of clinical practice in major tertiary hospitals in China
About Zhen Yi
A physician’s discipline.A practitioner’s path.
Zhen Yi, born Fu Yishan, is a physician, practitioner, author, teacher, poet, and lyricist whose work crosses professional discipline, inner cultivation, dialogue, and art.
MedicinePracticeBooksDialoguePoetry
A life of disciplined work
He holds a doctorate in surgery and previously served as an Associate Chief Physician in orthopaedics and spine surgery at Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital. He also served as an associate professor and supervisor of master’s students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
After eighteen years of clinical work in major tertiary hospitals in China, he left his institutional hospital position in 2014 and founded a physician-group spine surgery team.
His clinical record includes more than 3,000 spinal operations as lead surgeon, several thousand orthopaedic trauma procedures, and more than ten limb replantation procedures.
Professional work
Medicine, teaching, and research.
including work published in Spine and leading Chinese medical journals
with contributions to professional medical publications
three research projects, two national invention patents, and several utility model patents
A second line of experience
A lifelong engagement with practice.
Zhen Yi grew up in a Zhejiang family with a tradition of Chinese medicine. He describes studying and practising Chinese medicine, Daoist traditions, and Buddhist teachings from childhood.
At around forty, he describes a profound realization of what he calls “the fundamental nature of life.” This is his personal account within a practice tradition—not a medical or scientific conclusion.
Drawing on a decade of practice and reflection, he developed a structured approach to inner cultivation and shared it with a community of nearly one thousand members.
Ways to know the work
Read the ideas. Hear the questions. Meet the person.
Books offer structure, conversations bring the teaching into daily choices, and poetry and music reveal another human register. Together they show how thought, practice, and a life relate.
Two books, now across five language editions, move from foundational questions toward a staged Buddhist path.
Extended conversations with students bring large ideas into mistakes, ambition, change, responsibility, and ordinary life.
Poems and lyrics preserve love, longing, sorrow, beauty, seeking, and insight in a different register.
A structured approach, a long learning community, and the Hua Hin setting connect written understanding with lived practice.
Another register
Poetry and song keep the human being visible.
The poetry collected in REBIRTH ranges from love and longing to seeking and awakening. In 2020, Zhen Yi received a Silver Award in the “Tsangyang Gyatso Fanyinhai” International Competition for Poets, Poetry, Songs, and Lyrics. Under his birth name, Fu Yishan, he also wrote the lyrics for the original music album 《情劫》.
A note on language
Why Zhen Yi—and when to use Shifu.
Zhen Yi is the name on his English books. In Chinese, students may address him as Shifu (師父), a relationship-based term of respect for a teacher and guide within a living practice tradition.
“Master” can be a possible translation in specific contexts, but it can sound like a grand title or a claim of rank in English. “Mentor” is warmer and more familiar, but narrower than the Chinese relationship. For English readers, Zhen Yi remains the clearest and most consistent form.