The Unpublished Introduction

In the introduction, I wanted to write about how this book came to be, but it seemed a bit out of place. I am currently holding the first printed copy in my hand, which has inspired me to share what I did not put in the book.

About twelve years ago, while still a graduate student of Chinese medicine, I came across various copies of translations of the classics. What I read made no sense to me, so I asked some of the teachers who taught my classes. The overall response I got was, “Don’t worry about that.” This made me even more curious. How could I just forget the classics of the medicine I was studying?

I started getting my hands on anything I could read. I loved reading Paul Unschuld’s books, but in a very sneaky sort of way. I then started to discover academic work by Nathan Sivin, Charlotte Furth, Benjamin Elman, and others. They seemed to contradict much of what I was hearing from my teachers and I would use their work to ask more probing questions of my teachers.

After about a year of trying to understand the medicine through translations of the classics, I was told by a teacher whom I respected greatly that if I really wanted to get into the deeper meaning of classical texts, I would have to study Chinese…and not just Chinese, but classical Chinese. I was not excited by this.

Upon graduation, I vowed that after practicing for five years I would move to China and study the language. After a year in private practice, I was already quite bored. I missed the camaraderie that came with having classmates who were grappling with the same questions I had. I decided to keep practicing and enrolled in local Chinese courses. This was very satisfying at first, but after a year I realized I was no closer to being able to tackle Chinese medical texts.

I enjoyed clinical practice. Helping people with their physical, spiritual, and emotional issues was very satisfying; on the other hand, the desire to go more deeply into the medicine was eating away at me. After three years of practice (to the day), I decided to take on studying Chinese full time. I packed up as much as I could carry with me on a plane and gave the rest to the local Salvation Army. I gave up essentially everything I had built, but I knew I was treading the right path for me at that time.

My initial plan was to come to Taiwan for just one year, then apply for a graduate program in the UK or back in the US. I wanted to go all of the way through to PhD and not stop until I was done. After one year in Taiwan (studying Chinese 10 hours per week for the entire year), I realized I still needed more training. I couldn’t get through a modern Chinese book, let alone a classical text. For most of this time, I was working for a publishing company translating from Chinese to English. Most of the books I worked on were Chinese language textbooks. I didn’t realize how valuable this experience would be at the time-it was just a way to pay the bills.

After two years of studying and working, I received a full scholarship to attend the Chinese University of Hong Kong for two years. At this time, I decided to ramp up my knowledge of classical Chinese. I read and studied every book available.

Many of the classical Chinese textbooks I found to be great resources, but they do not cover medical literature. I probably spent about a year in total devoted to learning to read classical Chinese. The books that used English to teach classical Chinese were initially very helpful. After mastering these, I started reading classical Chinese to modern Chinese translations of medical texts.

I often asked myself, “Why is no one creating a good classical Chinese to English textbook?” Finally, I sat down at my computer and outlined what such a book would look like. I pulled some medical texts from my bookshelf and included what I found to be the best methods from all of the Chinese-English books. After a few chapters were put together, I had the beginnings of a textbook.

At the time, I was about to begin my second semester in Hong Kong and didn’t have time to work on the book. I was not serious about finishing it and was hoping someone else would pick up on the idea and do it. After about a month into the semester, I realized I was miserable in the academic world and knew I would only grow more miserable. I decided to give up the scholarship and went back to Taiwan.

The first few months, I had forgotten about the book. I traveled a lot and worked on bits and pieces. At some point, I looked at what I had put together and realized it could be a book-and a very useful one. I decided to start taking it seriously, which meant that I had to throw out a lot of what I had already done. I needed to consider what beginners could handle, check to be sure I was teaching each new character, make the texts short but still useful, explain the grammar in a way that could be understood, and make sure all of the texts followed one another in a language learner’s logic.

For the last six months or so, I have done nothing but work on this book. My goal throughout writing it was to create the book I wish I had when I started working on learning to read classical Chinese medical texts. I hope you will find that it makes tackling more difficult aspects of the medicine much easier.