53-year-old Diarra Boubacar was welcomed by a hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan, as a specially (invite) expert.
Boubacar was born in the African country of Mali, whose people found difficult to get affordable healthcare. This was Boubacar continued the family tradition of training to be a doctor. In 1984, he joined a government-sponsored program to study in China. In his freshman year, Boubacar (earn) a grade as low as 40%. The frustrated man was not defeated by hardship of learning the ancient Chinese language to read traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) (classic), and he was gradually absorbed in TCM.
However, the greatest challenge he faced was to convince people that even though he was a foreigner, he could still treat them (effective) with TCM. Fortunately, his fluency in Chinese got improved and it helped. In 1997, he became the first foreigner (receive) a doctoral degree in acupuncture(针灸) from Chengdu University of TCM.
Besides his work, Boubacar has been helping patients in (distance) villages in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. Due to his contributions in the community, where he has also been helping train village doctors in TCM, today Boubacar is known "China's barefoot doctor" and the "African Norman Bethune".
