By Eric Brand

Chinese medicine is developing at an extremely rapid pace in the West. Several of our recent blog posts have mentioned the contributions of key leaders in the older generation in the West, the early pioneers who helped Chinese medicine become the field that it is today. Bob’s recent tribute to Miriam Lee gives new practitioners insight into the struggle for legality that courageous practitioners like Miriam took on. Other blogs have mentioned the contributions of foundational translators like Nigel Wiseman, or leaders in herbal science and authentication such as Zhao Zhong-Zhen. Of course, Blue Poppy’s own Bob Flaws certainly makes the list as one of the most influential contributors of our time, with more publications than any other Westerner and a long history of advocacy for the profession. These legendary practitioners of the older generation have propelled Chinese medicine forward tremendously, and the young students of today are fortunate to enjoy things like legal acupuncture, a library of English books, enhanced standards in education, and increasing opportunities in the scientific and healthcare communities.

Follow up:

Like many students in the younger generation, it is hard for me to imagine that scholars like Wiseman couldn’t even enter mainland China back when they first began their studies. Nowadays, I travel throughout China to all manners of conferences, markets, and hospitals, often several times per year. Such opportunities would have been unthinkable 25 years ago. Travel and language acquisition are easier than ever before, and I look around and see my former classmates working all over the world in environments that never existed even ten years ago. Truly the new generation of students is fortunate to enter the field at a time when we have many more English books, increasing hospital privileges, and exponentially more teachers and study opportunities than our teachers had back in the day. It has never been a more exciting time to be involved.

The current generation is indebted to the contributions of our teachers. We sit upon the shoulders of giants, and the foundation that has been laid by the early pioneers has allowed a whole group of fresh new students to enter the fray. Chinese medicine takes a lifetime to develop true expertise, so it will be some time before the people in my generation become the real movers and shakers in the field. Nonetheless, there are increasing numbers of diligent students that are going all the way, and over time the new generation will surely make some great contributions. It is already easy to see the rising tide of students that outgrow their Maciocia-style texts and seek out great teachers and studies abroad. There are some great new rising stars out there, so I’d like to introduce a few of the people from the younger generation who really inspire me.

For a young student wishing to excel in the field, learning Chinese language is probably the most stable, exciting, and rewarding investment that can be made. Like any language, Chinese language acquisition is much more practical for flexible people who enjoy traveling and living abroad. Language study is not for everyone, and I believe that any endeavor that one invests 10 years in will bring endless opportunities and rewards, regardless of whether this investment is in biomedicine, sports medicine, Chinese language, chemistry, etc. I’m not one to encourage everyone to study Chinese because everyone has unique needs and interests, but I will say that many of the people that I see at the forefront of the new generation do have strong Chinese language skills. There is an incredible amount of information available in Chinese, so many of the Chinese speakers in our community are the ones that bring back cutting-edge, new information.

At any rate, allow me to introduce a few rising stars in the new generation to watch for:

Charlie Thomson

Blue Poppy prides itself on providing quality education and information to advance the state of the field. We know that high professional standards and a highly educated practitioner community is the key to our success, because well-informed professionals will naturally gravitate to our books and herbal products. We often do lectures at schools around the country, and I had the pleasure of meeting Charlie Thomson on a recent lecture tour to Santa Cruz. I can tell that he has the potential to be one of the top authors and lecturers in the new generation, so watch for him!

Charlie is a graduate of Five Branches in Santa Cruz. He lived abroad for many
years in his youth, and he even lived in Beijing with his family during the first year that foreigners were allowed, when the city didn’t go beyond the second ring road. A fluent Mandarin speaker, Charlie moved back to Beijing after he graduated TCM school in California. He spent several years studying in China with Wang Ju-Yi, a channel-based acupuncturist in Beijing. (Dr. Wang’s acupuncture approaches were popularized in the West by a book by Jason Robertson, another bilingual powerhouse of the new generation.)

Charlie has recently moved back to Northern California, where he is settling into practice, planning book projects, and raising his child. Charlie is scouting out the import business, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him show up with some organic tea and fair-trade gou qi zi, or even a whole line of small Chinese extraction machines. Without a doubt, he will excel in some of my favorite arenas, such as translation from primary sources and herbal trading.

Suzanne Robidoux

Without a doubt, the most heavy-hitting Westerner I’ve met so far in the new generation is Suzanne Robidoux. Suzanne got her PhD in TCM in Nanjing, and she is one of the few foreigners I know who completed her PhD in Chinese. She speaks and translates Chinese perfectly, and she is naturally bilingual in French and English. Originally from Quebec, Suzanne studied TCM in New Mexico before continuing on to China, where she has been living for the past nine years. She has made more connections with top doctors and hospital heads than any other young person I’ve met, and her incredible network gives her the chance to undertake advanced studies with many of the best acupuncturists and herbalists in China.

Suzanne is particularly interested in martial arts and acupuncture, though rumor has it that she is diving into some intensive Shang Han Lun studies with Dr. Huang Huang in Nanjing this summer. If ever there was a poster child for the merits of learning Chinese, it would be Suzanne. The opportunities she has to study through her network are incomprehensible to most Western students, and I suspect that new students would enroll in Chinese class in droves if they saw the world that someone like Suzanne lives in.

I feel fortunate that my generation has such amazing opportunities with Chinese medicine, and I know that we will make a tremendous contribution to the field over the next several decades. Keep your eyes out for people like Charlie and Suzanne, because the diligent students of today will be the true leaders in the field tomorrow.