Est. 1987 · Hangzhou & Shanghai

A reading of
your body,
written by hand.

You answer thirty questions and send one photograph of your tongue. Within 48 hours a physician in China — the same people our grandparents went to — writes you a report in English about what Chinese medicine sees in the answers.

Begin a reading — $39Read a sample report first

Morning light across a plaster wall, a celadon cup of clear infusion and dried herbs on a low elm table.
Price
US $39one report, paid once
Turnaround
48 hourswritten, not generated
Written by
A named physicianlicensed in China
Scope
Food · points · rhythmno herbs, no needles

The method

Four examinations, one of which we do differently.

Chinese medicine has looked at people the same four ways since the Han dynasty: ask, look, listen, and feel the pulse. We can do three of them across an ocean. The fourth needs a wrist, so we say plainly that it is missing rather than pretending a screen can find it.

  1. A physician’s desk seen from above: an open notebook, a fountain pen, folded spectacles.

    01

    You are asked

    Thirty questions about sleep, appetite, temperature, digestion, energy and mood — plus room to write anything in your own words. This is the oldest of the four examinations, and still the one that carries the most.

  2. A shallow celadon dish of still water catching window light.

    02

    You are looked at

    One photograph of your tongue, taken in daylight. Its colour, coating and shape have been read as a map of the interior for two thousand years, and a photograph carries almost everything the eye would.

  3. An open thread-bound volume beside a modern index card and a brass magnifier.

    03

    A pattern is named

    A physician reads the whole intake and identifies which pattern it fits — 辨证, the act of distinguishing. Not a disease. A description of how your particular system is currently running.

  4. A folded printed document and a sealed envelope on linen, lit from one side.

    04

    It is written down

    A report arrives as a PDF within forty-eight hours: what was seen, what it means, and what to eat, press and change. Signed by the person who wrote it, with their licence number.

The long version of how a reading is made

A printed report, folded in a paper band, resting on raw linen beside a plain envelope.
Macro detail of the deckled edge of printed pages with a small red seal impression.
Every report carries the seal of the physician who wrote it.

Inside the report

Seven parts, about four thousand words, one signature.

It is a document, not a dashboard. Nothing in it updates, nothing in it expires, and nothing in it needs an app. People print them.

01Before you read the rest
A short list of signs that belong in a consulting room, not a report. It is the first page, never the last.
02What we saw
Your tongue and your answers, described back to you in plain English, so you can check we read you correctly.
03The pattern
The Chinese term, its characters, its literal meaning, and what it has been understood to describe since the Neijing.
04At the table
Eight to twelve everyday foods, why each one, and how they are usually cooked. Ordinary groceries, not powders.
05Under your own thumb
Three or four points you can reach yourself, with a photograph of where they sit and how long to hold.
06The rhythm
Sleep, warmth, movement and season — the parts of the tradition that cost nothing and ask the most.
07Where this came from
Sources for every claim, cited to the classical text or the modern review, so you can read further or disagree.

Read a full sample report

The written tradition

This is not folklore.
It is a library.

Chinese medicine has been written down, argued with, corrected and reprinted continuously for more than two thousand years. Three books carry most of the weight, and every suggestion in your report can be traced back to one of them.

  1. An aged thread-bound volume on dark stone under a single museum light.

    c. 200 BCE81 + 81 chapters

    黄帝内经

    The Inner Canon of the Yellow EmperorHuángdì Nèijīng

    Written as a conversation between a ruler and his physician. It is where qi, yin and yang, the organ networks and the seasons are first set down as a working system rather than a belief — and where the sentence sits that the whole tradition still turns on: the finest physicians attend to what is not yet illness.

    Read what it says
  2. A stack of thread-bound volumes against a deep charcoal ground.

    c. 200 CE398 clauses

    伤寒论

    On Cold DamageShānghán Lùn

    Zhang Zhongjing wrote it after an epidemic killed two thirds of his clan. It is the first text to move case by case — this presentation, therefore that response — and it is the reason pattern differentiation exists as a method at all.

    Read what it says
  3. An open woodblock-printed herbal showing botanical line illustrations.

    15961,892 entries · 27 years

    本草纲目

    The Compendium of Materia MedicaBěncǎo Gāngmù

    Li Shizhen walked the country for twenty-seven years correcting the herbals he had inherited. Darwin cited it. Our name comes from it: 本草, root and herb — the plain word for what grows and what it is for.

    Read what it says

Walk the whole canon

The boundary

The most useful thing we can tell you is where we stop.

We are licensed in China and nowhere else. That is not a disclaimer buried in a footer — it decides what this product is allowed to be, and we would rather you knew the shape of it before you pay.

What we will not do

  • Name a disease, or rule one out.
  • Send you herbs, or tell you which to buy.
  • Tell you to start, stop or change any medication.
  • Put a needle anywhere near you.
  • Ask you to delay seeing someone in person.

What we do

  • Describe what Chinese medicine sees in your answers.
  • Suggest everyday food, cooked the ordinary way.
  • Show you points you can reach with your own thumb.
  • Say plainly when something belongs in a consulting room.

Why the line sits exactly thereOur written practitioner disclosure

A wall of traditional herb-cabinet drawers in aged elm with small brass pulls.

The house

A family clinic in China, now writing in English.

The cabinet in that photograph has been in our family since 1987. One of us fills it, one of us keeps the ledger, and two of us sit at the desk from seven in the morning. On a normal day, forty people come through the door — most of them for something small, most of them for the second or twentieth time.

Almost none of that transfers overseas. We cannot send you what is in those drawers, and we would not want to. What does transfer is the part that happens before the drawers: the questions, the looking, the naming, and the unglamorous advice about what to eat and when to sleep — which is what Chinese medicine spends most of its time on anyway.

So we write it down. Slowly, one person at a time, in a language that is not our first, because the alternative is that this stays behind a language barrier forever.

Practising since
1987
Physicians writing
Four
Licensed by
中华人民共和国 · PRC
Reports written
In English, by hand

Meet the physiciansOur story

Hands writing case notes with a fountain pen, seen from above.
A small brass balance scale and squares of wrapping paper on a wooden counter.
The counter scale. Kept for weighing, kept for the sound it makes.

Begin

Thirty questions, one photograph,
and then it is our turn.

Take twelve minutes. You can stop and come back — nothing is charged until the last step, and nothing is sent to a physician until you decide to send it.

Begin a reading — $39Questions first

Educational and general wellness information from the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Not a substitute for care from a licensed healthcare provider where you live.