Trinh Vinh Khiem

Trinh Vinh Khiem was born in 1924 in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, and received a basic education at the village schoolhouse.  Around the age of 12, he began to apprentice with his father, a "medicine master."  By the age of 17, when his father died, Khiem had mastered most of his father's knowledge.  He was the only one out of all his siblings to learn his father's medicines.

However, Khiem's youth coincided with the French colonization period and his attention was captured by the automobiles the French brought.  Setting aside the medicine practice, he became first a driver, then an owner of a trucking business.  When he was a business man, he only practiced medicine when people who knew he was a medicine master sought his aid.

When the communists gained control in 1975, they confiscated Khiem's trucks and he lost his business.  He opened a coffee shop/restaurant in his home, but the government declared it a "cooperative," which offered officials a justification for collecting his earnings "from morning until evening each day."  Trinh Vinh Khiem finally closed the coffee shop, and only from 1979 on, did the master practice medicine solely and more fully.

At the time of the filming in 1997, the master was treating up to five patients a day.  He turns away many because doctors or other masters can treat their illnesses or because they are beyond recovery.  He usually does not seek payment from his patients.  Treating those in need even if they cannot pay is a significant part of the folk medicine tradition.  This is a very important aspect of the practice for the master who takes pride in healing people who otherwise would have died or suffered without his help.  His wish simply is that his medicines may continue to heal people.