Shen Mingli
Physician
Age 66
Sleep that breaks at three in the morning and will not close again · Long-standing digestive complaints where the tests came back normal
Read the introductionLicensed in China · Written in English
A reading of
your body,
written by hand.
You answer thirty questions and send one photograph of your tongue. Within 48 hours a physician licensed in China writes you a report in English about what Chinese medicine sees in the answers.
- 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 people behind the house
A tradition carried
by people.
Shen Zhiwei
Physician
Cycles: timing, cold in the lower abdomen, the days before · The years either side of menopause
Read the introduction
Zhou Yanqiu
Physician
Age 68
Heaviness: after meals, in the head, in the limbs, in wet weather · Skin that flares in summer and settles in autumn
Read the introduction
Shen Yunzhi
Physician
Age 76
People who work at night, or across time zones · Students, and long days spent in front of a screen
Read the introductionOpen a profile for each physician’s introduction and areas of focus.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
黄帝内经
The Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor
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
伤寒论
On Cold Damage
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
本草纲目
The Compendium of Materia Medica
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
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
The house
Physicians in China, now writing in English.
Bencao House is four physicians licensed to practise Chinese medicine in the People’s Republic of China. Each of them reads intakes and writes reports, and every report is signed by the physician who wrote it. Fang Huichuntang in Hangzhou is our partner.
Much of a consultation does not transfer overseas. We cannot send you herbs, and we would not want to. What does transfer is the part that happens before the herbs: 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.
- Physicians writing
- Four
- Partner
- Fang Huichuntang, Hangzhou
- Licensed by
- 中华人民共和国 · PRC
- Reports written
- In English, by hand
Free to read
Most of what we know is not behind the paywall.
The report is worth paying for because it is about you specifically. The tradition itself is not ours to charge for, so it is all here, sourced, and written by the same four people.
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.