From April 1 to June 28, 2019, the 300th Introductory Acupuncture Training Course was hold in Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SHUTCM). A total of 15 students from 10 counties including Germen, France, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, South Korea and Chile participated. After three months of theoretical and clinical study, they finished all the subjects and passed the exam, successfully completing the course.
In the early 1970s, with the visit of the former US President Richard Nixon to China, the “acupuncture fever” swept the United States and caused great influence in the world.In 1975, the central government approved the opening of “foreign doctor acupuncture classes” in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. Since then, SHUTCM officially opened the history of normalized acupuncture international education. By 2019, it has successfully held the "International Acupuncture Training Course" for 44 years and the training class just ended was the third hundred (Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing). For nearly half a century, SHUTCM has promoted the popularization of Chinese medicine and acupuncture knowledge to Chinese medicine enthusiasts all over the world, and trained more than a thousand overseas acupuncturists. Today, the “International Acupuncture Training Course” not only is in the leading position in the domestic, but also has great influence in the international arena. It has become the brand project of the International Education College of SHUTCM.
Initially, the teaching form of the “International Acupuncture Training Course” was conducted with a Chinese lecturer and a foreign language full-time translator. With the opening up of China and the increasing level of internationalization of education, the translators graduated from Chinese medicine majors have gradually replaced full-time translators of foreign language majors. In recent years, SHUTCM has actively explored the “International Acupuncture Training Course” teaching mode in English. That is, the TCM professional teachers teach all subjects in English. For this reason, the university has trained a group of qualified TCM teachers, who are fluent in English and familiar with foreign education models. Those inter-disciplinary talents formed a high level of teaching force.
The 300th Introductory Acupuncture Training Course was of full-English teaching and had a total of 428 lecture hours. Among them, the TCM fundamentals 47 hours, TCM diagnostics 40 hours, needling techniques and moxibustion methods 34 hours, meridians and acupuncture points 62 hours, acupuncture treatment 45 hours, clinical practice 130 hours, examination and test paper analysis 21 hours, self-study 41 hours, and opening and closing ceremony 8 hours.
Teaching Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture in English not only has increased the actual teaching time and content, but also has been improving the teacher's ability. Over the years, SHUTCM has been seriously exploring and tackling difficulties in the field of international education of TCM, and has continuously achieved new substantive results. The “International Acupuncture Training Course” has won wide acclaim from overseas students and has also played an important role in promoting TCM internationalization.
