Talk:Gua Sha

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[edit] "lack of reference" marker

I don't quite understand the need of the label on the top of this article. If you do a google search on "Gua Sha", you will find 109 thousand webpages on the topic. If you do search on the Chinese term, there are 255 thousand Chinese pages too. So we are talking about 364 thousand webpages on the topic. When the topic is about an age-old, commonly known tradition, why is a single source of reference required? How do you tell which one out of the 364 thousand webpages are authority on this topic? If I make a link to the google search result page, can I remove this "lack of reference" label? Kowloonese 22:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Kowloonese, with the edits that I have made, including the two references I have added (one being an English language text book on how to apply the technique) I imagine that the tag will soon be removed. One of the reasons, I suppose, for asking for references, is that whenever references are supplied it is relatively easy for people such as librarians to follow up on the article. I hope that the way I have added to the article meets your approval, Lindsay658 00:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

• • Kowloonese -- Further note: I have just removed the tag. We'll see if anyone continues to feel it is unsourced, Lindsay658 00:09, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalization

Why do gua sha and cao gío have to be capitalized? These are ordinary nouns, not proper names. See Wikipedia:Capitalization and Wikipedia:Naming conventions. GUllman 23:04, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Translation of "Gua Sha"

I'm not Chinese but I am a student of Oriental Medicine and have heard an alternate translation of the term Gua Sha as "Extract Sand"...I'm guessing this would make it the same "Sha" as in the Chinese herb "Ye Ming Sha" which means "Night Brightness Sand"...--Gbruno 01:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

You say that you are not a student of Chinese. Therefore I can assume that you can not read Chinese characters and have no idea of just how many different characters can share the same, identical pronunciiation (which seems rather puzzling if you are a student of Chinese medicine, but anyway . . . .) .

(1) The Chinese character for the Sha in Gua Sha does not mean "sand". It is a composite character comprised of the "sickness" radical plus the graphical component which gives it its pronunciation Sha; and it is this graphical component which, in other circumstances, and on its own, means "sand".

(2) "Ye Ming Sha" contains the character that means "sand" and, as you say, in that meaning it is to do with the "mucopurulent discharge" that is found in the eyes after sleep.

(3) The term Gua means "scrape"; and, although one might argue that one uses Gua Sha to remove the fever -- and, therefore, to a Western medically trained English speaker it may seem logical to use the verb "extract" -- the traditional Chinese doctors would always refer to Qing-ing, or "clearing" the fever (by the way, the Qing is the same character as in the acupuncture point BL.1.

(4) Thus, the technical term can mean nothing more or less than (literally) "to scrape for cholera" and, more generally, "to scrape for fever"; and the technique itself would most likely be spoken of as having a Qing-Re, "clear heat", function as its most common application, notwithstanding its other equally importasnt, but far less frequent applications.

I hope that all of this gives you some encouragement to study genuine traditional Chinese medicine from traditional Chinese sources, rather than some distorted western version of it. Best to you Lindsay658 02:57, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

To make the answer above a little clearer, there is a difference between a particular written Chinese character's "citation meaning" -- as in the English word good's citation meaning of, say, "opposite of evil" -- and its meaning in a specific context (its "context meaning". This idea of a "citation meaning" allows one to distinguish between, say, the bank of a river, and a bank in which you deposit money, on the basis that they are two entirely different words. In the case of Gua Sha, the "citation meaning of the two characters that comprise the compound noun mean "scrape" and "cholera" respectively. Hope that makes my point a little more easily understood. Lindsay658 23:38, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the illuminating discussion. The difficulty of standardizing translations of Chinese Medical terms is a well-known issue (at least here in America) and thus is often the subject of many discussions (as in the writings of Flaws, Wiseman, etc.) and amongst my professors who are native speakers. And yes I am aware of the prevalance of homophones in the language. I did not draw this conclusion based on some ill-advised intuitive leap but from a source offered to me in the context of my education (where the term was translated explicitly as I mentioned). But of course, 'caveat emptor.' While I appreciate the time you took to explain, I did not appreciate the initial tenor of your response, it seemed to have an unwarranted vindictiveness in light of my fairly innocuous and earnest remark. As well, note that I used the discussion page rather than making a modification to the entry. Did you perhaps consider the possibility that I'm new to the study of TCM? In the future I will try to frame my comment in question form so as to elicit the scholarship and not the insult.--198.169.189.225 18:06, 3 November 2006 (UTC)