Dr. Ho Shi-Xiu, do you have anything for boils?
Country: China
Place: Baisha, Yunnan Province
Visited in: 1996
I had my fair share of diarrhoea when I lived in China, but even more embarrassing were my reoccuring abscesses. So one day during my visit to Lijiang, I decided to visit the neighbouring village Baisha to ask Dr. Ho Shi-Xiu for help.
Dr. Ho was already then world famous for his knowledge on Chinese traditional medicine. He had his own entry in the Lonely Planet and received visits from travellers from all corners of the world. More recently he was paid a visit by Michael Palin in 2003, which was televised in his Himalaya series.
When I arrived at his small clinic in Baisha, he already had two French visitors. He showed us postcards from previous visitors who were all praising his medicine. One German visitor had even sent him a watch, which Dr. Ho proudly showed us, only to put it back in the envelope. Why he had been sent a watch, I don’t know.
I waited for the French visitors to leave before I told Dr. Ho of my embarrassing problem. His diagnosis was that I had too much “fire” in my body, (I know, it begs for a joke!), which, no disrespect, seems to be the default diagnosis in China.
Anyway, Dr. Ho busied about in his white coat and black hat mixing the tea that was going to put an end to my boils. I paid him a few quai for the herbs, wrote a few lines in his guestbook and as I was leaving, his next visitors had already arrived.
Now if the tea helped or not, is hard to say, admittedly I did stay clear of boils for a while, but later that summer, I had one monster of a boil that I ended up having lanced without any form of anaesthetic on an old wooden bench in the semi-outdoor clinic of the college where I worked.
But don’t let that stop you from visiting Baisha. Dr. Ho is a character and a half, and Baisha itself is (or at least was in 1996) very picturesque!
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Contact details for Dr. Ho Shixiu
9 Responses to “Dr. Ho Shi-Xiu, do you have anything for boils?”
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Hello, Dr. Ho! I saw you in Brazilian TV with Sonia Bridgi, and i would like that you study my son’s case. [...] welll, send me some e-mail or adress and telephone number for i contact you and i will send some medical report for you, dr ho. thank you very much about it.
Love and thank you Simone Hantequeste
Dear Simone,
I’m really sorry to hear about your son’s condition! I have taken the liberty of omitting most of your original message, as it contained some very private medical details that I did not feel were appropriate to publish on a public site.
I’m afraid this is not Dr. Ho’s website, but an article about a visit I paid to Dr. Ho many years ago.
As much as I would like to help you with Dr. Ho’s address, I no longer have his detailed address in Chinese. However, Baisha, which is where Dr. Ho has his clinic is a very small village, so you may be able to contact him by simply addressing your letter to: Dr. Ho, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Chinese Herbal Medicine Clinic, Baisha Village, Yunnan Province, China. I cannot guarantee you that it will reach him or that he answers, but in your case it may be worth a try?
I am so sorry, I cannot be of more help. I hope you find the right help for your son.
Dear writer of the article about Dr. Ho,
I have a very sick friend in Germany and want to help him with Dr. Ho.
Do you have any further contact data of him? I am in Kunming and can’t go to Lijiang anymore. So I would love to write him a mail. Do you think that is possible now? Or should I fly there? Is he worth it???
My friend has something in his head paralising him on the completely left side and also at the right side of his face.
It would be great to get an answer from you. Thank you soo much.
Lots of greetings
Melanie
Hi Melanie,
Sorry to hear about your friend. Unfortunately I do not have Dr. Ho’s email address (if indeed he has one).
But as you are in Kunming, I would have thought it would be very easy to get word to him via the many tourists that go from Kunming to Baisha nowadays?
As for your question if he is worth it, I’m afraid I am not in a position to make that judgement on someone else’s behalf.
Sorry I can’t be of more help, but I hope your friend finds the right help.
I’ve now managed to get hold of Dr. Ho’s son, so anyone looking for a way to contact Dr. Ho, can find his contact details here:
Contact details for Dr. Ho Shixiu
Hi Annie,
just a word about the diagnosis of “too much fire” in the body. There’s always a big room for misunderstanding when translating vocabulary of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to a foreign language and this often makes it look very simplistic and primitive (unfortunately it is practiced that way by mane people as well…)
However, in Chinese medicine “fire” is not related to what we think of when talking about fire and even words as “heat”, “coldness”, “blood”, “outside” and “inside” have very different and specific meanings in the context of TCM.
So, just because it sounds simplistic, it is not, as anyone who’s studying TCM will easily confirm.
I enjoyed reading your article, keep on writing.
Ramin from Berlin, Germany
You’re right Ramin, “too much fire” doesn’t have the same connotation in Chinese. Perhaps I didn’t express myself very well, as I certainly didn’t mean to say that traditional Chinese medicine is simplistic.
What I meant to convey was how, when I lived in China, regardless whether I had a simple cold, a headache or in this case a boil the standard passing comment from my colleagues was that I probably had “too much fire”. Maybe I did have “too much fire”, but my colleagues were not doctors, so the comment, to me, became synonymous with “there’s a bug going around” or something similar. So no disrespect intended.
My son and I just visited Dr. Ho (June 2007) and here are some contact addresses (which I haven’t used). This information comes from a photocopied biography/testimonial with all the addresses written in margins.
Contacts: jdsmchmcl@yahoo.com.cn
Telephone and fax: 0888-514-2015
Address: Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Chinese Herbal Medicine Clinic, Bai Sha Village, Lijiang County, Yunnan Province, China (PRC) 674101
Thanks Marilyn. Apart from the German email address you provided (which I’ve edited out), the details match the details that Dr. Ho’s son gave me back in March (see Contact details for Dr. Ho Shixiu). So it’s probably safe to assume that those addresses are correct.