Before I arrived in China my dear friend told me about her her Aunt Yin Ming, a famous Pediatric Dr. in Nanjing. Phone calls were made, numbers exchanged and months later I called Yin Ming from a pay phone in a park in Naning. We laughed at my disgraceful Mandarin and her terrible English but figured out a way to meet despite our differences in language. She brought me to her home and offered me a place to stay but I didn't want to intrude so I declined and she took me out to dinner with her family. A day or so later I arrived at the "Famous Doctors" department at Jiangsu Hospital and was kind of intrigued by the concept of such a place. I found her office and watched her perform her medicine, only seeing one family at a time. Children came in with everything from asthma to diarrhea, skin disorders to just, crying babies with concerned mothers. One interesting case was a young mother with a crying baby having profuse diarrhea for almost a week. After the intake it was determined the mother was the problem, she was eating ice cream and was transferring the "cold nature" via the breast milk. The mother was prescribed a Rx and the infant "Baby Tuina" (baby-massage). The mother came back the next day and all the symptoms had resolved for the baby. A healthy lecture about TCM was given to the young mother and her grandmother was there to rub it in- Ha. The next two days was really fascinating and I saw things that I never could have seen here in the US. I saw babies guasha'ed, bleed, tuina'ed and flipped around like blades of grass over the hands of Dr. Yin Ming. Her technique was intense, fast, all free-hand and no needle retention. She was so fast that I could only ballpark which acupuncture points she had just punctured. It was great to watch, she would kind of trick the kids by needling them in opposing parts of the body. For example she would go for Renying (St-9) on the neck and just when their head moved forward to protect their neck she would needle Tian Zhu (UB-10) at the back of the head. After my time with Yin Ming I felt so inspired and was ready to see more. It was soon time to leave Nanjing...
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