Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle Over China's Modernity

by Sean Hsiang-lin Lei

Neither Donkey nor Horse tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China's exploration of its own modernity half a century later. Instead of viewing this transition as derivative of the political history of modern China, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei argues that China's medical history had a life of its own, one that at times directly influenced the ideological struggle over the meaning of China's modernity and the Chinese state.

Far from being a remnant of Chinas premodern past, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century coevolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation institutionally, epistemologically, and materially that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. This new medicine was derided as neither donkey nor horse because it necessarily betrayed both of the parental traditions and therefore was doomed to fail. Yet this hybrid medicine survived, through self-innovation and negotiation, thus challenging the conception of modernity that rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional.
By exploring the production of modern Chinese medicine and Chinas modernity in tandem, Lei offers both a political history of medicine and a medical history of the Chinese state.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Bodies, China

395 pages, ebook

First published September 1, 2014

Reviews

[Neil Lovell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I may come back to this book. I read it in less than a couple of days for grad school. Though academic and compelling, this was a dense work that I felt I needed more time on to grasp the full depth and breadth of his work.
I appreciated the use of a Chinese idiom, neither donkey nor horse, to describe the modernization of China as a nation and its medicinal transformation.
If you read it, take your time.

[Rose Canoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would love to say that it's not a leisure novel, but to some extent it tells a dramatic saga of Chinese medicine. By reading it, I understand how politics reshapes China's modernity.

[Kelly Dombroski · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I am supposed to be writing a proper academic review for this. Will post when I get done!