Hosted by Herman Hu, episode 9 of Season 2 presents Professor Bian Zhaoxiang, the Associate Vice President of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). He is also the Director and Chair Professor of the Clinical Division of the School of Chinese Medicine, and Director of the Hong Kong Chinese Medicine Clinical Study Center at HKBU.
Professor Bian says traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine are two totally different systems. The difference is that TCM is holistic, natural and individualised; whereas Western medicine is organ-based, standardised, and chemical-based. “But the problem is that for human diseases, you cannot standardise every person’s disease as the same type, because different people may have different characteristics, different appetite, and different lifestyles; and the disease base is also different. Therefore, when we treat diseases, we focus on individualised other than standardised treatment,” he explains. He adds that TCM has been developed in China for a very long time and its effectiveness has been globally recognised.

In Hong Kong, the government is building a Chinese Medicine Hospital which is scheduled to serve the public in 2025. Professor Bian says the hospital, to be operated by HKBU, will be the flagship for the education, services and product development of TCM, not just for Hong Kong but also the Greater Bay Area and many countries. He points out that Hong Kong is in a unique position to develop and promote TCM, and to combine the benefits of Chinese medicine with Western medicine systems. “We can develop a new modal of medical systems that serves not just Hong Kong but all over the world.”

In the program, Professor Bain shares with audiences a Chinese couplet poem that has inspired his Lion Rock Spirit. Originally from a Buddhist temple in Chengdu, the poem suggests that if you realise something that needs to be done quickly, just do it, let it go, and don’t think about it anymore; and that wisdom stems from tranquillity, in which you can find eternal peace in life. “This poem gives me lots of inspiration and lots of thoughts in my daily life. Sometimes we need to make very quick decisions, and we need to take very quick action too. Do it or not, either way you can let it go. So just do it.”

To give an example, Profession Bian says during the fifth wave of Covid-19, some patients came to HKBU’s Chinese medicine clinics looking for help. In view of the critical situation, he and his colleagues made a quick decision to offer telemedicine services to those Covid patients calling in, which was a breakthrough at that time. He also prescribed the same poem to a patient suffering from serious insomnia due to constant stress some 20 years ago. “In our daily life, we need to find ways to deal with the problems by ourselves, and there are things that you have to let go to reduce our stress. This is a very important,” he remarks.

To find out more, watch Season 2, Episode 9 of Friday Beyond Spotlights tonight at 8:30pm on the HKIBC channel (#76).

Watch the trailer of Episode 9 on https://youtu.be/TIxDX5bNImk