This series is based on our reporting on TCM: its history, treatments and growing acceptance around the world. This is the eighth instalment.
For decades, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has often been viewed as a fragmented collection of folk remedies, overshadowed by Western clinical models and dismissed as purely anecdotal.
But as luxury wellness centres in Hong Kong blend traditional methods with modern science – drawing interest from Western-trained doctors and hospitality leaders alike – the boundary between holistic and conventional medicine is blurring.
This shift is supported by Hong Kong’s stringent regulatory framework, which has helped move the practice into the clinical foreground.
“Right now, we consider Chinese medicine not as an alternative medicine, but a mainstream medicine,” says Kelly Chain, a registered TCM practitioner at Chain’s Medicare Centre.
Chain, whose family legacy in TCM dates back to 1760, operates at the intersection of these two worlds; her husband, David Chain, is a doctor of Western medicine.
Kelly Chain Yeung Pui-kuen, a TCM practitioner at Chain’s Medicare Centre in Admiralty, Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong
