In the land of China, the development of traditional Chinese medicine is like a thick history book, from the ancient Shennong and Huatuo periods all the way to 1900, during which time it has undergone countless changes. In ancient times, medicine was limited by the times, and there were no Chinese medicine schools to study as there are today. At that time, the apprentices were more likely to be in the clinic, learning from the teacher on the spot, which is what we call TCM practitioners. 
Why are more and more people choosing to learn Chinese medicine from a teacher? There are actually pros and cons to learning Chinese medicine from a teacher. In the era of scarcity of doctors, the country urgently needs a large number of medical talents. If you rely only on the teacher-teacher method, a teacher who only teaches one student obviously cannot meet the huge demand for physicians. However, the teaching method of large classrooms can produce a large number of medical personnel in a short period of time. But the disadvantages of this kind of education are also obvious, and many students who have studied in medical schools for 5 or even 8 years do not even go to see a doctor after leaving the school.
With the changes of the times, the people's demand for medical care has also changed, from treatment to disease prevention and health preservation. This makes the status of TCM more and more important. In response to this change, the state introduced the mentorship policy in 1998, which undoubtedly shows that the state attaches great importance to the development of mentorship. According to statistics, there are nearly a million people in the country who are eager to learn from teachers, but there are also some illegal institutions that want to profit from it. In order to regulate this phenomenon, the new mentorship policy provides a legal way for unlicensed people to practice medicine, and at the same time discourages those who are half-baked from pursuing medical careers. For those who really want to study medicine, they only need to go through 5 years of study with a teacher, pass the teacher's examination, and obtain a medical practitioner's certificate, and then they can open a TCM clinic. 
Why do people choose to study TCM? On the one hand, there is a growing demand for medical care. On the other hand, learning from veteran physicians can really master the core technology. The one-on-one teaching method and the on-the-spot observation of how the physician diagnoses the patient** will undoubtedly allow people to learn more practical experience. With this experience, the path to medicine will be more stable.