In an east China traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospital, Briton Kate Steiner is watching a doctor take pulses, examine tongues and ask about symptoms.
Steiner, 25, has been studying TCM at Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine in Jiangsu Province for two years. She frequents the provincial TCM hospital to learn from TCM practioners during her summer break.
"I like to accompany my friends who are also overseas students to visit TCM doctors. I ask questions and take notes of prescriptions doctors give to my friends," says Steiner. She is one of 1,300 overseas students who make up more than 10 percent of the university's 12,660 students.
Overseas students graduating from prestigious TCM universities across China every year are becoming known as the foreign "heirs" of the country's thousand-year medical heritage.
Before TCM was systemized in the 1950s under the People's Republic of China, it was only practiced within inherited family systems.
At that time, TCM gur
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