Neither Donkey nor Horse tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China’s exploration of its own modernity half a century later. Instead of viewing this transition as derivative of the political history of modern China, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei argues that China’s medical history had a life of its own, one that at times directly influenced the ideological struggle over the meaning of China’s modernity and the Chinese state.
Far from being a remnant of China’s premodern past, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century coevolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation—institutionally, epistemologically, and materially—that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. This new medicine was derided as “neither donkey nor horse” because it necessarily betrayed both of the parental traditions and therefore was doomed to fail. Yet this hybrid medicine survived, through self-innovation and negotiation, thus challenging the conception of modernity that rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional.
By exploring the production of modern Chinese medicine and China’s modernity in tandem, Lei offers both a political history of medicine and a medical history of the Chinese state.
Review
“In this insightful and provocative book, Lei shows us what it meant to practice ‘modern’ medicine in Mao Zedong’s semicolonial and semifeudal society. Drawing on rich historical sources, Neither Donkey nor Horse reveals that modern medicine will always be mongrel medicine. Importantly, Lei gives us the critical postcolonial genealogy for ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine,’ the epitome of Chinese modernity, now a global phenomenon.”
(Warwick Anderson, University of Sydney)
“Reaching far beyond the history of modern China, Neither Donkey nor Horse challenges conventional understanding of modernity, science, and state power through an intellectual and social history of medical debate and development in East Asia from the late nineteenth century forward. This is a thoughtful and meticulously researched investigation of transnational modernizing processes in the twentieth century as they touched down and transformed worlds in China. The book demonstrates that medical knowledge and practice, whether ‘modern’ or ‘traditional,’ historicized or fixed as policy, are nowhere innocent of politics, culture, and social hierarchy. It offers surprising historical lessons for everyone interested in science and local knowledge, socialism and capitalism, institutions and ideas about nature as they weave together in modern regimes of health and population governance.”
(Judith Farquhar, University of Chicago)
“Neither Donkey nor Horse is a tour de force of how both Western and Chinese medicine played central roles not only in Chinese modernity but also the formation of the state in Republican China. Lei thus adroitly relates the politics of medicine and debates over making Chinese medicine more scientific to the big themes of nationalism, the state, and modernity that dominated the political struggles of early twentieth-century China.”
(Marta Hanson, Johns Hopkins University)
“Neither Donkey nor Horse is a major work by the leading scholar in the field of modern Chinese medical history. Lei argues that what we now know as traditional Chinese medicine as it emerged as a discourse in the early twentieth century was fundamentally shaped by the encounter with Western medicine and the relationship with the state that this dictated. Chinese medicine was something new that was created during this period in response to themes with Western biomedicine as traditional practitioners sought social mobility through participation in the state. Lei’s argument is backed up by research of the highest standard: his knowledge of the historical sources is outstanding, and he is impressively familiar with the secondary and theoretical literature in both English and Chinese. His book will be of interest not only to historians of Republican China but also to those interested in the history of science more widely.”
(Henrietta Harrison, University of Oxford)
“If you are going to read just one book on the modern history of Chinese medicine, this is the work to read. Lei’s analysis of the entwinement of medicine, science, modernity, and the state is brilliantly original and persuasive, and argued with admirable clarity. Neither Donkey nor Horse is a major contribution to science studies and the history of global health, as well as to the study of twentieth-century China.”
(Shigehisa Kuriyama, Harvard University)
Sean Hsiang-lin Lei is associate research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; associate professor at the Institute of Science, Technology, and Society at National Yang-Ming University; and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He lives in Taipei, Taiwan.
As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
评分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
评分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
评分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
评分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
很棒。对“非驴非马”的"现代中医”的形成过程中,中医、西医和国家之间的纠结,以及它与中国“现代性”的关系,有非常好的剖析。配合老皮的专著,对近代中医的发展当有更为深入的理解。
评分Chinese medicene redefined against modernity, science, and China.
评分Chinese medicene redefined against modernity, science, and China.
评分如果定位是部思想史和政治史作品,那么成也萧何败也萧何。最大的贡献大约是提供了一种中西医共同进化的观点,或许不久之后亦会有人提出其实这关系应该是你中有我我中有你的观点吧。
评分本来没有太大期待,因为类似主题(近现代史里的中国医药)已经读了很多,觉得可能难有新收获。但惊讶地发现这本书竟然让我有最多共鸣,不知道是不是因为同为华人,与Rogaski或者Bridie Andrews相比,雷问出的研究问题和我自己的最为相关。“非马非驴”的讨论也对我有启发
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