Do you know what TCM is? Your Chinese teachers may have told you about it if you have taken Chinese lessons. TCM is the abbreviation of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which includes a broad range of medicine practices sharing common theoretical concepts which have been developed in China and are based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years, covering various forms of herbal medicineacupuncture, massage (推拿tui na), exercise (气功qigong), and dietary therapy. Different from Western medicine, it regards human body as a whole and interact with the surroundings while diagnosing an illness. Some consider TCM to be inferior western medicine in that it always takes a long time to be effective, but it is able to cure the disease from the source.

TCM diagnosis consists in tracing symptoms to an underlying disharmony patterns, mainly by palpating the pulse and inspecting the tongue. It is said that in ancient times, some doctor of TCM were able to diagnose patients by tying a string to the patients' pulse and then feeling the tie. Stone and bone needles found in ancient tombs have caused speculation that acupuncture might have originated in the Shang dynasty. But most historians now make a distinction between medical lancing and acupuncture in the narrower sense of using metal needles to treat illnesses by stimulating specific points along meridians.

While learning Chinese, it is necessary to pay attention to its classic books. The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, the oldest received work of Chinese medical theory, offers explanations on the relation between humans, their environment, and the cosmos, on the contents of the body, on human vitality and pathology, on the symptoms of illness, and on how to make diagnostic and therapeutic decisions in light of all these factors. All these reflect the elements of TCM.

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