Kezhuang Zhao picks apples from a tree in the yard of his Santa Fe home. Zhao, an avid gardener and well known practitioner of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, died July 13.

Courtesy photo

 

A gifted student sent to the countryside as a teenager during the Cultural Revolution, he found himself serving as a teacher to farmers' children rather than a field hand.

Taking an entrance exam the year after Chinese universities fully reopened, Zhao found himself competing with 10 years' worth of graduates who, like him, had their academic dreams put on hold during Chairman Mao Zedong's decade-long social experiment — yet he still won entrance to Chengdu College of Chinese Medicine, graduating in 1983.

He was conscripted in the late 1980s to serve as a translator and guide to a group of Swedish students interested in traditional Chinese medicine — and ended up meeting practitioner Thomas Stolt, who would later pave the way for Zhao's invitation to teach in his country and who "essentially became his lifelong best friend," said daughter Faye Zhao.

"It was his first experience living outside of China," she said, adding that from Sweden, her father was invited to teach at traditional Chinese medicine school that was open at the time in Santa Fe. That ultimately led the family to emigrate to the United States.

Kezhuang Zhao, who spent 35 years in Santa Fe, where he became a well-known provider of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine services, died July 13 after suffering complications from a rare blood disorder called idiopathic thrombocytopenia. He was 70. 

Faye Zhao said her father's experiences as a young person in China were "formative" for him. As a teacher during the Cultural Revolution, he set up a classroom in an abandoned Buddhist temple. With no supplies, he taught his young students every subject, Faye Zhao said. 

"He did everything," she said. "... He taught everything, [gave] haircuts, would comb the lice out of their hair."

The students' parents were farmers and had no money, so they often paid him in rice. 

While it was hard being sent away from home, having to live with strangers and abandon his studies, Faye Zhao said her father never became embittered.

"I think he was one of those people who goes through all these, like, extreme experiences and ... some people become better for it," she said, adding the poverty he witnessed transformed him ultimately into a "more empathic person."

Kezhuang Zhao's time in Sweden was just as important, his daughter said. He was married by that time, in his mid-30s with a daughter on the way, when he was invited to teach acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine in Gothenburg, Sweden. His friend, Stolt, took Zhao under his wing, introducing him to Swedish culture and pastimes, Faye Zhao said. He sailed around the small islands, picking strawberries and foraging for mushrooms, resulting in big family meals. 

"He basically loved that all his life, and tried to go back to Sweden as much as he could," she said. 

Zhao's opportunity for the job in Santa Fe came in 1989 while he was still in Sweden, and he traveled straight to New Mexico — meaning he didn't have a chance to meet his newborn daughter, back home with his wife in China. 

"It really had to do with the American dream," Faye Zhao said. "It's true for generations of immigrants, really, that America was the place for immigrants."

Kezhuang Zhao's wife, Dr. Yan Yang, a fellow practitioner who focused on Western medicine, joined him the next year, leaving Faye Zhao behind with grandparents for the next two years.

"I came in '92, so I didn't actually meet him until I was 3," Faye Zhao said. 

Kezhuang Zhao taught and established his practice in Santa Fe for years, but it wasn't the last time the family would be separated. When Yang redid her medical residency in order to practice as a physician in the U.S., she moved with Faye Zhao to Little Rock, Ark., for four years while her husband stayed behind in Santa Fe. 

"They were doing long distance and I was actually going to high school in Arkansas," Faye Zhao said, adding her father came to visit about every two weeks. "... I just remember ... looking forward to that, like, so, so, so much. It was always the best time." 

He was a kind and mild-mannered father, never harsh.

"He was just such a protector for me," said Faye Zhao, an attorney living in Los Angeles. "He never wanted me to be in trouble. He always kind of wanted me to be happy."

Kezhuang Zhao and Yang worked side-by-side at the East Tao Herb Co. and Acupuncture Clinic, Faye Zhao said, offering complementary perspectives. 

"I think [they] always had this kind of nice Eastern-Western medicine balance," she said. "I think they had tremendous respect for each other." 

Over the years, Kezhuang Zhao's reputation in Santa Fe grew.

"I feel like anytime we went out to the grocery store or, like, a restaurant, somebody would always say hi," Faye Zhao said. "It felt like it was hard to be out and about without somebody recognizing him." 

He liked to garden, Zhao said, and during the Arkansas years enjoyed hiking or going out on lakes. But more than anything, Kezhuang Zhao loved his work, she said.

Faye Zhao said she's been hearing stories in the last couple weeks about the impact her father had on his patients at the practice, which she said her mother plans to keep open. 

"It's just like how helpful he was to several patients with cancer," she said. "... People can be hyperbolic, but [they say], 'Dr. Zhao saved my life,' or, 'He saved my child's life.' "

In an online obituary for Kezhuang Zhao, one former patient said she was rendered unable to walk by a sciatic episode last year.

"He corrected the problem in one treatment," she wrote. 

"Always calm, focused and humble, Dr. Zhao had the perfect intelligence and temperament for healing," another wrote.

His blood disorder was aggressive in the last couple years, and in 2021 put him in the hospital with a bleed that left him with nerve damage in his legs that had him using a walker, then a cane, then eventually walking unassisted but with a limp.

Still, his daughter said, he didn't retire and continued to work.

"He was 70," Faye Zhao said. "He could have retired. But ... he felt like the people here really wanted him to be here." 

In addition to his wife, daughter and son-in-law, Kezhuang Zhao is survived by his father and sister in Chengdu, China.