Fuddland

In stark contrast to the imperious Cao Cao, one of his contemporaries and another resident of Bozhou was the legendary physician Hua Tuo. [And when I say “legendary”, I of course mean, “I’d never heard of him until I went to Bozhou, but he does seem to have been pretty important.”]

As well as being a renowned practitioner of traditional medicine, perhaps his most significant achievement was the first recorded use of anaesthetic during surgery—1,800 years ago.

He might have passed his extensive knowledge on to future generations had he not irked Cao Cao by refusing to treat the tyrant’s chronic headaches exclusively—a stubbornness that cost him his life. [In fairness, his recommended treatment was to numb the pain with hashish then split Cao Cao’s head open with an axe to extract the pus, so one can perhaps understand Cao Cao’s desire for continuous pain-relief treatment rather than extreme surgery.]

The fairly simple former monastery of Huazu’an that has been designated a tribute to Hua Tuo doesn’t offer much to see beyond a tastefully-displayed statue of the man himself with a potted biography and a few other historical artifacts, but is worth seeing if only for completeness.