By: Atty. Marlo T. Cristobal
My wife and l decided to take a brief trip to Shanghai, China, departing last September 16 and coming back on the 20th, just a day before our countrymen, from whom we eagerly anticipated and pined for some hell-bent action, massed in unison countrywide to condemn to high heavens a history-breaking colossal robbery the government perpetuated against its very own people it swore to serve. This federal robbery that is record-breaking in shamelessnes before the world is all documented, pinpointing its wicked authors, for everybody to clearly see, except sadly many (still) fellow Filipinos who refuse to see, and worst, defend or cover up its perpetrators. How truly real indeed Satan blinds people to the truth. (Please read 2 Corinthians 4:4, GNT). So hopelessly enamored these countrymen with lies, that God has irrevocably sent them the coup de grace: a strong delusion to believe a lie that will send them to eternal damnation. Certainly Satan now is in a state of bliss as he awaits his equally horrible subjects to expand his Kingdom (I kid not, please read 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, KJV).
But let me go back to my main subject before Satan undeservedly lay claim more space to a moral story: our Shanghai frolic. Why Shanghai, of the many countries we could go to? Like Vietnam in my student days, Shanghai left an indelible mystique in my heart
since my childhood days. When l was about 3 to 5 years old, l remember displaying frequent and difficult bouts of tantrum (that obviously presaged my adulthood quick temper), prompting my wise and loving mother to come up with a ready formula to pacify my child frequent outburst. She would hum a hymn with an accompanying jerking of her head and neck, left to right and right to left, and her hymn had only one word lyric, “Shanghai, Shanghai, Shanghai,” a word she continuously uttered in clockwork cadence with her head jerking. This jerking, this strange hymn, this monotonous one word lyric perplexed and amused me no end and kept me staring my mother do her virtuous stageplay and led me to stop my violent crying. My mother’s showmanship encore either quieted my subsequent outbursts or put me to sleep.
Later in my life, l came to know that my mother’s hymn was a typical Chinese tone and Shanghai was an old Chinese city, and, hence, no wonder l heard it mentioned from time to time among the old people in our place in my boyhood times. By this time my mother hymn of Shanghai was already deeply embedded in my mind, in the same way the velvety and soulful music of Elvis Presley that first soothed my ears in my elementary school years, overwhelms my psyche. As Shanghai persisted to mystify me, one time l had to ask one office mate of Chinese descent, Ronald Ong, about Shanghai and he said quickly, without hesitation, “it’s an old, beautiful, lighted and progressive city.”
So off my wife and l took a decisive trip to Shanghai amidst other more tempting countries my wife more preferred to visit. But as l asserted in my previous write up (Sojourn In San Francisco (USA, November, 2023), Episode lll — Its Provoked Imperative Lessons On Wives, Divorce, And Thieves, September 12, 2025), my wife keeps close to her faith in God’s wisdom that wives must submit to their husbands in everything (Ephesians 5:22, Ephesians 5:24). I took our Shanghai trip as a fact check of a mother-induced mystique that kept captive for a very long time my imagination.
Shanghai is a stupendous beauty to behold. Its rural areas flashed flawlessly clean, quiet environment and absolutely quieting and long-life nourishing aura, it’s urban areas flaunt staggering progress. But l have decided to defer to later episodes of our Shanghai experience the graphic accounts of these places.
Meanwhile, l wish to jump to our 4th day, September 19, of our tour to a Genting so designated building at Kangqiao Street, Shanghai, that houses China’s so-called Eastern Medicine, more particularly its Beijing Tong Reng Tang (BTRT), Beijing government sponsored or regulated herbal (plants based) products that purveys a vast range of the renowned traditional Chinese medicine(TCM). The potency and efficacy of Chinese traditional (herbal) medicines is a long established fact and truth since China’s ancient times and continues up to the present. And what is more, the potency and efficacy of Chinese medicine inheres—as generally acknowledged—a less riskier side effects. Herbal medicines, being “generally gentler,” are “generally considered safer than synthetic medications.” Modern medicines, for some selfish reasons, may dispute this, but herbal remedies proceed from ancient concept and concoctions, and persist to this day, gaining constantly more and more adherents over the centuries, and recording appalling successes that include stopping temporarily or permanently the death march of patients whom modern medicines have let down. In much the same way biblical people from Noah’s time led long and healthy lives out of elixirs concocted from nature plants and substances. I personally know of medical cases of some people that Western doctors cannot successfully avert the diagnosis of death march for their patients. But after availing themselves of Eastern medicine as a desperate measure, whether in Singapore or in China or somewhere else, they began to live and kick for more years.
In this Genting building, the nature doctors are not called “Doctors” but “Professors.” The professor assigned to me and my wife took some time to diagnose us to determine where lies the ultimate source or sources of our health infirmities. l never told the professor that l have a healthy heart and stable blood pressure because of the competent management of my Western doctor in Manila, just to trap him. But he saw a serious ailment somewhere else after palming conscientiously my left hand nerves and examining my tongue. His findings? My blood has become dangerously sticky and toxins heavily laden because now my kidney has been rendered weak and my liver unduly fatty and thus hardly do their functions any longer. I did not ask him anymore questions which l felt would only constitute leading questions that were not of any help.
Deep inside me, l began to fault the no less than 10 synthetic medicines l take daily for many, many years now. I did not tell him anymore my very frequent bouts with sleep-disturbing peeing and numbness of my feet and hands, and at times shortness of breath at night to patronize him with his findings of very sticky blood that hampers its free circulation to radiate thereby adverse effects the western medical world knows very well.
I had the unusual urge to continue consulting with and believing my “Professor Sunat” from Tibet, for he sounded logical and sensible. Maybe God was giving me this urge to make me and my wife healthy. God uses medium, either a person or a thing of nature, to cure one’s ailment (To confirm, please read Isaiah 38:21; 2 Kings 20:7). As l stated in my previous write up (Vietnam Travel Anecdote Episode IV (The Final Episode), July 7, 2025), God is the ultimate healer. Doctors and medicines are just His instruments to heal. I thought to myself, my “Professor’s” prescribed herbal medicines for me and my wife maybe God’s medium to heal us. We pray for this. My “Professor’s” plant medicines are to be taken daily, morning and bedtime, for 6 months. These nature’s medicines prescribed to us cost us a fortune in the total combined amount of, as the receipts handed to us showed—hold your breath—33,200 Yuan, or approximately equivalent to P265,000 of Philippine currency. I told my wife immediately thereafter to forget our plans for further foreign tour, and just be consoled by my “Professor’s” strong guarantee that after a month of religiously taking his Beijing medication, the strength and health in our youth will start coming back to us. If true, a retrieved good health is definitely worth more than any foreign travel, or money, for that matter. I smilingly told the “Professor,” “if after 6 months, we don’t feel any improvement in our health, l will come back here, and l will look for the highest tree in this place, and hang you there.” He answered back quick, with strong and serious conviction and felt sincerity, “you will get back your youthful health.” God permitting, of course.
I will give herbal medicine it’s due and chance to work on me, after all l have given all my life synthetic medicines of Western Doctors do its thing on me despite all its universally conceded collateral damaging effects around and outside the targeted object of healing.
It is always wise to invest in or even gamble your money for your health. Our tour companion, Frayda Reyes, approving what we did, fired her salvo of wisdom, “Health is wealth!” Indeed a statement no genius can impugn!
