The Medical Sage Arrives: Zhang Zhongjing Transmigrates to the City to Practice Medicine

The Sage of Medicine, Zhang Zhongjing, accidentally transmigrates through time and arrives in a bustling modern provincial capital. With his peerless mastery of traditional Chinese medicine, he is hired under special dispensation at a provincial hospital by its perceptive senior director, Chen Shouren. Yet this “ancient man” in Han clothing is at odds with the modern medical system: he cannot use a computer or understand health insurance. His methods of “observation, listening, questioning, and pulse-taking,” along with his seemingly “unusual” old prescriptions, such as taking Guipi Decoction with millet broth for insomnia, using honey suppositories to relieve constipation, and teaching therapeutic exercises for air-conditioning sickness, draw fierce criticism from the Western medicine faction led by Deputy Director Zhao Minghui and obstruction from vested interests.

Zhang Zhongjing remains unmoved, guided by compassion and medical skill. His precise pulse diagnosis stuns the entire hospital, and with the wisdom of Treatise on Cold Damage, he brings patients back from the brink, treating everything from office workers' poor health to difficult and unusual illnesses with tailored remedies. He improves the dog days herbal patches and promotes seasonal medicinal cuisine, breathing new life into ancient wisdom. His assistant, Lin Xiaolu, becomes his bridge to the modern world and witnesses the astonishing results of traditional Chinese medicine. When Zhang Zhongjing's keen insight into “dampness” leads him to warn that an unusual wave of “colds” may signal the return of an ancient “damp plague,” he is accused of fearmongering.

The shadow of an epidemic quietly spreads. When Western medicine proves helpless in the face of the first child with a severe case of influenza, Zhang Zhongjing turns the crisis around with a combination of Maxing Shigan Decoction and other remedies, winning fame overnight. But his “unlicensed practice” and the interests he has threatened unleash a storm. Pharmaceutical companies join forces with Zhao Minghui to attack him, and the health bureau intervenes. A petition signed by recovered patients and the senior director's tireless efforts temporarily resolve the crisis, but Zhang Zhongjing feels the constraints of the system keenly. After accurately predicting the risk of a “cold-damp epidemic” that winter, he chooses to step away from the turmoil for a time.