Contradictory Images of Indigenous Medical Practices in Chinese Historical Books: The Example of Guangxi

Zhou Qufei tells of a medical case that had occurred several centuries earlier during the Tang period (618-907). An imperial official’s family in the Jingjiang area (now the Guilin area) suffered from Zhang (瘴, a kind of malaria) and was said to have been treated by a ‘celestial being’. The celestial being in question was reported as having used a medicine called Qinghaosan (青蒿散, sweet wormwood powder) to treat this particular variant of malaria. Zhou then proceeds to note that Qinghaosan had continued to be used as a renowned treatment for malaria into Song times (his own era). He briefly introduces the ingredients that comprised Qinghaosan – Qinghao (青蒿, sweet wormwood), Shigao (石膏, gypsum), and various other unspecified indigenous medicines. Attesting to the efficacy of this particular medicine, Zhou Qufei states that, if the Qinghaosan prescription did not work, it was because the patient was too weak, or the illness was too serious.¹

Zhou further describes how local people in Song dynasty Guangxi used tiao caozi (挑草子), a form of bloodletting, in conjunction with some indigenous medicines, to treat ‘hot Zhang’ (热瘴, a more serious form of malaria). The theoretical basis for this treatment, according to Zhou Qufei, is that ‘hot Zhang’ constitutes a form of Taiyang (太阳) ‘highest-yang’ febrile disease. Because a human being’s upper and lower lips are traversed by the ‘yang-bright stomach-meridian’ (阳明胃脉, yangming weimai), and the side of the Achilles tendon above the ankle is traversed by the ‘highest-yang-bladder-meridian’ (太阳膀胱脉, taiyang pangguangmai), when the disease has affected the ‘highest yang’ (taiyang) for three days, the ‘yang-bright’ (阳明, yangming) meridian will get the disease, and bloodletting should be practiced. The key point to note is that Zhou Qufei is affirming that the bloodletting or needling techniques utilised by local people in Guangxi were highly effective in curing the above-mentioned forms of malaria.²

It is important to point out, however, that despite documenting various examples of effective indigenous medical practices, Zhou Qufeu makes the strong claim in the book that Guangxi people knew nothing about medicine.³

This cultural superiority was largely perpetuated by Han scholar-officials in pre-1949 Republican era. Liu Xifan (刘锡蕃), who was posted to Guangxi during the 1930s, produced a monograph study of the peoples of Guangxi entitled Lingbiao jiman (岭表记蛮, Records of the Barbarians of Lingnan, Liu Xifan, 1934). In this work, Liu writes that the indigenous medicines that local people used to treat injuries like falls and fractures, ulcers, and other miscellaneous illnesses that required surgical treatment, were often highly effective. While acknowledging the efficacy of these treatments, Liu Xifan somewhat derogatorily states that these treatments were deployed in the context of superstitious performances of wu.⁴ Wu (巫) is the Chinese name for indigenous spiritual practices and implies shamanism or spirit mediumship. The derogatory statement that Liu makes suggests that the Han scholar-officials’ blanket denial of the existence of indigenous medical culture in Guangxi extended to the medical elements contained in wu ritual, a magical religious practice performed by members of the local ethnic community in Guangxi.

The above examples show that the writings of imperial officials and Han scholar-officials in Republican times not only documented indigenous medical treatments on China’s periphery, but also acknowledged the efficacy of those treatments. We can therefore observe that the denial of the existence of a separate indigenous medical culture by those writers owed much to the political and cultural chauvinism of imperial and Republican Han officials in an era characterised by an ideological concern with legitimising the authority of the central state.