Dr Xiaolan Zhao was born and raised in Kunming, in Yunnan province, south-west China. Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, she attended medical school, studying Western medicine. After graduation in 1977, she went to work as an abdominal surgeon at a hospital where the focus was on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). She was soon exposed to the various forms of TCM, and in particular the use of herbs. It was an eye-opener for her to see that as many as 80 percent of patients were suffering from chronic illnesses, which generally responded more effectively to Chinese herbal remedies than to Western medicine. After a little over a year working, she went back to medical school and completed a degree in TCM. Subsequently, she returned to the hospital where she had started out, combining her training in Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. She worked there for eight years before coming to Canada in 1988.

Xiaolan came to Canada initially on a scholarship to do medical research at Queen’s University. After seeing the great interest that was developing in Canada for alternative medical treatments, and in particular Chinese medicine, she decided to go back to practising TCM. She opened her own clinic, which today has thousands of patients. Her patients are as ethnically diverse and demographically varied as the population of Toronto, although the great majority are women.