Foe Tai Ling remembers the day she rushed out of a consulting room at the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital on hearing screams and cries from the next room.

When she peered inside, she saw Dr Bai Yulan treating a 9-year-old boy with acupuncture needles. The boy was wailing with pain and his father, who could not bear to watch, was standing outside in the corridor.

However, the father knew his son's pain would be worth it. He told Ling, an Indonesian intern in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), that his child's hearing had improved because of it and that if she wanted to learn acupuncture, she should apprentice herself to Bai.

Dr Jose Luis Coba Carrion (2nd from left) of Ecuador observes Dr Bai Yulan (front) giving a patient acupuncture. [Jiang Dong/ China Daily]

Since the 1990s, the number of foreigners coming to China to study TCM has increased dramatically, according to China Care Net of TCM. In the 1950s, there were only 10 foreign students a year. Between 2000 and 2005, there were 200 students annually. The figure doubled in 2006.

Gong Jiapei, an instructor in the international school at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM), says the number of foreigners specializing in acupuncture has grown since the mid-1990s. At the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital, an average of 30 foreign students enroll each year as acupuncture interns, many from Asian countries.

Dr Bai, former head of the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital's acupuncture department, is one of Beijing's most renowned practitioners and specializes in treating complicated musculoskeletal, neurological, digestive and respiratory conditions.

As Ling learned, however, it is not easy to get a job with a master. "One day I plucked up the courage and asked Dr Bai if she needed an assistant, even though she already had plenty of them. She didn't say anything - she just turned her back on me," Ling recalls.

But Ling didn't give up, she often turned up at Bai's consulting room to watch her treat patients. Several weeks later, she asked again. "This time, her silence was a sign of consent," Ling says in fluent Mandarin.

Unlike Ling, Dr Jose Luis Coba Carrion of Ecuador did some research before asking to study TCM under Bai. He noticed that Bai's schedule was always full in the morning, so he came at noon when she was about to take a lunch break.

Bai looked so formidable that Coba Carrion hardly knew what to say, even though he had practiced it many times.

"I just said that I came from a country far away and that I wanted to study acupuncture to help the Ecuadorian people and therefore needed a really good teacher," Coba Carrion recalls. He was accepted.

Bai has taught some 6,460 foreigners from 30 countries over the past 30 years, including some whose visits lasted less than a year.

"For me, the standard for selecting students is very simple," says 66-year-old Bai. "If students are solidly grounded in both TCM and Western medicine, and more importantly, are able to bear hardship and have the initiative to study, I am willing to teach them, no matter where he or she comes from."