About this blog

I've been interested in Chinese wisdom — particularly in Daoism (or 'Taoism') — for a long time. A few years ago, I became a patient of Dr.Thomas Zhang, a naturopath and practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) here in Toronto, Canada. I expected to find an average TCM practitioner. Thomas's brand of TCM, it turns out, is anything but average.

TCM had always been taught in the context of Daoism, a philosophy of living based on understanding Nature and working with it, rather than against it. As such, it includes knowledge about astronomy, climate, weather, farming, food, lifestyle — even business and politics. It also includes knowing how to predict weather trends and health, environmental, agricultural and natural disasters.

In the 20^th century, much of this knowledge was forgotten because of a wave of westernization and various political decisions made by Chinese leaders. Today, only a handful of scholars and the few remaining TCM practitioners who were trained in the early part of the 20^th century still use and understand the system.

It so happened that Thomas, while studying TCM in greater depth in China in 1994-95, met a few such elder physicians and was fully trained in the system. Thomas uses this knowledge every day in his practice, but had no way of making it better known. Being a writer and owner of a small publishing company, I offered my help.

At the end of 2002, Thomas and I founded Ginseng Press, a small publishing company dedicated to making this valuable knowledge more widely available. We've been writing and publishing The Chinese Almanac every year since then, with more books on the way.

The almanac is full of information, but there's always something new to add. Whenever I see Thomas, be it as a patient or as a co-author, I always learn something worthwhile. Little bits he mentions. Comments on news stories. Answers to questions I ask. These — and a few of my own musings — are things that deserve to be shared. And that's why I started this blog.