Herbs have been used to cure illnesses in China long before westernization spread all over the globe. A lot of written accounts were made to preserve the old ways of creating and administering medicine in the country. Over the years, some of these books got lost. Now, some traditional medicine books have been recovered overseas and returned to China.

National funding has helped authorities to recover many ancient books containing information about traditional Chinese medicine. During the 20 years of exploration in different nations such as Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and France, historians and medical specialists were able to locate important accounts from repositories and libraries. These national treasures were photocopied to provide access to doctors, researchers, and the public.

The Zhonghua Book Company recovered a total of 427 books,  and 160 of them were totally unavailable in China until now. A sum of 403 volumes cover manuscripts from Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. Handwritten notes created during the Qing dynasty and those reproduced in Korea and Japan were also retrieved. The people behind this initiative consider these as a significant way of "passing on the ancient knowledge of Chinese medicine."

The Editor-in-Chief of the Zhonghua Book Company, Zheng Jinsheng, said that "these books were brought overseas in ancient time, and then there were none of them in China. This set of books is photocopies of these lost books. It's a task we've worked on since the 1990s. Now, this is the result of our labor." Zheng added that "many books dating back to the Song dynasty recorded prescriptions to cure diseases. So they are of very practical use for our clinic."

The recovered traditional Chinese medicine books provide further knowledge about the practice that was founded over 2,500 years ago. Traditional Chinese medicine involves the use of herbs, massage, acupuncture, dietary therapy, and exercise to address illnesses.