PureInsight | January 27, 2003
[PureInsight.org] There was an elderly journalist at my former workplace. In his lifetime, he visited many places in China and got to know various aspects of society, different people and things, and he became very knowledgeable. One of his hobbies was that, wherever he went, he would visit and interview famous doctors and open his mind to learn from them. After several decades, he somehow acquired many skills for curing illnesses. People around him often sought his help for medical suggestions.
Twenty years ago, the "One Child Policy" had already been completely implemented in China. As a result, the issue of bearing a boy or girl very soon became quite sensitive and acquired a lot of practical importance . In my workplace, a lady got married very late in life. Since her husband was the only son in his family, she wanted to have a baby boy to pass on his family name. As soon as she knew she was pregnant, she went to the elderly journalist and asked him to feel her pulse to see if it was a boy or a girl. At that time, I doubted the effectiveness of taking one's pulse. After a few minutes, the elderly journalist said confidently that the embryo was a boy. After several months, the lady got what she had wished and indeed gave birth to a baby boy, and she was very happy. One day, I curiously asked the elderly journalist, "How could you tell if the embryo was a boy or girl even when the mother had just gotten pregnant and the embryo was at a very early stage?" The journalist said calmly, "It is very simple. Male is Yang, and female is Yin. If a pregnant woman's pulse appears as a male pulse, she is bearing a boy. Otherwise, she is bearing a girl. It is very accurate, so feeling the pulse is a very easy method."
I was quite impressed at the time. While others had to go to the hospital and have various tests, he was able to clearly tell the result just by feeling a women's pulse. However, I did not think about how many profound theories were behind this simple pulse exam. Later, I got married and became pregnant. I did not care much about having a boy or girl; I just thought it would be a surprise later on. Unexpectedly, it turned out that I had to wait for a long time in every examination during my pregnancy, and I became more and more bored during the examinations. One day when being checked by ultrasound, I felt bored and asked the doctor while he was looking to see if it was a boy or a girl. The doctor's answer surprised me. He said sometimes it is easy to tell from the ultrasound results, sometimes it is not. Moreover, it is not always accurate. As expected, he looked at the ultrasound for a long time, but still could not recognize if the fetus was a boy or girl. He said the fetus was very big, but the baby's legs blocked him from seeing the gender. Later, even when it was close to the due date, it was still hard to tell the baby's gender due to the position of the fetus.
Even at that time, I still did not doubt the superiority of present western medicine. I didn't doubt western medicine at all until I had the following experience. In fact, the story is simple. One day, a Caucasian lady sharing the same room with me in the hospital delivered a baby boy. After the initial excitement, the young couple said to me with a little disappointment, "It is a pity that we prepared so much baby girl's stuff. Every time after checking the ultrasound, the doctor told us the baby was a girl so we already gave the baby a girl's name." At that time, I was confused. With such advanced equipment, they still failed to correctly determine the baby's gender. The elderly journalist's method turned out much better, even though he did not have any specialized training.
Today, when I read in "The Falun Emblem" of Lecture Five in the book, Zhuan Falun, about the Qi of Yin and Yang in the Tai-chi theory, I recalled the experience of the elderly journalist determining the gender of an unborn baby by feeling a woman's pulse. It was not so mysterious anymore. A male has pure Yang Qi, while a female has pure Yin Qi. Once a fertilized egg becomes a male embryo in a women's womb, the Yang Qi will show in the pregnant woman's pulse, which would be totally different from the pure Yin Qi in her original pulse. Thus, feeling Yang Qi in a pregnant woman's pulse indicates the fetus is male. Meanwhile, a female fetus will display the Yin Qi, and the pregnant woman's pulse will remain Yin. Then of course the fetus is female.
Two thousand years ago, Hua Tuo was able to see a tumor in Cao Cao's brain without any equipment, and he even dared to perform an operation to open the head to take the tumor out. The elderly journalist at my previous workplace just learned some skills in his spare time. However, he was able to tell an embryo's gender at the very earliest stage of pregnancy simply with his fingers, [a stage] when western medicine does not have a way to do it. Isn't that advanced? Perhaps we should think this over carefully. Should we just discard traditional Chinese culture, or should we take a fresh look at ancient Chinese civilization and culture? Are we enchanted by a small, distant, obsolete tool while not realizing that we have a treasure chest right in front of us? Is it possible that we look afar and neglect what lies close at hand, or even worse, miss a most wonderful and sacred treasure in the human world?
Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2003/1/8/19659.html
