Trailblazer, 86, spreads acupuncture worldwide

When Zhou Yunxian reflected on her years of teaching foreign students acupuncture, she said that the main challenge was the language barrier.

In 1975, China responded to the World Health Organization's call, and the Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing started offering classes for foreign medical practitioners to study traditional Chinese medicine.

This initiative initially attracted dozens of doctors from developing countries.

"At that time, the WHO had a slogan saying that by the year 2000, everyone in Third World countries should have access to medical care. Beijing had an acupuncture institute, so we set up an international acupuncture class," said the 86-year-old.

Zhou graduated from a medical college in Hunan province in 1963, majoring in Western medicine. In 1972, she moved to Beijing and began studying acupuncture and other traditional Chinese medicine treatments.

She also became involved in teaching international students.

"In those days, resources were scarce; we didn't even have textbooks or projectors for them, only charts of acupuncture points on the human body, and they weren't even in English. Students couldn't understand the names of the meridians and acupoints," Zhou said.

"Back then, my English was poor, so I learned alongside them during classes. The most difficult part was communication with the students. We started numbering the acupoints on each meridian. For example, on the large intestine meridian, one of the twelve standard meridians in TCM and consisting of 40 acupoints, we assigned numbers to the acupoints — one point is number 1, another is number 2 — and gradually taught them this way."

Initially, most of the students were practicing doctors from Africa and Latin America. Later the institute saw an increase in students from North America and Europe.

As more foreign students joined, acupuncture and other TCM treatments spread more widely overseas.

"After these students returned to their countries and practiced clinically, they found that traditional Chinese medicine was indeed effective, not only in pain control and management, but also in cardiovascular, gastrointestinal diseases, and more. Many of them even started their own TCM clinics abroad," Zhou said.

In the last 50 years, the international acupuncture training center has trained over 30,000 healthcare professionals from more than 100 countries and regions in acupuncture, massage and other TCM treatments.

Zhou expressed her joy at the increasing recognition of TCM's popularity in the international community.

"Years ago, during a visit to Germany, as I strolled through a market, a German warmly greeted me. Later, I remembered that he had studied acupuncture in Beijing and was a former student of mine. It was a fantastic moment," she said.