Writing | Zachary Lui

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.

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

Two chapters. They are the written foundation for everything that follows: the argument that the Chinese medicine you were trained in is 75 years old, and the receipts for the claim that your clinic already runs eight of the nine things a magician does. Read them in order. Chapter two carries the sources the rest stands on. Each chapter ends with a reading list that names the editions and flags what is contested.

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.

The story continues on camera, one operation per lesson. Each lesson names one thing you already do in clinic, shows you what it is, and hands you the receipt: the word in your own vocabulary that proves it. Operation 1 is pulse diagnosis. Watch the series →

The Secret Menu Index is the free map: every operation running unlabeled in your training, what it was, when it was cut, and where it is restored. Get the Index by email →. Subscribers also get the sample monograph, garlic, 大蒜 (dà suàn); every monograph after it is members only.

The Secret Menu is the paid room: one live hour a month, recorded, on the operation the members choose, plus every monograph after garlic, members only. First class Monday, September 28, noon Eastern. $45 a month plus tax at the founding rate, locked for as long as you stay a member; $75 plus tax from September 28. Become a founding member →

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.