UC Irvine

This dissertation explores the intersections of Chinese medicine, diasporic experience, and performance in contemporary U.S. society. Through a multidisciplinary approach combining drama and theatre studies, medical anthropology, and Asian American studies, Chengyuan Huang examines how Chinese medicine operates as a performative medium of healing, cultural negotiation, and subject formation. The study is organized into three chapters.Chapter 1 analyzes the work of Chinese American artist Hung Liu, focusing on her use of Chinese medicine body maps to explore themes of displacement and diasporic identity. Liu’s artworks are read as embodied contemplations that challenge conventional narratives of immigrant integration and reimagine the body politic through Chinese medical philosophy. Chapter 2 investigates the lived realities of Chinese medicine practitioners in Southern California, using ethnographic methods and a diagnostic framework inspired by Chinese medicine. It identifies patterns of blockage—legibility issues, institutional constraints, social pressures, and personal struggles—that practitioners navigate in their daily work, revealing the dynamic interplay between healing, cultural integration, and professional survival. Chapter 3 offers an autoethnographic account of the author’s own engagement with Chinese medicine, presented as a dramatic play. This creative exploration examines the transformative potential of Chinese medicine in disorganizing the body and reshaping personal and cosmological understandings of health, healing, and embodiment. By integrating theoretical frameworks such as performativity, somaesthetics, and illiberal humanism, the dissertation challenges dominant paradigms of wellness and healing, proposing Chinese medicine as a site of adaptive practices and aesthetic inquiry. It invites readers to rethink health as an ongoing, relational performance shaped by cultural, historical, and embodied contexts.