by Eric Brand

During the few years that I taught at PCOM, I was always stricken by the fact that most students in America don’t really comprehend the vast scope of our fascinating field. I found that many students had never traveled to Asia, and tended to assume that the comparatively small world of little U.S. acupuncture clinics was representative of the general state of the field of Chinese medicine. New students often do not realize that Chinese medicine is a highly sophisticated field complete with large hospitals, incredible academic institutions, advanced scientific research centers, and an incredibly complex body of traditional and scientific literature covering virtually every subject imaginable.

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The real treasure in Chinese medicine is the brilliant minds that power the cutting-edge developments in the field. In honor of these living legends, I am going to be writing an occasional blog series on some of the top people in the field today. I can think of no better place to begin than with an introduction to Dr. Zhao Zhong-Zhen, a researcher and instructor at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Dr. Zhao is originally from Beijing, but his current position at HKBU provides him with facilities that truly befit a scholar of his caliber. Dr. Zhao is one of the world’s top experts in herbal pharmacy. In fact, I suspect he is probably the top guy in the entire world within his area of expertise, but he is far too modest to actually affirm my suspicion upon a direct inquiry. While he is a world-class expert in the science of Chinese medicinal pharmacy, he also clearly has a profound knowledge of traditional medicine and extensive clinical experience. However, unlike many of China’s top doctors, Dr. Zhao is extremely modest and is not the least bit arrogant about his profound achievements. He practices taiji daily and he really fits the image of the classic self-aware, cultivated scholar-physician that newcomers to Chinese medicine (somewhat naively perhaps) expect to see all over the field.

Dr. Zhao essentially has an entire museum at HKBU dedicated to his private pharmacy collection. This collection includes true and counterfeit specimens of virtually every medicinal substance in common use. Many times these medicinals have actually been wild crafted by Dr. Zhao himself. He has traveled to all corners of China collecting samples, and he has an entire vaulted room full of pressed botanical specimens, complete with pages of collection data as well as pressed leaf, flower, stalk, and root tissue (the same as a normal botanical field sample but generally with the root intact because roots are commonly used in Chinese medicine). All of the medicinals with various adulterants are present in the main museum of dried pharmacy specimens, such as specimens of guang fang ji (Radix Aristolochia) next to han fang ji (Radix Stephania). In fact, all of the photographs in Dr. Zhao’s definitive book on common marketplace adulterants, Easily Confused Chinese Medicines in Hong Kong, were taken from his own specimens and are stored in the museum.

Several of the items on display in Dr. Zhao’s museum are quite incredible. For example, Dr. Zhao is featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for finding the largest cistanches plant ever discovered; this massive wild crafted rou cong rong spike is displayed in an impressive glass case along with his Guinness Book certificate. Another amazing specimen is a larger-than-life statue of a Chinese god of longevity that is crafted purely from ginseng roots. Red and white roots give the appearance of robes while the god’s skin and huge forehead are made out of pressed ginseng cortex. A text description alone cannot hope to do all these specimens justice, but suffice to say that in all my adventures around the wholesale markets of China, I’ve never seen anything close to the incredible medicinal specimens that Dr. Zhao has assembled in this room.

Nearly as impressive is the laboratory that allows Dr. Zhao’s grad students to pursue their assignments. Within the lab of HKBU, one can see virtually every type of machine that is required for herbal analysis, including HPLC, TLC, heavy metal testing machines, and all manners of lab equipment that would typically be seen in a huge commercial granule factory rather than a private university. This technology is used to analyze specimens for a variety of purposes, for example, they often test Chinese prepared medicines to analyze their composition, active constituents, and contaminants. They also have a fascinating project where they test the same medicinal from 100 different markets throughout China and Hong Kong. Hundreds of boxes each contain 100 specimens of the same medicinal with detailed collection data, and they then test these items to assess the species used, contaminants, and active constituent levels. This is truly impressive, cutting edge scientific work.

All these things are but examples of the academic and scientific work that Dr. Zhao is involved with. I was fortunate to have him show me through his collection and facilities, but there was really more to see than I can describe in a simple blog entry. For example, their university library has an incredible book called the Ben Cao Da Quan. Actually, this “book” is really dozens and dozens of books that together form one complete set. Occupying several huge bookshelves, this set of books together contains the entire extant collection of materia medica literature. In other words, it is every materia medica text ever discovered in Chinese medicine, all assembled into one huge multivolume collected work. Amazing. Only about 100 copies exist in the world, as their high expense makes them virtually exclusively found in academic institutions such as HKBU.

I mentioned to Dr. Zhao that I’d like to feature him in an article, and he sent me a summary of his CV for reference. It is really almost too extreme to summarize. He lived in Japan for many years, where he completed his PhD, and he is currently the course director of the Bachelor of Pharmacy (Hons) in Chinese Medicine at Hong Kong Baptist University as well as a clinical supervisor. He is also a member of the Chinese Medicines Board of the Chinese Medicine Council of Hong Kong, a member of the HKSAR Department of Health Scientific Committee and International Advisory Board on Hong Kong Chinese Materia Medica Standards, an advisor of Traditional Medicines in the West Pacific Region of World Health Organization, and a member of the Steering Committee for Complementary and Alternative Medicine program at Harvard Medical School.

The publications section of Dr. Zhao’s CV really defies any simple summary. It lists “selected publications in the past five years,” and goes on to list 58 articles in scientific journals of all types. Entries range from “Development of high performance liquid chromatographic fingerprints for distinguishing Chinese Angelica from related Umbelliferae herbs” from the Journal of Chromatography to “Inhibition of DNA topoisomerase I by natural and synthetic mono- and dimeric protoberberine alkaloids” from Chemistry & Biodiversity, along with dozens of articles in the Chinese Journal of Chinese Medicine and his own special niche works such as “A systematic study on confused species of Chinese Materia Medica in the Hong Kong market” from the Annals Academy of Medicine. Add to this 13 books and a list of “selected presentations” ranging from Brazil to Japan, San Francisco to China, Australia, Korea, you get the picture.

Why do I mention all this? I feel that it is important for American practitioners of Chinese medicine to have perspective on what constitutes true expertise in the field of Chinese medicine. Doctors like Dr. Zhao Zhong-Zhen inspire me, they inspire all of us to set our sights high and pursue our education with diligence.

At Blue Poppy, we are committed to advancing the state of knowledge in the field of Chinese medicine. Our first and foremost goal is to promote education and growth in this field that we love so much. Currently, we are in the early stages of organizing elite study tours in East Asia. It will take a bit of time before we launch these tours formally because when we do it, we are going to do it right. But just to hint at our plans, we will probably aim to do a multicity tour that starts in Taipei and moves up towards Beijing, with stops in every major metropolitan center of Chinese medicine.

Our study tours will feature hospital rounds and tours of astounding herbal markets, and there will be private lectures with top practitioners from throughout China. All the translation will be high quality translation from a native speaker (yours truly) and the people that would do the lectures will be true experts in the field, the best of the best.

I wrote this mini-bio of Dr. Zhao primarily to make sure that people hear about this man’s incredible achievements. But I also wanted to paint a picture of what the phrase “true expert” means to me. I’ve been fortunate to meet many of China’s best doctors and I have a good ability to recognize what constitutes a real world-class expert. Western students need to see these true experts in action so that we go home with the inspiration to become the best doctors we can be. I feel lucky to have such a strong network in China, and I’d really like to bring students over to see how truly advanced and inspiring our field really is. As Bruce at Blue Poppy likes to say, no wine is opened before its time, and it will likely take us another year at least before we start arranging elite study tours in Asia. But you can rest assured that when the tours begin, we are setting our sights high.

Copyright Blue Poppy Ent. Inc. 2009. All rights reserved.