Zhang Qian

Li Zhihua, a physician practicing in rural Henan province during the Mao era, gains great fame when his inexpensive herbal remedy cures a plague of poliomyelitis. But his medical skills, cannot protect his family from the political chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Nor are they enough to treat the flood of impoverished patients at his doorstep.

This Chinese period drama series follows the fortunes of a prominent merchant family engaged in Traditional Chinese Medicine during the waning years of the Ching dynasty. The affairs of this family of doctors/pharmacists (which in those days were one and the same) are intimately linked with social upheavals of the time such as the encroachment of Christian missionaries and foreign imperialism as well as conflicts that inevitably emerge in a large upper class family. Comparable in scope and production value to such recent titles as "Downton Abbey", the lives and character of both masters and servants intertwine in plot lines that spans more than a generation.