The Birth of American TCM Acupuncture: A Misled West in Searching for Eastern Treasures

Few people today in the world who know the history facts that today's globally-accepted TCM acupuncture is a modern invention made in 1950s. It is a distorted form of an ancient healing art, caged in the frame of Chinese herbal medicine within which needles became a marginal adjunct to a herbalist's workbox.

“Traditional” Is by No Means Traditional

Such a distorted and “herbalized” acupuncture was transmitted to the West in early 1980s under the name of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Ironically, the name “TCM” has never been used in China but was a label designed for foreigners. The people in China had used only the term “medicine” (医) before the "invasion" of Western medicine into China in 1850s. Thereafter they started to say “Chinese medicine” (中医) just to differentiate their own “medicine” from that introduced from the West. The Chinese called the latter “Western medicine”(西医).

Woo-Woos Scorned in China

The TCM acupuncture, on the surface, adopted the metaphoric yin-yang / 5 element / six evils (pernicious influences) – a set of metaphoric concepts that are very difficult to understand even for many brilliant Chinese scholars or intellectuals.

But in the reality particularly of the Maoist China, none of educated elites truly believe such woo-woos. It was not until the yin-yang / 5 elements had been given a modern explanation in accord with Mao Zedong's dialectical materialism that such woo-woos were "convincingly" integrated into Chinese medicine textbooks.

In the modern history of China, even those hardcore proponents of Chinese medicine (CM) had claimed that the "yin-yang / 5-elements / 6 evils" must be discarded as metaphysical nonsense in order to save CM from extinct, such as the famous CM physician Lu Yuanlei 陆渊雷 (1894～1955 ) and Tan Cizhong 谭次仲(1887-1955).

Mao Zedong, the late leader of Communist China, who himself had never really believed CM, once said in 1955 to his personal doctor Li Zhisui: “Yin-yang / 5 elements is indeed not easily understandable...” If the intelligent brain like Mao's was unable to comprehend, how many of others' in China could?

As German scholar Paul Unschuld - the world-leading Chinese medicine historian – pointed out (2008), it has been very difficult for Westerners as well to understand the metaphoric basis of Chinese medicine.

Suckers for The Mysterious East

Interestingly, TCM acupuncture in America today has been highly romanticized into a poetic entity “spiritualized” as harmonizing mind and body. Why this? It is because “In China, they worship science, in America, we are suckers for the mysterious East”, says Charlotte Furth, Professor of University of Southern California, an American historian of medicine (2011).

Tyler Phan, an American acupuncturist, conducted a research on ethnography of Chinese medicine in the United States which resulted in his Ph.D. thesis titled "American Chinese Medicine"(2017). His thesis provided a vivid narrative of some aspect of how TCM acupuncture was romanticized in the US.

New Age Movement

The story of TCM's romanticization in American begins in 1968 when a Chinese New Year’s event was held in Los Angeles’ Chinatown (Phan T, 2017). Two psychology students of UCLA jointed a team to perform tai chi as requested by their Chinese qi gong master. There they came across acupuncturist Dr. Kim from China who shew them how he was needling patients.

The 70s-80s were heady times in the US. The “New Age” movement (religious movement) was in full swing; China was opening up; and curiosity about Eastern ideas flurried about, where many drop-outs from mainstream society embraced natural lifestyles.

The “New Age” movement spread through the occult and metaphysical religious communities in the 1970s - 80s. It involved many who were followers of modern esotericism and looked forward to a “New Age” of love and light and offered a foretaste of the coming era through personal transformation and healing (Gordon Melton, 1990).

Among the “new age” crowd, two groups of people became the most influential figures in shaping the American version of TCM acupuncture. One group was led by that two psychology students from UCLA, Steven Rosenblatt and William Prensky.

Another group was led by Ted Kaptchuk, known for his book The Web That Has No Weaver. Both group were “new age” activists, once participating in marches and sit-ins, occupying public land for the people, maintaining tent cities.

The Turning Point

The UCLA group later invited acupuncture doctor Tin Yau So 苏天佑 from Hong Kong on a special person’s visa to the US. By 1969, the UCLA group had established one of the first Chinese medicine institutions at the Institute of Taoist Studies in Los Angeles.

However, the public recognition of this group did not come until an event took place in China which became a turning point of acupuncture history in the US. In July 1971, the journalist, James Reston, wrote in The New York Times about receiving acupuncture in China as part of his post-operative recovery.

A week after Reston’s story came out, the media somehow “discovered” the UCLA group and conducted interviews. After a few days, the group decided to form a professional organization, the National Acupuncture Association (NAA). Literally in a month’s time, the UCLA group became the source for Chinese medicine in California, and later across the country.

The two groups eventually converged at one institution in 1975, New England School of Acupuncture (NESA), the first nationally recognized Chinese medicine school in the US. The following 10 years saw the UCLA group scattered throughout the country to pursue professionalization of Chinese medicine.

A Beauty Portrayed on A Misidentified “Mystery”

In the West, the first influential book about TCM was Ted Kaptchuk’s The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine (1983). The book romanticized TCM as “a coherent and independent system of thought and practice that has been developed over two millennia.” But the true Chinese Medicine history indicates that such a statement is a misunderstanding (Unschuld P. 2010).

“The fact is, Chinese medicine has been dominated for the past two millennia by the approach Kaptchuk depicts as Western, but this knowledge was simply not available in the late 1970s and early 1980s”, Unschuld wrote.

“Kaptchuk’s book became widely read, and created images in the minds of large audiences ... even today when historical research has shown many of these images to be unfounded.

"I do not wish to specifically pick on Kaptchuk. ..At the time he wrote his book, no one in the West knew much about the true nature of Chinese medicine.

“...Westerners created out of hear-say and based on conceptual bits and pieces learned from China an artifact of diagnosis and treatment linked by notions of harmony, wholism, etc., and then attributed to this artifact a Chinese nationality...”

“Falsely attributing TCM a Daoist origin and a history of millennia, a group of Western followers developed the cure of many ills not only of patients, but also of Western medicine. It is this group that was misled, for a long time, by the term TCM...”, Unschuld concluded.

The West's Failure in Finding The Treasure Box

Professor Paul Unschuld repeatedly voiced his disappointment with the West's failure in finding the truth of Chinese medicine. In an interview with Acupuncture Today (2004), He says:

“It is a fact that more than 95 percent of all literature published in Western languages on Chinese medicine reflect Western expectations rather than Chinese historical reality. Bestsellers are usually written by those who know no Chinese, have no access to Chinese medical history, and have never - or at best for short periods - been to China.

“There is, I wish to emphasize, nothing wrong with these books, as they were informed by visions of an ideal health care presumably developed in China. As such, these books tell us something about what is lacking in Western biomedicine, ...

“Nevertheless, while they reflect Western yearnings, they fail to reflect the historical truth of Chinese medicine. Chinese medical history is, indeed, a huge treasure box, and given that TCM has selected only parts of its contents, serious historical research may turn up many more.”

Needle Healer's Choice Today between …

This is how a “metaphoric woo-woo” scorned in China turned a religious tenet worshiped in the West. Another fancy irony in acupuncture history.

As a practitioner, the mysterious medicine has rendered them unable to connect with today’s patient population or to foster communication with the biomedical mainstream (Phan T, 2017).

In America and many other parts of the West today, Chinese medicine practitioners must find a balance between making themselves a tech professional adopted into biomedicine and becoming swept away in the ever shifting oceanic tides of spiritual healing.

References

Bauer, Matthew, 2004, An Interview With Dr. Paul Unschuld, Acupuncture Today – July, 2004, Vol. 05, Issue 07

Charlotte Furth, 2011: Modern Transformations of Chinese Medicine in China and in the United States.

Gordon Melton, J. et al. 1990, New Age Encyclopedia.

Kaptchuk, Ted, 1983, The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine.

Li Zhisui, 1994, The Private Life of Chairman Mao.

Lu, Yuanlei 陆渊雷, 1928, 西医界之奴隶派, 医界春秋.

Paul U. Unschuld, 2008, 古今論衡 第 18 期.

Phan, Tyler, 2017, American Chinese Medicine, PhD thesis, University College London.

Tan, Cizhong 谭次仲, 1931, 中医科学化之商榷. 社会医报.