“Indigenous” contributions feed into cross-cultural “science”. Historically, both change and can even interchange. But multiple perspectives coexist as to how one becomes the other. While science and status as established academic does fundamentally change knowledge, indigenous identities linger on.
Surveys of materia medica in Western China serve as an example to show how historical, vernacular and scientific names come to appear in the published pharmacognostic, botanical, as well as folk and ethnography-based literature. Collaborating insiders in both science and traditions speak different languages as they find names for the plant/animal/mineral-based medicines from Northwestern Daoist and Southwestern Tibetan-Buddhist and Yi ethnic regions. They remember scientific experiments of knowledge extraction, while many names about the particular historical landscapes, which were crucial during the indigenous-scientific endeavours, have disappeared from the final records: Names of the contributing knowers and makers, outdated and confused names of the sources, vernacular place names and transliterations.
Dominant political, scientific and indigenous stakeholders aim to rear resources and knowledge from rich ethnic backgrounds, but may obscure and hamper the actual rural industry, folk culture and lineage-based education, which sustain this natural and cultural heritage. Various drug-makers operate during the multi-sited production processes with transforming materials. Often these do not have separate names. These contributing knowledge holders run small businesses and live in the preserved Western Chinese habitats. Until today, not all the synonyms and unmentioned translations are excluded from the precarious materia medica landscape in this vast environment.

The bamboo slips that were excavated from a Han tomb in Tianhui Prefecture of Chengdu City in late 2012 are medical books from the period of the Jing and Wu Emperors of Western Han Dynasty (157-87 BC) according to archaeological reports. The graves from Mawangdui Han tomb 1000 kilometres to the East are from around that time, i.e. just over twenty years later. However, the “Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments” (wushi’er bingfang) from Mawanghui (before 168 BC) differ from the Tianhui Medical Manuscripts’ “Formulae and Decoction Methods to Treat Sixty Ailments” (around 100 BC) since the proportion of shamanist zhuyou recipes has decreased broadly. This indicates a demarcation during the early Western Han when physicians and shamans separated. From the perspective of medical developments, this seems to proof that [the quote] “Believe the shaman, not the physician” [from] “Six Not-to-Treat” in “Biographies of Bian Que and Canggong” of the Shiji “Records of the Grand Historian” does not stem from [the author] Sima Qian’s politically motivated discussions only.
According to these excavated medical manuscripts from present-day China’s southwestern Sichuan Province and central Hunan Province, the knowledge about healing and drug-making of ‘shamans’ (wu) was established knowledge, until a shift occurred around 157-87 BC. Only then did ‘physicians’ (yi) come to represent a higher status of scholarship.

This paper introduces two examples from my experiences since 2005 of surveying and preserving indigenous medical traditions of healing and pharmacy throughout different regions of China to provide legal protection and preserve this intangible heritage. Providing legal status by legalizing or founding local healthcare institutions is one way. The case illustrating this is the Daoist Medicine Hospital (yiguan) in Louguantai in Northwestern Shaanxi Province. In the multi-layered regulatory context, it is registered as a Site of Intangible Medical and Pharmaceutical Heritage Transmission, and run by the Xi’an Handian Academy of Traditional Culture. A second way of safeguarding transmitted indigenous practices, industries and education by legal means is the patenting of ethno-pharmaceuticals. Daoist Dan Drugs demonstrate the early regional histories of alchemy and this case lets me introduce the knowledge holders today who are specialised in the safe handling of the delicate remedies and powerful poisonous ingredients.