Health and Medicine

This chapter contains four pieces on the topic of health and medicine all of which either directly link to or are pertinent in the context of the continuing Covid-19 pandemic. Emily Baum’s piece focuses on the way the Chinese state has employed Traditional Chinese Medicine practices as softpower tools not only in diplomatic endeavours but also in reaching out to an imagined cultural community of Chinese people across the globe. Dino Ge Zhang’s piece focuses on We-Chat groups as field sites of social-viral-technical epidemiology and the dual role they played in creating a both positive and negative affective community during Wuhan’s lock-down. Liz P.Y.Chee takes a critical look at the medicinal use of animals in TCM and calls for a desanctification of so-called traditional practices. Sophie Xiaofe Guo’s piece, through her discussion of Taiwanese artist Pei-Ying Lin’s work, invites the reader to embrace virophilia instead of viewing viruses as microbes that need to be eliminated.

Chapter Contents:

1.1 Acupuncture Anaesthesia as Medical Diplomacy
Emily Baum
1.2 The ‘Affective Plague’: WeChat Group Chat as an Epidemiological Space
Dino Ge Zhang
1.3 Accounting for the Animals: Faunal Medicalisation in Modern China
Liz P. Y. Chee
1.4 Art after Pandemic: Reimagining Virus in Pei-Ying Lin’s Virophilia
Sophie Xiaofei Guo