was not very well known in the province, let alone the country.

Guo followed Li deep into the mountains to treat patients, and learned how Li used TCM to treat people on the verge of dying.

Guo opened a clinic in Taiyuan in 1998 and soon became well-known.

Later, he was invited by a private clinic in Beijing.

He was also invited by his patients to lecture on TCM in New Zealand and Australia.

In 2013, he authored a book, Traditional Chinese Medicine Is Intangible Science (My Practice and Reflection of TCM), because he wanted to share his knowledge.

"TCM is not culture. It is science. But the biggest challenge now is that people don't believe it is a science," says Guo.

For many patients, TCM is only an alternative when Western medicine cannot help, he says.

Guo, who says he is against modern TCM education because it is influenced by Western medicine, believes he is lucky that he wasn't a medicine major in college so he could learn authentic TCM from masters.

He is also against the modern education system because he says students mainly learn from books rather than from mentors.

He says that TCM sees the human body as a harmonious whole in a dynamic balance. So, when there is an imbalance, health problems occur, and when the harmony is restored, health returns.

Chinadaily.com.cn