Kleinman (2006) states “how we perceive, experience, and cope with diseases is based on our explanations of sickness, explanations specific to the social positions we occupy and the system of meaning we employ.” Thus, in this paper, I attempt to understand my interviewee Iris’s explanatory model centering around the concept of tiaoli, that is, a notion of health and wellbeing. tiaoli stands in contradistinction to biomedical scientific notions of health, since it does not perceive the body as a machine that needs to be fixed. Rather, tiaoli frames the body as a garden and the doctor as a gardener who will continuously nourish the body to strive for improvement and perfection. Western …show more content…
For example, Chinese people do not “take medicine.” Instead, Chinese people “eat medicine” and categorize medicine as a type of food beneficial for the body in sickness or when physically healthy. This idea of “eating medicine” embodies the concept of tiaoli. It illustrates that by eating medicine, something beneficial for the body, Chinese people can continuously improve their health and wellbeing. Accordingly, Iris believes, as she states in the interview, “Chinese Herbal Medicine takes longer for the effects to come in.” This belief reflects another resemblance between food and medicine in that long-term consumption of both will lead to beneficial effects. Moreover, the notion of medicine as beneficial is clearly shown through her words “Chinese Herbal Medicine does not have any adverse effect on your body.” Therefore, culture not only play an important role in constructing Iris’s definition of health and wellbeing, but it also frames Iris’s conception of medicine and medical …show more content…
Her experience shows many parallels with the Hmong family (Fadiman, 1997). The family’s experience is an amplified version of cultural collision with Western medicine. In Lia’s case, cultural collision and the inability of Western medicine to solve the conflicts caused by cultural discrepancy have ultimately led to her death. Lia’s family and Iris’s negative views regarding Western Medicine is caused by the lack of common ground and cultural discrepancy. In Lia’s case, the physicians did not understand the Hmongs’ explanatory models, which centers around two major beliefs. The first being diseases have a spiritual cause and the second is “a little medicine and a little neeb”. This lack of understanding ultimately led the family to believe that it was the medicine and doctors killing Lia, which caused their noncompliance with treatment. Likewise, in Iris’s experience, Western clinicians’ lack of understanding of tiaoli leaves her feeling unsatisfied with its treatment and the difference in the perception of privacy leads her to regard Western hospitals and clinicians as