AT Yueyang Hospital, an affiliate of the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 95-year-old Zhu Nansun is having a cup of tea and taking a brief rest. No, she’s not a patient. She’s a staff doctor.

Zhu put on her white doctor’s coat 75 years ago today, and she’s never taken it off.

Now the oldest practitioner of traditional medicine in Shanghai, Zhu is the third generation in her family to become a doctor in gynecology and maintains an active patient load.

Her grandfather, Zhu Nanshan, came to Shanghai from Nantong in Jiangsu Province in 1916 and set up a general practice in traditional medicine, with a specialty in gynecology. He was skilled in treating menstrual problems and infertility.

Zhu Nansun led a pretty typical childhood.

“I liked skating and traditional opera when I was young,” she says. “I especially liked singing the role of the princess in the famous opera ‘Silang Visits His Mother’.”

But the genes of medicine trumped any inclination toward a musical career.

“When I was young, more than 200 patients used to come to my grandfather’s clinic every day,” Zhu recalls.

“People came with worried faces and left with smiles. I feel proud to follow in his footsteps.”

In 1933, he established the Nanshan Xiaozhu private clinic, where he formulated 10 basic questions to be asked in any gynecological diagnosis. They became the basis for what has come to be known in traditional Chinese medicine as Zhu Gynecology.

“My grandfather’s clinic was near the ghetto,” Zhu says. “Most poor people went to a doctor only when they were seriously ill. Therefore, my grandfather usually prescribed strong medicine based on precise diagnosis so they would feel better after only one or two doses.

Thus, her grandfather came to be called Zhu Yitie, or Zhu “one dose.”

Zhu Nansun’s father, Zhu Xiaonan, also became a well-known gynecologist. As the oldest granddaughter of the family, Zhu was given the name Nansun by her grandfather. It signified the inheritor of the family tradition.

At age 18, she began her medical studies at the New China Medical School, which was founded by her grandfather.

At the time, few girls studied traditional Chinese medicine. Zhu’s uncle, who studied Western medicine in the US, was not pleased with her choice.

“’You will not learn well,” his niece recalls his warning. “But his words didn’t discourage me. Instead, they made me determined to do well.”

She read all the books available on traditional Chinese medicine and gynecology during her study at the medical school and became an apprentice to her father after graduation.

“My father told me on my first day as an apprentice that to be a good doctor, one had to be responsible, compassionate and sympathetic,” says Zhu. “I have always kept his words in my mind during my 75 years of practice.”

Her first big mistake as a doctor was an important lesson in need for caution in every diagnosis.

It occurred when a woman came to seek help at the clinic of Zhu’s father when he was out on a house call. The woman complained of severe stomach pain. Zhu decided to help the woman in her father’s absence.

After an examination, Zhu concluded that the woman was suffering from a menstruation-related problem and prescribed herbs to help activate blood circulation and remove any clotting. The patient was advised to return the next morning.

Instead, the patient’s husband showed up, recounting his wife’s excessive bleeding. It turned out that the patient had suffered a miscarriage brought on by the herbs prescribed by Zhu.

Fortunately perhaps, the woman had three children already and did not want another one.

“You cannot be too careful when people’s lives are in your hands,” Zhu says. “My father scolded me severely about my misdiagnosis. Since that day, I have been scrupulous in determining every detail of a patient’s condition before making any diagnosis or embarking on any treatment. When patients are reticent to tell me everything, it’s my duty to get them to talk.”

Zhu strictly follows the traditional Chinese diagnosis system of observation, listening, smelling, questioning, palpating and pulse-taking. She has no qualms about reviewing medical reports from Western-style doctors in the process of reaching a diagnosis.

Those around her can’t fail to be impressed by the dynamism and dedication of one now in her 90s.

Zhu attributes her longevity to her optimistic attitude toward life and her steely determination in the face of adversity.

When her husband, a lawyer, was sent for re-education at a labor camp in Fujian Province in the 1950s, she took over the care of all their five children by herself.

“No matter what difficult conditions confront me,” she explains, “I have faced them head on.”

A healthy diet is often the key to a healthy life, she says. Though she often gives dietary do’s and don’ts to her patients, she follows no particular diet herself.

“I am healthy, so I can eat anything I want,” says Zhu, who admits to a fondness for hairy crab.

She now holds half-day clinics at Yueyang Hospital twice a week, seeing about 20 patients at each session. For the rest of the week, she teaches students the ABCs of traditional Chinese medicine, giving them the benefit of her 75 years of experience.

Indeed, traditional Chinese medicine is largely passed on through the doctor-apprentice model that has served the system so well for centuries.

Her specialty, of course, is Zhu Gynecology — a precise system of diagnosis and prescription. It is now practiced worldwide.

Zhu has helped so many women with fertility problems eventually bear children that she is sometimes called Songzi Guanyin, or the “goddess of mercy who sends children to families.”

Not surprisingly, Zhu is a staunch supporter of traditional Chinese medicine, even as debate about its efficacy versus Western medicine continues.

“Traditional Chinese medicine is effective though it seems mysterious,” says Zhu. “Quite a number of patients who failed to be cured by Western medicine have been healed by my hands.”

It’s a science for thousands of years that has helped people with illnesses, she says, and the proof of its effectiveness can be seen in the patients who regain good health.

Dr Dong Li, who was Zhu’s student and now practices at Yueyang Hospital, wholeheartedly agrees with her mentor.

“Traditional Chinese medicine is based on a profound theoretical system of diagnosis and treatment,” she says. “It has been proven in countless case histories.”

Dong says many people misunderstand traditional medicine because they insist on comparing it with Western medicine. That’s difficult because the two disciplines have different theoretical bases. For example, TCM seeks to ease menstrual pain by restoring the energy balance of the body, while Western medicine may prescribe a painkiller.

“Western medicine is indeed advancing in the conquest of many diseases and ailments,” Zhu says. “But that doesn’t mean the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine should be ignored.”

Zhu always prods her students to ask a lot of questions so that no part of her long experience goes untapped.

She has trained many well-established medical professors and doctors practicing medicine at home and abroad.

Many of her relatives are practicing medicine in Hong Kong or the US. Zhu prefers to stay put. One of her daughters, Xu Chuanquan, has chosen to remain in China to assist Zhu at the clinic.

“There is no particular reason that I have chosen to stay in China,” Zhu says. “But the root of traditional Chinese medicine is here, and as a practitioner of TCM, my roots are here as well.”