When we were small, from time to time, adults would bring us to an old Chinese medicine shop to see an equally old Chinese doctor, who had strange and unreadable handwriting, scribbling the names and weights of grasses and herbs on a piece of paper, which he would pass on to another old man behind the counter, who picked out various ingredients from the cabinets. Little shops or makeshift clinics could be found in many places in Hong Kong. We usually picked a Chinese medicine doctor based on word-of-mouth. Except for a few eminent practitioners, Chinese doctors do not get the respect they deserve as doctors.

The problem with these small set-ups was that they lacked consistency of prescription; to be fair, there might have been some kind of record, but mostly they were just in the doctor's head. There was never a detailed examination and certainly no quantifiable medical data, we just had to rely on the doctors' three fingers on our wrists and his years of experience. However, we would often hear something like this from older folks: "this doctor may work for me, but he may not work for you." Now that sounded too arbitrary. How could I have confidence in drinking black and bitter medicine when it could just be a trial and error process? This approach probably had to do with poor record keeping, and the lack of a systematic method to collect patients' data, treatments and their effects. Perhaps we could not expect a small business to collect such data and turn it into something meaningful.

Years later, things changed, at least for a short while. Among other things, the Tung Chee-hwa administration suggested Hong Kong could be a hub for the Chinese medicine industry. Chinese medicine suddenly became a popular subject among Hong Kong residents. Besides the old shops, some better looking and more professional clinic-like outlets began to appear in Central, Tsim Sha Tsui and other high-ends districts. I went to a few where they gave patients herb powders, or pre-cooked medicine soups; the patients just needed to bring the packs home, add water and put them in the microwave. I was amazed by the simplicity, but when I saw the medical bills, I practically jumped through the roof! So then I asked staff what ingredients made the medicine so expensive, and she said she was just a clerk, had no formal Chinese medicine training, and could not tell me much about the few packs of black juice I would be drinking at home. This sounded more like a gamble.

One positive that came from Tung's suggestion is that our universities have started offering Chinese medicine majors. Since then, Hong Kong Baptist University, University of Hong Kong and others, have nurtured hundreds of Chinese medicine graduates. While some of them have been practising Chinese medicine in both private and Hospital Authority Chinese medicine clinics, others have been working in private practice in Hong Kong and overseas. New blood has at least been joining the local Chinese medicine profession. But what is still lacking is a systematic Chinese medicine teaching hospital in Hong Kong to provide our Chinese medicine students with clinical training relevant to the regulations governing its practice in Hong Kong. The establishment of a Chinese medicine teaching hospital in Hong Kong will serve as a base for Chinese medicine students to conduct their internship, provide a bigger pool of data for teachers and researchers to carry out clinical studies in Chinese medicine, contribute to the integration of Chinese and Western medicine as well as the standardization and modernization of Chinese medicine. And of course in the process it will benefit our society as a whole, which demands a professional and reliable health service.

I am just hoping that the Leung Chun-ying administration can pick up where Tung left off, and support the development of a proper Chinese medicine teaching hospital. It is time to get some respect for the industry.

The author is vice-president of the Hong Kong Chinese Importers' & Exporters' Association.

(HK Edition 04/27/2013 page4)