Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Note on Chinese terms -- Introduction: ways of learning -- Modes of transmission -- Styles of knowing -- Knowing Practice -- TCM -- The settings -- Approaches to the field -- Working in the field -- The structure of the book -- 1 The secret transmission of knowledge and practice -- The setting -- Social networks and private enterprise -- Brotherhood and dangers of knowledge -- Family bonds and the ethics of knowledge -- Discipleship: imitation and repetition -- The Light that changed the healer's gaze -- Destiny and the legitimation of knowledge -- The secret mode of transmission -- Excursus: secrets and social relations -- Family secrets - secrecy as attribute of those in power -- Secret societies - secrecy as a weapon of the weak -- Secrecy in self-cultivation - secrecy as adornment -- 2 Qigong and the concept of qi -- The outsider's observations -- (1) Choice of therapy -- (2) Forms of recruitment -- (3) Mutual commitment -- (4) Reaching consensus -- (5) From patient to pengyou -- The insider's view -- Bad qi and illness as affliction -- Primordial qi and the transmission of well-being -- Qi and conceptions of the body -- The body ecologic -- Accumulating qi -- 3 The personal transmission of knowledge -- The setting and reminders of French colonialism -- Biographical notes and trends in medical politics -- The person and his personae -- The scholar doctor -- The senior doctor -- The modern intellectual -- The mentor and his followers -- The personal mode of transmission -- 4 Interpreting a classical Chinese medical text -- The personal adoption of the text -- Notions of change and the indirect mode of interpretation -- The concept of shen and the authoritative mode of interpretation.

The odd number three and the justificatory mode of interpretation -- Xing and qi and Zhang's interpretation by recourse to everyday life -- Yinyang and the creative mode of interpretation -- The senior doctor's modes of reasoning -- 5 The standardised transmission of knowledge -- The setting: a work unit -- Formal inquiries -- Assistant teachers: semidirected interviews -- Students: questionnaires -- Graduates: letter questionnaires -- Interviews with the administration -- The teachers -- The xiaxiang year: alienation from the profession -- Assistant teachers: underemployment -- Lecturers: struggle for a livelihood -- Motives for the choice of the profession -- Senior staff: pillars of the college -- Summary -- The students -- Recruitment -- Commitment to studies -- Job assignment -- Summary -- The curriculum -- The introductory courses and the rise of a TCM theory -- The clinical courses and the continuity with the past -- Practical training, touch, and flexibility in the application of standards -- Standards and their variation -- Goals of teaching -- The standardised mode of transmission -- 6 Teaching from TCM texts -- Lesson one: China's cultural heritage -- Lesson two: Mao's dialectics -- The unity of opposites and the necessity of struggle -- Mutual transformation: two different notions of change -- Lesson three: being systematic -- From the Five Phases to the Five Organs -- Compartments and Organ Clusters -- From Chinese medical doctrine to TCM theory -- The loss of Spirit -- The reinterpretation of Chinese medicine in TCM standards -- Discussion: styles of knowing -- Secret knowing -- Personal knowing -- Standardised knowing -- Non-verbal knowing and participant experience -- Verbal reasoning, word meaning, and social practice -- Key concepts of Chinese medicine and qigong -- Qi and its connotations -- Yinyang and its pragmatics.

Yinyang and different conceptions of change -- The Five Phases and the mood and modality of an utterance -- Spirit and its performative significance -- Ways of learning and styles of knowing -- Appendix: Curriculum for TCM regular students and acumoxa and massage specialists at the Yunnan TCM College in 1988-9 -- Glossary of medical and philosophical terms -- References -- CHINESE REFERENCES -- TCM TEXTBOOKS -- General index -- Index of Chinese book titles and chapter headings discussed in text -- Index of Chinese personal names.