A Chinese American Node of Healing: Taiji, Acupuncture, Qigong, and Buddhist Medical Arts

Abstract

This article examines a contemporary Chinese American immigrant community in the New York City area centered on a religious healer, CHEUNG Seng Kan, who employs qigong, Buddhist chants, and Chinese medical arts. I argue for how healing and religion overlap, a perspective that has not been given significant attention in the discourse on Global Chinese Medicines or Transnational Asias. Religious healing is the centripetal force in forming this community. Cheung learned qigong in New York from a relative who studied it in mainland China. Cheung has since taught other Chinese Americans, including a childhood friend, during the friend’s brief visit to the US, who has returned to Guangzhou to teach qigong there. In addition to relatives and friends, Cheung also heals patients—who are mainly interested in relief and treatment, and teaches students—who are interested in learning to practice self-cultivation and become healers themselves. Besides qigong, Cheung also spreads religious healing to his community by prescribing fengshui object placement, Buddhist chants, and life release rituals. Over the span of five decades, Cheung learned from four Chinese and Chinese American teachers, and is also an autodidact who takes advantage of transnational religious healing techniques available to global Sinophone audiences via YouTube videos, cable television shows, local radio programs, and books. This study demonstrates that understanding medical practices in transnational Asian communities must consider not only physical, emotional, and mental dimensions, but also social, ontological, and soteriological ones.