Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, 2014, Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China's Modernity, 382 pages, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Neither Donkey nor Horse aims to answer one question: How was Chinese medicine transformed from an antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol and vehicle for China’s exploration of its own modernity just half a century later? Instead of viewing this transition as a derivative of the political history of modern China, this book argues that China’s medical history had a life of its own and at times even influenced the ideological struggle over definitions of China’s modernity and the Chinese state. Far from being a “remnant” of pre-modern China, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century co-evolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation—institutionally, epistemologically, and materially—that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine.