Writing | Zachary Lui

Long-form essays and notes on classical Chinese medicine, qigong, ritual, and the territory where older traditions meet modern practice. Written for practitioners and serious lay readers. Irregular, no editorial calendar.

Most of what's here right now is one book, being written in public a chapter at a time. Two chapters are up.

Not medical advice. If something here touches what you're working with clinically, take it to your own practitioner.

A serialized book on classical Chinese medicine. What the standardized curriculum left out, where the deeper tradition persisted, and what practice looks like with the full toolkit still intact.

Start at chapter one and read in order. Chapter two carries the receipts the rest of it stands on, so skipping it makes the later chapters read as assertion. Every chapter ends with a reading list that names the editions, flags what's contested, and prints the claims I've had to take back.

About this book, and who's writing it →

• Chapter 1: Chinese Medicine Is 75 Years Old — A mahjong reading that wasn't fortune-telling. Why the version of Chinese medicine you encounter is 75 years old and not 4,000, what the post-war reform renamed, and the man who wanted the whole thing abolished in 1929 and was right about what it is.

• Chapter 2: Your Clinic Runs Eight of Nine — Nine things a magician does. Your clinic does eight of them, today, and nobody told you which eight. Where each one lives in this medicine, and the two places I get careful.

Chapter three, Chinese Medicine Lost Its Licence in 1571, is next. Chapters drop when they're ready. Subscribe to get the next one when it lands →

Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole. Co-host with Andrieh Vitimus. Long-form conversations on contemporary esoteric practice, ritual, and tradition. ddtrh.com

For more press coverage, podcast interviews, and conference talks, see Press.