Up through the early 1970s, the “Barefoot Doctor” initiative in China brought primary care to rural China through a cadre of village health workers affectionately referred to as the “Barefoot Doctors.” Julie Zhu was one of them. She was sent to the countryside from Beijing after high school and worked under the most famous Barefoot Doctor in China, Lee Sun, who was praised by Mao and whose stories were in the official newspapers and school text books. In her talk, Julie discussed poverty, medical care, as well as her experiences living in the countryside under Mao, using her own photo archive. The audience had the opportunity to travel back in time and reflect on China’s primary care system from a historical perspective.
