Discussion On Yin and Yang and Bearing Baby Boys and Girls

There was an elderly journalist at my former workplace. throughout his lifetime, he has visited many places in China and come to know about various aspects of society, different people and things, and has thus become very knowledgeable. One of his hobbies was that, wherever he went, he would visit and interview famous doctors and open his mind in order to learn from them. After several decades, he was able to acquire many skills for curing illnesses and so people around him often sought his help for medical suggestions.

Twenty years ago, the "One Child Policy" had already been completely implemented in China. As a result, the issue of bearing a boy or girl soon became quite sensitive and acquired a lot of practical importance. In my workplace, a lady got married very late in her life. Since her husband was the only son in his family, she wanted to have a baby boy to pass on his family name. As soon as she knew she was pregnant, she went to the elderly journalist and asked him to feel her pulse to see if it was a boy or a girl. At that time, I doubted the effectiveness of taking one's pulse to decipher such a thing. After a few minutes, the elderly journalist said confidently that the embryo was a boy. After several months, the lady gave birth and was happy to find that it was indeed a baby boy. One day, I curiously asked the elderly journalist, "How could you tell if the embryo was a boy or girl even though the mother was still in the very early stages of her pregnancy?" The journalist said calmly, "It is very simple. Male is Yang, and female is Yin. If a pregnant woman's pulse appears as a male pulse, she is bearing a boy. Otherwise, she is bearing a girl. It is very accurate, so feeling the pulse is a very simple and effective method to tell whether it is a boy or girl."

I was quite impressed at the time. While others had to go to the hospital and have various tests, he was able to clearly tell the result just by feeling a women's pulse. However, I did not think about how many profound theories were behind this simple pulse examination. Later, I got married and became pregnant. I didn't care much about having a boy or girl; I just thought it would be a surprise later on. Unexpectedly, it turned out that I had to wait for a long time for every examination that was taken during my pregnancy, and I grew more and more bored during the examinations. One day whilst being checked by ultrasound, I felt bored and asked the doctor while he was looking to see whether it was a boy or a girl. The doctor's answer surprised me. He said sometimes it is easy to tell from the ultrasound results, sometimes it is not. Moreover, it is not always accurate. As expected, he looked at the ultrasound for a long time, but still could not recognise if the foetus was a boy or girl. He said the foetus was very big, but the baby's legs blocked him from seeing the gender. Later on, even when it was close to the date of when I was supposed to give birth, it was still hard to tell the baby's gender due to the position of the foetus.

Even at that time, I still didn't doubt or question the superiority of present western medicine. I didn't doubt western medicine in the slightest until I had the following experience. In fact, the story is simple. One day, a Caucasian lady sharing the same room with me in the hospital delivered a baby boy. After the initial excitement, the young couple said to me with a little disappointment, "It is a pity that we prepared so many things for a baby girl. Every time after checking the ultrasound, the doctor told us that the baby was a girl so we already gave the baby a girl's name." At that time, I was confused. With such advanced equipment, they still failed to correctly determine the baby's gender. The elderly journalist's method turned out to be far more effective, even though he didn't have any specialised training.

Today, when I read the chapter entitled "The Law Wheel Emblem" of Lecture Five in the Falun Gong book, Zhuan Falun, about the Qi [Vital energy] of Yin and Yang in the Tai-chi theory, I recalled the experience of the elderly journalist determining the gender of an unborn baby by feeling a woman's pulse. I then found that it wasn't as mysterious as I had once thought. A male has pure Yang Qi, while a female has pure Yin Qi. Once a fertilised egg becomes a male embryo in a women's womb, the Yang Qi will show in the pregnant woman's pulse, which would be totally different from the pure Yin Qi that would be present in her original pulse. Thus, feeling Yang Qi in a pregnant woman's pulse indicates that the foetus is male. Meanwhile, a female foetus will display the Yin Qi, and the pregnant woman's pulse will remain Yin. Then of course the foetus is female.

Two thousand years ago, Hua Tuo [A famous Chinese doctor] was able to see a tumour in Cao Cao's brain without the use of any equipment, and he even dared to perform an operation to open Cao Cao's head so as to be able to remove the the tumour. The elderly journalist at my previous workplace had just learnt some skills during his spare time. However, he was able to tell an embryo's gender at the very earliest stage of pregnancy with just the use of his fingers, whilst western medicine still can't accurately tell the gender to this day. Isn't the elderly mans way of determining a baby's gender more advanced? Perhaps we should think this over carefully. Should we just discard traditional Chinese culture, or should we take a fresh look at ancient Chinese civilisation and culture? Are we enchanted by a small, distant, obsolete tool while not realizing that we have a treasure chest right in front of us? Is it possible that we look afar and neglect what lies close at hand, or even worse, miss a most wonderful and sacred treasure in the human world?