The Inheritance and Change with Last 60 Years for The
Traditional Chinese Medicine Stores in Taiwan
With 20 centuries-old of history, traditional
Chinese medicine has evolved with Chinese culture, tradition and society. Very
conservative and traditional people run the traditional Chinese medicine stores
in Taiwan. All stores are family business, teacher and pupil pass them on or
father and son impart. The Chinese medicinal community with centuries old is a
closed world and conservative circle. For this reason, they keep very well for
their He Luo Chinese medicine culture, which is handled down generation by
generation for two thousands years. The He Ro people (河洛人) is another name
of Taiwanese, origin from He Ro area in ancient China, 1500-2000 ago. Their
language and culture was classic China type, the Chinese medicine stores
dealers in Taiwan have combined this ancient culture and their medicinal career
to develop a special He Ro traditional Chinese medicine culture, the
characteristics from our survey, they are honest, gentle, sincere, frank, stubborn,
advocate tradition, conservative, faith, etc. Many Hang dynasty spelling are
reflected in the Taiwanese names of herbal medicine, for example, the same word
with different spelling, as tai3-hong5 (大黃), ng7-lian5(黃連), ng7-ki5(黃耆), chenn7-ki5(晉耆); kam7-cho2(甘草),
ik8-boo1-chau2(益母草); jiok4-kui3(肉桂), iubb3-bah4(羊肉); hu3-cu2(附子), su1-kun7-cu2(使君子), ki7-cian7-ci2(車前子); hian7-som1 (玄參), etc. We
discuss the detail for these characteristics of He Ro traditional Chinese
medicine culture.
Because this is special traditional business, they
are not college-educated pharmacists but do the medical work. In the passed 60
years, our government had spent a lots effort work to settle the license
problem for this special business circle. Many policy and improved methods were
tried, failed and changed. The business license fighting between government and
traditional Chinese medicine stores were continued for more than 30 years. Many
chairman, directors of health department involved this complex problems, but
failed again and again. One of the main reasons were caused by neglect the
special characteristics of the Ho Ro traditional Chinese medicinal culture.
Another very serious case
was the rhinoceros horn and tiger bone problem in Taiwan in 1992-1994, all the
media over the world reported this case. It was caused by the paper “the Horns
of a Dilemma: The Market for Rhino Horn in Taiwan” was complied by a foreign
conservationist and two domestic zoologist scholars. The traditional Chinese
medicine store owners had sine become the target. Chinese medicine, long being
regarded as a profession devoted to preserving human life, had turned out to be
the center of criticism. Taiwan invoked the Pelly Amendment from the United States,
and lost more than US$30,000,000 per year. The biased result of investigation
report only caused by these 3 authors did not understand the special
characteristics of the Ho Ro traditional Chinese medicinal culture. It hurt
Taiwan government, people and the Chinese medicine so much.
In order to cooperate the modern society, of course,
they need keep on educating. We must know it is very difficult to conduct and
investigation research among these closed group of people. The study methods or
future developed direction of government should be arranged more detail and
carefully as this work is very complex and hard.