The Story of Sunflower: Acupuncture Became “Good Doctor” in Remote Areas(I)

【专栏】| Conlumists >微公益 | MicroCharity

By Yibai, Jointing.Media, in Shanghai, 2018-11-08

Image 1: Sunflower Team（July, 2015）Zhang Haizheng, Lu Fang, Zheng Weidong, Yang Yongxiao, Yang Yijian, Qin Liqiang, Li Zheng and Lin Tianjiao

Acupuncture has a long history. According to evidence, acupuncture therapy was born around the Neolithic era. The earliest record of acupuncture appeared in the book Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine. In the book, the shape of nine needles is described, the theory and techniques of acupuncture are described in detail.

When the ancient medicine meets the modern Chinese medicine practitioner, what kind of chemical reaction will happen?

Yang Yongxiao graduated from Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, majoring in Traditional Chinese Medicine（TCM）. He founded Yingxiang（应象）School out of his love for TCM at the age of 40.

In 2007, Yingxiang School started teaching TCM to people who interested in TCM, with the vision of passing on the original TCM culture. The following year, Yingxiang and Jacques Pialoux, author of book Introduction to Classical Acupuncture, and Dr. Hu Siwei held the first acupuncture training for the public.

In March 2010, Shanghai Yingxiang TCM Clinic was established and equipped with its own Yingxiang Pharmacy. In the same year, Yingxiang’s public welfare project – Grassroots Doctors Acupuncture Training Program, named “Sunflower”,

was officially launched.

Over the past eight years, Drs. Yang Yongxiao, Xu Yarong, Hu Siwei, and Chen Cheng, along with dozens of volunteers, have traveled to more than 10 provinces and cities, including Sichuan, Yunnan, and Henan, to provide free public acupuncture training to nearly 1,000 grassroots doctors.

In 2015, Sunflower opened a public service training course on holographic acupuncture for Tibetan medical schools, which is now in its fourth year and has trained more than 200 medical students. Currently, more than 90% of the trainees are engaged in grassroots medical services in Tibetan areas.

From the beginning to the end, from the end to a new beginning

The backbone of Yingxiang is mostly middle-aged doctors in their forties. They came together out of a shared love for the culture of TCM. Today, it has grown from a small team of seven to a boutique TCM clinic with about 30 employees. In Yingxiang, they have flexible working hours and time for education, research, academic exchange and public welfare. Most of them have volunteered for public welfare projects initiated by Yingxiang. The practice of public welfare has long been integrated into the corporate culture.

Yang Yongxiao first became involved in philanthropy in 2006 when he was a full-time MBA student of Peking University. At the time, he was looking for a new owner for a batch of brand new IOLs (an artificial lens implanted in the eye to replace the natural lens – Editor’s note). He planned to donate them all to Peking University, but unexpectedly struck up a friendship with a fellow alumnus, Shanghai ophthalmologist Zhang Xingru, and together they started a charity brightness Project-Guangming Xing（GMX）. This batch of IOLs was then taken to Zuoqin Township, Dege County, Highland, where Tibetans suffering from cataracts benefited from their free GXM clinic and regained their sight.

In 2015, AEGON-INDUSTRIAL, a fund management company, invited Yingxiang to teach an acupuncture class for the Tibetan medical School, where it sponsors meals for students. Coincidentally, this School happened to be located in Derge Zochen. Yang Yongxiao recalled that nine years ago, GMX met the Living Buddha Gega Rinpoche, who had expressed a wish to raise funds to build a hospital for Tibetans in Derge. Nine years later, Yang Yongxiao started a new public welfare project in the same place.

Dege is a small county surrounded by mountains, and the Zuoqin Liuliguang Tibetan Medicine Hospital is on the outskirts of a small town, with the prairie just outside its walls. There were seven volunteers, Yang Yongxiao and Professor Zheng Weidong, and five other volunteers who went to Zuoqin for the first time to teach in the Tibetan medicine class. With a large number of courses to complete in just one week of training, most of the “Sunflower” team suffered from altitude sickness, and all of them endured physical challenges.

Li Jing has worked at Zochen Liuliguang Hospital for more than ten years. She told JM: “Dege Zochen Liuliguang Tibetan Medicine School was founded on the basis of Liuliguang Hospital, which was established in 2005. At present, Liuliguang Hospital is a well-respected private hospital in Ganzi Prefecture, which charges patients a very low fee and is free for poor patients.”

It is understood that the food expenses and part of the daily operating expenses of the students of the Tibetan Medicine School covered by the Shanghai AEGON-INDUSTRIAL. The School recruit students from remote villages in Tibetan areas for a three-year program. Upon graduation, students receive a national high school diploma and are required to return to their villages to work for at least six years.

Editor note：

In 2005, Gekar Rinpoche founded the Zochen Glazed Light Charity Hospital. While the hospital practices medicine and saves lives, it has also taken on the important task of teaching Tibetan medicine.

(To be continued)

中文原文

Edited by Wind and DeepL

Image source: Yingxiang