ABSTRACT
The trans-Pacific route is one of the many through which Chinese medicine has globalized. The last forty years of traditional Chinese medicine in the United States has witnessed the processes by which it became simultaneously ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’. The vibrant forms of traditional Chinese medicine in the United States are part of the larger dynamic unfolding which, through this set of lively medical practices, continues to change our ideas and practices of who we are and the worlds we inhabit. In this chapter I draw on my own fieldwork in California and other colleagues’ research to recount some of the key events, routes, features, and debates in the world of traditional Chinese medicine in the United States. To do so I focus on three interwoven storylines: transnational movements and migrations; encounters with biomedicine; knowledge creation and world making.
