the Anywhere Clinic

Today is the beginning of fall, 立秋 lìqiū by the Chinese agricultural calendar.

This is the season and the element I had the most trouble translating, even though the essence of the silent, killing season resonates in me so strongly that I started invoking her as ying in high school, years before I would learn about 容平 róng píng, acceptance and balance, reserve and poise...

Saturday July 13, 2019 7:20am

My childhood best friend had a middle school teacher who allowed his students to use curse words in class if they looked up the dictionary definitions first. I wonder if cultural literacy can be used similarly to prevent or transform appropriation, drag it back over the boundaries of offensive into the territory of appreciation. For example, is it okay for a non-Indian person like myself to practice yoga if I...

Tuesday, June 4, 2019 11:21am

Today I want to write about privilege. Today I want to reflect upon a privilege I spend very little time appreciating. I refer to the fact that I am practicing Chinese medicine as a Chinese-American. I am culturally aligned with my profession of choice. For all that I appreciate how my bilingual-ness gives me an edge over everyone (Chinese or not) w...

It does not matter to me if you succeed.
It matters to me that you try.
I don’t care if you are bound to fail.
Try anyway. Effort matters.

I am tired of hearing my mother tongue mangled in the mouths of my students because the people publishing their textbooks cannot be bothered to put tone marks on the wo...

Over lunch yesterday, someone was talking about the patron saint of the mentally disabled, St Dymphna, who started the tradition of families taking in a mentally ill person instead of gathering them all in a single institutionalized asylum that is still practiced in Geel, Belgium today. He said that the average stay was 21 years, where the 'patient' really becomes part of the host family and requires much less intervention than those in standard psychiatric care who are institu...