Mark Schwartz (USA)
I met Dr. Wilms over a group dinner for DAOM students during my final days of the program a year of so back. Missed the first time she offered her Classical Chinese Intensive; I tried twice to get through the introductory text she uses and kept getting partially stuck in chapters 6-8. I believe what she says, “it’s just about impossible to teach yourself classical Chinese”. In addition to Chinese language, she brings all the cultural, historical, philosophical pieces into one coherent context.
About 20 years ago prior to studying Chinese medicine, I had taken four semesters of modern Chinese and later lived in China for two years. I already felt comfortable with modern medical Chinese and the Chinese of Zhang Zhongjing’s writings. The fascinating thing is people join this class with a wide range of knowledge from zero Chinese background to very advanced (in modern Chinese). My spoken Chinese is somewhere in intermediate. She has thoughtfully figured out a way to get absolute beginners familiar with pinyin, Chinese character structure etc (prior to start of her classes), so she doesn’t take class time away from the core of what we’re all there to learn. She also adds content in her slides for the more advanced students. No matter what your background is I think everyone will see there’s much to learn under her kind tutelage and you’ll go further faster than if you only tried to study this content on your own.
My goal is to get to a place where I can render professional or semi-professional translations of our medicine’s core gynecological works. I feel confident that after completing Dr. Wilms’ three-part series of classical Chinese courses I’ll have attained a solid core to get to work on material that I had previously considered daunting. It’s been very nice during the pandemic to get to be part of community with similar interests from as far away as Belgium, Poland, and Ireland. Eventually there’s talk of having collaborative group translation or journal projects and folks with similar interests working together in specialty areas such as gynecology, internal cultivation, etc.
Although not a Chinese medicinal practitioner herself, I believe her experience designing and teaching this content for various Chinese medical universities, work as a professional translator of numerous classical Chinese medical works, and her close ties to many experienced practitioners of Chinese medicine make her eminently and uniquely qualified to offer this material. I believe it was Confucius who said, “You get what you pay for”. Don’t be deceived by the knockoffs who claim to “know” this content, Dr. Wilms is the real deal!
Mark Schwartz, L.Ac., FABORM, Dipl. O.M.
Buckhead Acupuncture & Herbal Center, Atlanta (Georgia, USA)
www.atlanta-acupuncture.net
