SO WHAT'S YOUR POINT?

Traipsing through the city’s must-see destinations, I stumbled across FITO’s museum of traditional Vietnamese medicine in District 10. Everything from hand carved wooden photographs to manuscripts in ancient Chữ-nôm language – a rather confusing Vietnamese language using Chinese characters - are on display. While the bulk of the museum’s contents explore the medicinal value of Vietnam’s plentiful flora, it was the archaic acupuncture charts that stood out among the displays. As I gazed at the display, a curator approached. “Vietnamese schools of medicine were heavily involved in trading knowledge with those of China throughout the second century B.C. to the ninth A.D.  During this trade of expertise, both schools ascertained the preventative, healing and curative powers of natural remedies,” she said.

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I wondered why traditional Vietnamese medicine wasn’t given its credit with that of big-brother China. Especially since she continued to tell me, “They also began charting the body’s many systems, including those beyond the understanding of western medicine; the flow of life force energy, you may have heard of it as ch’i, along an invisible system of 12 main meridians. When these channels were mapped, so were over 365 points and the genesis of acupuncture.” We toured the rest of the displays, and as we did, my curiosity for Vietnam’s history and use of acupuncture grew. Where she referred me to next was the last place I would have expected.