Zhang Family Throat Clinic

Historical origins

A report by People's Daily Online, Jiangsu, of 2 January 2025 states that the Zhang Family Throat Clinic has been transmitted for four generations and is the "gold-letter signboard" of Zhetang Health Centre. "Gold-letter signboard" is the wording of the report and is reproduced here in quotation marks. The report does not give the starting date of the clinic or the names of the four generations of transmitters, and no other source in this library does so; these remain to be added.

Transmission and safeguarding

According to the reply of the district Culture and Tourism Bureau dated 25 November 2022, ten items at national, provincial and municipal level were being submitted, among them the Luoshan Great Dragon, the Putang Bridge Cishan Temple Fair, the shehuo fire festival, the "five strikes" and the Zhang Family Throat Clinic. That document gives the position as of 2022 and is a submission list; the formal level of a project follows the lists published by the authorities at each level.

According to the report by People's Daily Online, Jiangsu, the clinic was rated in 2023 as a representative item of provincial intangible cultural heritage in traditional medicine. That is the media's wording; it gives the year only, without the batch or the full project name.

The extension list of the fifth batch of provincial representative items of intangible cultural heritage, "VIII. Traditional Medicine", published under Su Zheng Fa [2023] No. 100 of 3 November 2023 by the Jiangsu Provincial People's Government, carries the entry "Traditional Chinese Medicine Throat Therapy (Zhang Family Throat Therapy)", number JS-VIII-8, serial number 284, with Lishui District, Nanjing, as the applying area or unit, listed as an extension sub-item under the same number as "Traditional Chinese Medicine Throat Therapy (Throat Disease Therapy)" of Guannan County. The formal full name, the batch number and the status of the entry as an extension item are settled by that document.

The third annex to the district's third-batch list, "List of representative bearers, nineteen persons in all", includes Shu Zhaoxing as a bearer of the Zhang Family Throat Clinic. The same annex also carries the entry "Chinese medicine", with Zhang Yuanzhong and Jiang Ting as its bearers; whether that entry and the throat clinic belong to the same project has not been verified in the original annex, and the two are not combined here.

Uncertainties

First, the provincial extension list gives only the project name, number and applying area or unit, and gives neither an introduction nor bearers; the guardian unit recorded here follows the wording of the district list and the media report, and the provincial document does not carry that field.

Second, the statement that the clinic has been transmitted for four generations is the report's wording; the names of the transmitters of each generation and the dates of their practice have not been verified. Whether Shu Zhaoxing, listed in the district annex, is at the same time a representative bearer of this provincial item is not stated in the provincial document, and no assumption is made here.

Third, an extension project shares the number of its main project: JS-VIII-8 is the number of the "Traditional Chinese Medicine Throat Therapy" series, and the provincial document does not set out separately the relation between the serial number of this extension item and that of the main project, so no inference is drawn here.

Fourth, the relation between the "Chinese medicine" entry in the third annex and the Zhang Family Throat Clinic remains to be established, and this entry does not count the two together.

Fifth, the clinic's methods of diagnosis and treatment, its prescriptions and the way it is transmitted within the hospital have no source in this library and remain to be added.