Rediscovering the Chinese Medicine Tradition: Reflections on Volker Scheid's Anthropological Research

This article adopts literature research methods and aims to explore the tradition and modernization of Chinese medicine by introducing Western Chinese medicine practitioner Volker Scheid and his anthropological research. Volker Scheid's research on Chinese medicine in contemporary China shows that the tradition of Chinese medicine is characterized by plurality, plasticity and synthesis. This plurality includes plasticity and exists in all aspects of each stage, and this plasticity makes plurality possible, in which temporal unity (synthesis) is also contained. Volker Scheid's research on the origins of Menghe medicine explained how the tradition of Chinese medicine came into being, continued, and proposed that the essence of tradition is a reciprocal network, and its vitality comes from the closeness of various relationships in the network. Therefore, for Chinese medicine, "modern" is a natural extension of "tradition"; the modernization of Chinese medicine should be plural, and the tradition of Chinese medicine can grow through the inheritance and innovation of "establishing without breaking"; selecting and utilizing new knowledge, tools and discourse to address current specific health issues will inject new vitality into the Chinese medicine tradition and will simultaneously modernize Chinese medicine.