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Magic and medicine: The Barefoot Doctor, by Can Xue, reviewed

Mrs Yi is a folk healer in a remote Chinese village where the living commune with the dead and rocks relay warning messages

26 November 2022

9:00 AM

26 November 2022

9:00 AM

The Barefoot Doctor Can Xue, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

Yale, pp.272, 18.99

It must be exhausting to live as a barefoot doctor in a Chinese village if Can Xue’s latest novel is anything to go by. Not because of your work as curer-in-chief, but because all your patients are either nauseatingly happy or prone to near-constant weeping.

Barefoot doctors emerged in the 1930s, but really hit their stride under Mao, when they spread throughout rural China.

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