It’s been one of those Beijing winters when flu is landing half the population in bed with a fever. But the talk is not of flu vaccinations. It is of how to find a pharmacy that hasn’t sold out of woad root. Shelves have been emptied by Chinese returning to their traditional medicine roots, literally, for a cure.

For Zheng Jinsheng, a professor of the Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, such actions are wholly sensible because they demonstrate that the Chinese recognise the value of the herbal remedies upon which they have relied for centuries.

But all this is anathema to Professor Zhang Gongyao, an outspoken critic of traditional Chinese medicine whose views have created a furore in Chinese medical circles.

The argument centres largely on whether consumption of usually vile-tasting concoctions of such exotic-sounding ingredients as powdered deer horn, simmered seahorse and boiled bat droppings, along with countless dried plants, offer an effective cure for ailments ranging from the common cold to rheumatism, gastritis and migraines.

Zhang, the critic, believes that China needs to adopt a more questioning approach. “TCM has no clear understanding of the human body, of the functions of medicines and their links to disease. It’s like a boat without a compass: it may reach the shore but it’s all up to luck.”

His online petition demands that traditional medicine be stripped of its mention in the Chinese Constitution and that such treatments should no longer be covered by medical insurance. His appeal has attracted only 200 signatures, but that response fails to reflect the full extent of the controversy surrounding Chinese medicine.

Almost every scholar has a view, and many are locked in fierce debate in internet chat-rooms. The divisions are also visible in the choices of the sick. Chinese are flocking in increasing numbers to Western hospitals. Western doctors total about two million, while, in contrast, the number of Chinese practitioners has halved since the 1949 Communist takeover to fewer than 300,000. Traditional practices are increasingly being marginalised and regarded as an alternative therapy.

The shift is taking place in spite of government support for traditional medicine and a statement from the Ministry of Health that describes Zhang’s views as “ignorant of history”.

Proponents recognise the limitations of TCM and the importance of proper practice. Most agree that poorly trained doctors who prescribe incorrectly mixed herbal medicines or patients who exceed proper consumption of these drugs are giving traditional medicine a bad name. Zheng says: “It is unreasonable to attack TCM because of the mistakes of a few doctors. There are toxins in both traditional Chinese medicines and in Western medicines and it all depends on how you take it.” He argues that the same standards apply to Western medicine.

The system in China in which Western hospitals stand next to their traditional counterparts, and where patients can claim insurance for both, endeavours to combine the best of both. Zheng argues for moderation. “We are like two friendly armies but with different equipment and theories of battle, but we are fighting one enemy. They are good at mountain battles and we are good at fighting on the plains.”

But sceptics worry that substandard herbs, unregulated ingredients and methods of diagnosis such as reading the pulse or the iris of the eye, are just plain dangerous to health.

Fang Zhouzi, a biochemist, has won a reputation for rooting out academic fraud, and the risk of poisons in traditional remedies is one that he finds particularly worrying. Some treatments contain heavy metals, others traces of mercury or arsenic. Acupuncture, too, gives him concern. At what angle should the needles be inserted, and how deep? Fang and his fellow doubters worry that the lack of scientific research in the Western manner is letting traditional practitioners get away with murder.

Zhang scoffs: “What exactly is the pulse? Do they mean the flow of blood, or is it the heartbeat, the breath and the softness of the blood vessels? Some doctors boast that they can even tell if a woman is pregnant from reading her pulse. The biggest problem is that there is no standard.”

There is little doubt that this 3,000-year-old system has come in for serious questioning in its homeland. But even those opposed do not believe that traditional medicine will disappear. It’s too deeply ingrained in the Chinese system. Chinese will choose their foods, for example, depending on the season and without even knowing the medical reasoning that is the foundation for the choice of diet.

Thus beef and lamb are winter foods that can raise the heat in the body, while crab and papaya are cooling and appropriate summer dishes. A new mother will not bathe for a certain number of days after the birth or step outside.

Fu Jinghua, who trained in Western medicine and later became a respected author and expert on traditional medicine, responds with a patient smile to the attacks. “This is just not the era of Chinese medicine. But we must just flow with history. At the moment Western medicine has the upper hand, but one day the tide will turn and we will see that Chinese medicine will be recognised for its superiority.”

Meanwhile, sales of “Influenza Number One” are booming.

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