Professor Chung Chun Chiu is an Emeritus Professor and former Associate Dean of the School of Chinese Medicine at Hong Kong Baptist University, and a Distinguished Professor at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. He is also the founding director of the Compendium of Materia Medica, the founder of the Materia Medica Reading Club, and a registered Chinese medicine practitioner in Hong Kong.
Professor Zhao received his bachelor’s degree from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine in 1982, his master’s degree from China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in 1985, and his Ph.D. degree from Tokyo Pharmaceutical University in 1992. He is currently a member of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission, the United States Pharmacopoeia Commission, the International Advisory Committee of the Hong Kong Chinese Materia Medica Standards, and a Senior Chinese Medicine Consultant to the Department of Health, Hong Kong.
Professor Zhao has over 40 years of experience in the field of herbal medicine, with research footprints covering more than 30 provinces in China and more than 40 countries on seven continents. His outstanding contribution led him to win the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 1991. In 2011, his book “Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants” won the China National Book Outstanding Publication Award and was named one of the “Top 10 Books of 2023” by Joint Publishing Co., Ltd. In addition, his illustration masterpiece “Identification of Chinese Medicines” has been translated into ten languages, including English, Russian, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Vietnamese, and has been widely published worldwide. His “200 Lectures on Health and Wisdom of the Compendium of Materia Medica”, which was broadcast on the Himalayan platform, has also attracted widespread attention internationally.
Professor Chiu has been teaching at Hong Kong Baptist University since 1999 and pioneered the Department of Chinese Materia Medica in Hong Kong. He is committed to the promotion of TCM culture and has disseminated TCM knowledge to the public through numerous lectures, programs and books. He also conformed to the trend of the times, opened the WeChat public account “Zhongzhen Shuo Compendium of Materia Medica”, and pioneered a talk show for Chinese medicine experts to further promote the popularization and internationalization of Chinese medicine.
Professor Zhao has also participated in the production of several large-scale documentaries, such as “Dao Materia Medica” and “Materia Medica”, and has broadcast the program “Zhongzhen Says Materia Medica” in the United States with English subtitles. Since 2010, his other important book, The Illustrated Dictionary of the Identification of Chinese Materia Medica, has been translated into many languages, including Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, English, Japanese, Korean, German, Russian, Vietnamese and Portuguese, and has been published in many countries. These achievements fully demonstrate Professor Zhao’s unremitting efforts to internationalize Chinese medicine and his commitment to re-understanding the value and wisdom of Chinese medicine around the world.