Lishizhen Legend
01 · Historical Records
Li Shizhen, 1518-1593, was a famous physician of the Ming, a man of Qizhou in Hubei; he once served as a奉祠正 of the Chu princely house and as a judge of the Imperial Medical Institute. Through twenty-seven years of hardship and three drafts he wrote the world-influential Compendium of Materia Medica and became a world cultural celebrity.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Li Shizhen legend is first found in literature in the birth legend of Li Shizhen written in the early Qing Gu Jingxing's notebook: when Shizhen was born a white deer entered the room and a purple mushroom grew in the courtyard, and as a child he called himself an immortal. The Li Shizhen legend was transmitted generation after generation in his native Qizhou and from various angles displays fairly comprehensively Li Shizhen's ordinary yet moving life, warmly extolling his brilliant character and great achievements as the typical medical sage of the Chinese nation. Rich in content, varied in theme and wide in subject, from his birth to his old age it touches such levels of life as family life, studying medicine, practising medicine, gathering herbs and writing books, from an ordinary citizen to entering the Imperial Medical Institute of the palace and resigning to return home, accumulating material and writing the Compendium of Materia Medica. There are such stories as kneeling to a famous doctor to ask to be his disciple, seeking secret prescriptions from a wandering martial artist, taking a monk physician as his teacher for one medicine, gathering, distinguishing and preparing herbs, transmitting skills and taking disciples, being good at poetry and couplets and astonishing the prefect with a clever couplet, curing a general's eye trouble with a lantern riddle, curing the prince's lovesickness with a living-man medicine, curing the princess's strange illness with a marvellous method and matching wits with Daoists. The Li Shizhen legend not only reflects his lofty medical ethics of healing the dying and helping the wounded, his upright attitude to the world, his indomitable spirit of dedication and his method of seeking the root in scholarship, but is also closely bound up with knowledge of Chinese medicine, with trade customs and local folklore and with the geography and social conditions of every place.
Legends of Writing the Compendium of Materia Medica
Legends telling of Li Shizhen completing the Compendium of Materia Medica over twenty-seven years.
Legends of Gathering and Distinguishing Herbs
Legends telling of Li Shizhen gathering, distinguishing and preparing herbs.
The Legend of a Clever Couplet Astonishing the Prefect
A legend showing Li Shizhen's skill in poetry and couplets.
The Li Shizhen Cemetery
A commemorative relic in Qichun connected with the Li Shizhen legend.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Li Shizhen legend circulates with Qichun in Hubei as its centre through the eastern Hubei area and is bound up with the Qizhou medicine market, medical customs and local hills, waters and place names; transmitted from generation to generation in his native Qizhou, it displays from various angles Li Shizhen's ordinary yet moving life. Such relics as the Li Shizhen cemetery and the old city of Qizhou in Qichun corroborate the legend, forming a distinctive space of medical culture and being important material for studying Chinese medical culture.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
He devoted his life to the study of medicine and pharmacology, travelling the famous mountains and rivers, gathering and distinguishing herbs and learning from herb-gatherers, fishermen, woodcutters, gardeners, hunters, porters and monk physicians, collecting folk prescriptions.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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