Study Abroad Student Blogs

By Liang Gu, Public Health in China, Summer 2013

This is a post about the field trips that we went on as a part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine class. For other posts, please refer to:

TCM Class 

TCM Theory

For once or twice a week during class time, we would meet a little earlier after lunch to board the bus to go on TCM related field trips. Most of the time our destination was the Peking University Medical School, where we would visit the TCM department and the professors who were there would give us a lecture. I will briefly describe some of the more notable field trips that we have been on.

Traditional Chinese Medicine Museum

For one of the afternoons we visited the TCM Museum, which was on the Beida medical campus. Our tour included two floors, one containing items detailing the history of TCM and the other, a collection of TCM herbs. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide accompany us on the way. On the first floor, we learned about the important historical figures of TCM, including the TCM practitioners who were responsible for various inventions, such as the figure of acupuncture points.

Acupuncture points and meridians

Acupuncture needles in the ancient days. Look at how thick they are!

The second floor contained all kinds of medicine in the TCM arsenal. Some of them were not too surprising, including Ginseng, mushrooms, barks, and herbs. However, some remedies had us wide-eyed or gagging, including preserved deer fetus, calcified dog stomach, and very large centipedes. The visit was eye-opening in that it contrasted western biomedicine’s factory-produced pills to TCM’s remedies found in nature.

Ginseng

Deer fetus

Not the most appetizing

TCM Clinic

For one of the field trips we visited the TCM clinic, which was located at the medical school. After a brief tour, we arrived in a large room that had beds on one side of the room and equipment on the other. One doctor showed us Tuina, cupping, and acupuncture techniques while the other doctor saw his regular patients who arrived for therapy. It was very interesting to observe first-hand the daily activities of the clinic. People arrived complaining of back-pains, headaches, and irregular bowl movements, after which the doctor usually stuck them with a few needles and told them to let the needles sit for a while. The entire visit took no more than 20 minutes.

Electric acupuncture

We were directed to practice Tuina and cupping on each other, and a few of us also volunteered to receive acupuncture. There is a picture of Peter lying down with needles in his abdomen for better bowel movement (which, according to him, worked wonderfully).

The Northwestern Tuina experience

Herb Collection Trip

The herb collection trip was perhaps the most memorable field trip. It was during one of the last weeks in Beijing, and the trip was not limited to students in TCM class. We took the bus for around 2 hours and arrived at a hillside with a small village, where we were greeted by some friendly locals who ran a restaurant there. We hiked to an abandoned part of the Great Wall that was not open to tourists through a trail surrounded by nature. Every few steps, either the tour guide or Professor Gu would stop and explain what herb they’ve just located, match it to our list of herbs, and explain what disorders it treated.

Professor Gu with some herbs

Our hike took us to the actual wall itself, and the view on top was unbelievable. We were surrounded by miles and miles of green, without any civilization in sight. In the middle of the platform that was the wall was an old man who was selling fireworks. How he ever got any business was beyond me, but being as adventures as we were, of course we had to buy some fireworks and light them there. The setting was surreal, us sitting on top of an abandoned portion of the Great Wall of China, surrounded by new friends and traditional Chinese herbs.

Around lunch time we came down the mountain and went back to the restaurant. We caught our own fish out of the pond, and lunch was served. After lunch we had to each present one of the herbs we collected on the trip to the rest of the class, drawing an end to a memorable experience.

Peter catching some lunch

Connor presenting his herb

Elaine with fish