by Eric Brand

I just returned from a brief trip to Shanghai and Nanjing. Our friend Bob Felt, the head of Paradigm Publications, was recently put on the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine’s board of directors. I had the pleasure of joining him and Ping Chen (a well-known TCM expert from New Mexico) in Nanjing, and I was able to make a number of good contacts at the school. We had several full days of meetings with the head of the school, and I was able to arrange for Blue Poppy to bring students out to Nanjing for our future study tours in Asia.

Many students go to China for advanced study at some point in their education, but a truly fulfilling study abroad experience can be elusive for many students. Translation tends to be the weak link at many institutions. All too often, students go to China for advanced study only to be disappointed by translators that lack expertise in Chinese medical English. Furthermore, most foreign students are put on shifts with average or junior doctors rather than true experts, and most institutions provide translators that lack the technical expertise necessary to convey advanced Chinese medical knowledge in English.

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This situation is unfortunate, because most Western students that travel to China for advanced study are truly interested in accessing an elite level of knowledge and clinical experience. Many Chinese institutions that take foreign students cater primarily to MDs or international students without any background in Chinese medicine, so there is relatively little infrastructure for advanced training. Consequently, students often hear very basic material and fail to gain exposure to the real academic and clinical experts.

At Blue Poppy, we are working on a unique solution to this problem. I have been arranging world-class contacts at cities throughout China, and Blue Poppy now has permission to bring students to many top institutions in mainland China and Taiwan. By using our fantastic network of Chinese relationships, we have access to private classes with true experts in many different disciplines of Chinese medicine, as well as permission to do hospital rounds with the top doctors at the best TCM hospitals in the world.

We now have the ability to bring students to Taipei, Taichung, Nanjing, Changchun, Tianjin, and Beijing, and we are in direct contact with very best experts at each institution. This allows us to organize private classes with the real experts, as well as the most diverse clinical observation and general TCM touring around. All translation will be done by native speaker with experience in advanced Chinese medical translation (yours truly), so we can ensure complete preservation of all the valuable information that the real experts share.

In addition to setting up the potential for academic exchange with the experts in Nanjing, I was able to grab some great new additions for our Chinese library at Blue Poppy. Bob and I are putting our Chinese libraries together and opening them up as a reference resource to the community, so practitioners that swing through Boulder can come in to peruse a truly awesome Chinese medical book collection.

The most notable text that I brought back was a brand-new addition of Li Shi-Zhen’s Ben Cao Gang Mu. The Ben Cao Gang Mu is one of the most famous books in the history of Chinese literature and it has been published in dozens of editions. However, true Ben Cao Gang Mu scholars say that nearly every edition out there is riddled with errors, and a widespread lack of commentary has limited the utility of the text. This year, the most authoritative edition ever published came out, and I got the heads up from my teacher Dr. Zhao Zhong-Zhen to look out for it. This book was compiled by a father and son team that each dedicated their lives to Ben Cao Gang Mu scholarship, along with several famous professors at Beijing’s prestigious graduate school, Beijing Zhong Yi Yan Jiu Yuan. Li Shi-Zhen’s original drawings and text covering 1892 medicinals is preserved in its entirety, and the book is rich with text notes and commentary that shows an incredible degree of scholarship. This is a real treasure, and since it just came out in China, the copy at the Blue Poppy office is bound to be the only one around for hundreds of miles.

I also managed to pick up some great new books on herbal quality discernment. As many readers know, I am a major geek when it comes to herbal medicine quality discernment and authentication. This works out well, since one of my responsibilities at Blue Poppy involves assessing the raw materials used in our herbal products. As it turns out, Nanjing has some major experts in this field, so I was happy to build new contacts there to complement my teachers in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Be sure to visit us in Boulder to check out our library and our new location!