A patient once asked me, halfway through an acupuncture session, how I know exactly where each needle goes and where I learned it. I told him it was a long story. He said he wasn’t going anywhere for the next twenty minutes.
So here it is – the long story, in eight pages.
It starts in Tieling, in China’s far northeast, on my parents’ farm, where I learned to plant rice in straight lines. It goes on through a long road to school in winter, a misty park where an old teacher showed me that Tai Chi starts in the feet, and the long years of studying Traditional Chinese Medicine. Then come a job offer, a flight to Albania in 2020, new friends who taught me Albanian, English and Italian, and, on 8 May 2025, the door of my own parlour in Tirana.
A few words about how it was made. The drawings were created with the help of AI, starting from real photos. Xiao Xiao, Wei Huang and I all agreed to appear. The patients and the friends in the story are drawn from many real people, but none of them is a portrait of anyone.
My friends in China call me da maolü – the big donkey – because once I have chosen my way, nobody can talk me out of it. Looking at these pages, I think they were right.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of this story, and to everyone who walks through our door. To meet the team and see how we work today, have a look at our About page.
I dedicate this story to a Big Bear (da xiong) – you know who you are.
Yang Wang practises acupuncture and therapeutic massage at Chinese Massage – Tai Chi Tirana, in central Tirana.