Endangered ethnic medicine needs more protection

NANNING - Every weekend, Zhao Miaoyuan goes into the mountains to pick medicinal herbs in Jingxi, a small county in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

The 56-year-old doctor practices Zhuang medicine, a traditional way of curing disease among the Zhuang people, an ethnic group largely living in Guangxi.

Located in the southwest of the autonomous region, Jingxi boasts a population of about 630,000, among whom 99.4 percent are Zhuang. Thanks to its geological conditions, the locality produces a large number of medicinal herbs used in Zhuang medicine.

"Zhuang medicine is amazing in treating some chronic diseases when Western medicine can't do its job," Zhao says.

He explains that it is similar to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), except that it uses special herbs mainly found in Guangxi.

However, while TCM is getting more attention around the world, Zhuang medicine is seriously endangered. The worrisome fate has been a big concern for Zhao, who has been in the field for more than 40 years.

"More efforts are needed to protect the cultural heritage," he urges.

Zhuang medicine is usually passed on orally, without many written records, which makes it hard to be learnt comprehensively, Zhao points out.

This doctor currently runs the only privately-owned Zhuang medical school in Guangxi, but his students are mainly in their 50s or 60s. The number of young people seeking to inherit the skill is quite limited, because many of them don't think it will help them build a career, according to Zhao.