Circulating Qi: "Vital Energy" in China and the United States, 1900 to the Present

项目总结 我正在写一本书，追溯过去一百年来气的全球循环， 探讨这种全球化的气如何体现在当代的临床遭遇。 我的研究遵循了气与中医一起传播时的局部重新运作， 世界在二十世纪，从医生的办公室的现代化城市在交替的- 世纪中国，通过日本、韩国和法国研究人员的实验室， 加州新时代大师的表达，最后到慢性疼痛和排毒诊所 位于美国的心脏地带虽然这些循环是全球性的，多- 我的两个主要兴趣点是中华人民共和国 和美国作为一位在中国生活和工作过的中国医学史学者， 我想了解中国自1980年代中期以来气是如何变化的， 这是围绕现代科学的两极进行辩论的结果， 古老的遗产与此同时，作为一名在纽约伍德斯托克长大的美国人， 我在田纳西州的纳什维尔生活了15年，我强烈地感觉到气已经成为 美国文化。这个项目试图追踪这种适应是如何发生的，以及它意味着什么。 一些优秀的研究探讨了汉语的全球流通和转换 药通过把气作为一个焦点，我的项目提供了一种引人注目的方式：1）把历史联系起来 过程与当代问题; 2）通过理论辩论涵盖中医的意义， 实验室实验和临床接触;以及3）研究中医如何 不同的当地社区都经历过。 由此产生的专着，我将写的是访问学术和非- 学术观众，将阐明如何转换古代概念仍然可用于 患者和从业者，使他们的日常人类痛苦的经验， 治愈通过历史性的探索，该项目突出了非紧张局势， 生物医学模式在生物医学定义的世界中面临的挑战。我的研究希望揭示 全球化的气，远远不是一个纯粹的“假定”能源的边缘，一个工具定义的 事实上，这可能会提供一种工具，通过这种工具，病人和医生建立联系， 对世界对自己的身体对彼此

PROJECT SUMARY I am writing a book that traces global circulations of qi over the past one hundred years and explores how this globalized qi manifests in contemporary clinical encounters. My research follows local reworkings of qi as it traveled with Chinese medicine around the world in the twentieth century, from the doctor’s offices of modernizing cities in turn-of-the- century China, through the laboratories of Japanese, Korean, and French researchers, to the expressions of California New Age gurus, and finally to chronic pain and detox clinics positioned in the American heartland today. While these circulations are global, multi- directional, and multi-sited, my two main points of interest are the People’s Republic of China and the United States. As a scholar of Chinese medical history who has lived and worked in China on and off since the mid-1980s, I want to understand how qi has changed in China as the result of debates that have often been arranged around the fraught poles of modern science and ancient heritage. At the same time, as an American raised in Woodstock, New York who has lived for fifteen years in Nashville, Tennessee, I strongly sense that qi has become a part of American culture. This project seeks to trace how this adaptation happened and what it means. Several excellent studies have explored the global circulations and transformations of Chinese medicine. By using qi as a focus, my project offers a compelling way to 1) connect historical processes with contemporary issues; 2) encompass TCM’s meaning through theoretical debates, laboratory experiments, and clinical encounters; and 3) examine how Chinese medicine is experienced by diverse local communities. The resulting monograph, which I will write to be accessible to both academic and non- academic audiences, will illuminate how a transformed ancient concept remains available for patients and practitioners to make sense of their everyday human experiences of suffering and healing. Through historically grounded explorations, the project highlights the tensions non- biomedical modalities face in a biomedically defined world. My study hopes to reveal how a globalized qi, far from being a mere “putative” energy on the fringes of an instrument-defined reality, may instead offer a vehicle through which patients and practitioners forge connections to the world, to their own bodies, and to each other.