Site Overview

The www.dontow.com is the website of Don M. Tow.  It contains articles in three topical categories (or pages):  Political/Social Commentary, Taiji, and Other Topics.

Any article in a particular category can be accessed via the corresponding category on the menu bar at the top of the page.  Any article in a particular release can be accessed via the corresponding release on the right sidebar.

This website began in October 2006, and the website was redesigned in October 2008.  Recently (November 2009) this website was redesigned again, this time using the WordPress platform.  The new design provides many nice features, e.g., all articles of any category or release are grouped together, and readers can directly submit their comments at the end of any article.  The new design also makes it significantly easier to update and maintain the website.  I have also recovered the photo banners. I wish to thank Adam Tow and Eric Tow for helping me to redesign this website.

Modern Scientific Analysis of Medical Qigong

Is there any scientific analysis of the medical benefits of Qigong, which is a type of health/healing/martial arts exercise that has been practiced in China and other countries for at least two thousand years?  Recently an important book “Chinese Medical Qigong” [1] has just been published.  It provides a comprehensive summary on the theory, practice, clinical applications, and modern scientific research on Qigong.  This article reports on excerpts from this book in the area of modern scientific research on Qigong.  Readers can get an introduction to Qigong from an earlier article in my website “A Proposal to Perform Scientific/Medical Analysis of Qigong“.

The book reports on modern scientific research in control settings that could be repeated.  The results so far are very encouraging, showing positive evidence of physiological effects, psychological effects, biochemical and immunological effects, and physical effects.  These encouraging results definitely show that more research in this field at a larger scale is warranted, and show hints of an alternative medical approach that could complement and supplement the traditional western medical approach, and could help to slow down or even reverse the rapidly rising cost of healthcare.

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Reflections on a Recent Visit to Xinjiang

In terms of size, location, and natural resources Xinjiang has strategic importance to China.  In terms of history, people, and culture, Xinjiang is different from many parts of China.   This article describes some of the opportunities and challenges facing China with respect to Xinjiang based on observations from a recent two-week visit to Xinjiang.  We flew to Urumqi (烏魯木齊), the capital of Xinjiang, located north and east of the central part of Xinjiang.  From there except for the last leg, we (group of 14) traveled via our tour group bus.  We covered the middle part and the southwestern part of Xinjiang.  For the last leg, we flew from Kashgar (喀什), located in the southwestern part of Xinjiang, back to Urumqi.

Our observations are discussed in terms of geography, political history, religion, culture, livelihood, and government structure.

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