Anthony Woodward, MD
The Fascinating Ginkgo Tree: A Sacred Plant of East Asia
The ginkgo is an ancient tree that retains its spiritual, physical, and medicinal allure to the present day. This tree was already around when the dinosaurs walked the earth and, no doubt, some dinosaurs munched...
The Great Chinese Treasure Ships of Zheng He
Ask an American to name the world’s greatest maritime explorers and you will likely hear the names of Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Leif Erickson, Ferdinand Magellan, or Francis Drake. But few would name the...
Gongshi: The ‘Scholar’s Rocks’ of China
The mountain holds a special place in Chinese art and philosophy, as men of learning attempted to convey the majesty, holiness, and eternity of the mountain as well as aesthetic ideals and spiritual manifestations. One...
The Odyssey of Gai Lan
There is a charming story that the families of early Chinese immigrants sailing from Guangdong to San Francisco provided them with seeds of the vegetables they were leaving behind. Among these were gai lan (芥蘭,...
The Legendary Origins of Chinese Acupuncture
The spread of acupuncture into Western medicine has been spectacular but relatively recent. The first acupuncture school opened in the US in 1975; by 2018, there were nearly 40,000 licensed acupuncturists in this country. One...
Ancient Chinese Pest Control – Without Insecticides
Pesticides are bad; we all agree on that, but we also want to eat and not pay too much for our food. Pesticides increase the yield of our crops and, at present, are essential to...