With his outlandish claims of being able to cure the sick, it is little wonder Hongchi Xiao attracted a devoted band of desperately ill people to his ‘slapping’ workshops.
The 61-year-old’s cheerful demeanour and soft voice gave the impression of a humble do-gooder.
The Chinese healer’s motivation, he said, was to rid the world of its maladies through his brand of holistic treatments, virtually unheard-of in the West, known as paida lajin – ‘slapping and stretching’ in English.
No medical emergency or condition was apparently too big for Xiao, or those who learnt how to perform paida lajin.
He claimed to have cured a 70-year-old man of his paralysis shortly after discovering how to perform acupuncture.
He said his own mother – an actual doctor of Western medicine – was able to give up her high blood pressure tablets after being performed on by Xiao, a man with no medical qualifications.
Hongchi Xiao, during a visit to South Africa, sits cross-legged as he gives an interview about the merits of paida lajin
Many medical practitioners have criticised the practice, saying that it causes bruises and results in broken blood vessels leading to horrific injuries such as those pictured above
Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, who had diabetes, ended up dead from the consequences of Xaio’s unorthodox methods
Xiao, 61, appearing in one of many videos on his Pailala Institute website in which he explains how to help someone suffering a heart attack by slapping
And his impact was apparently keenly felt in Tibet, where he treated more than 1,600 locals in a month, claiming ’90 per cent of patients benefited from my treatment.’
There were plenty of others, according to Xiao.
Patients with diabetes, Parkinson’s and kidney failure all saw their conditions improve, specifically due to paida lajin, he said.
Somewhat miraculously, a heart attack victim was brought back to life through Xiao’s completely unregulated form of salvation.
‘We just slapped him,’ Xiao claimed. ‘In a few minutes, people come back.’
These stories, and many others besides, are sure to raise an eyebrow or two.
Mrs Carr-Gomm (pictured) – a follower of Xiao’s who wanted to get rid of her type 1 diabetes – fell gravely ill over the course of the October 2016 workshop
Xiao, originally from Beijing but more recently of California, talks about the ‘poison’ of modern medicine at his talks
Xiao, at a workshop in 2015, is pictured performing his paida lajin slapping and stretching method on a willing participant
Viewers are told: ‘When you encounter this heart attack don’t panic. There is a very simple thing. You can do it in one minute, you can save many lives.’
Xiao said patients with diabetes, Parkinson’s and kidney failure all saw their conditions improve, specifically due to paida lajin
Yet Xiao had plenty of fans around the world, desperate enough to give paida lajin a go. He referred to them as his ‘disciples’ – a nod to the messianic opinion he had of himself.
Tragically, among those drawn to him was diabetic grandmother Danielle Carr-Gomm.
The 71-year-old, from Lewes in East Sussex, sought out alternative therapy due to her fear of needles.
She travelled to Bulgaria for one of Xiao’s workshops, but became seriously unwell after she stopped taking her insulin, which she ordinarily had to inject every day to keep her blood sugar levels stable.
She survived only when her medication was eventually administered.
But the near-death experience did nothing to dampen Mrs Carr-Gomm’s enthusiasm for Xaio’s unorthodox methods.
‘You are definitely a messenger sent by God,’ this ‘disciple’ wrote about Xiao afterwards.
And undeterred, she attended a second slapping workshop in Melksham, Wiltshire, in 2016, in a bid to be ‘cured’ of her diabetes. The decision had fatal consequences.
Witnesses said Xiao praised Mrs Carr-Gomm for stopping her medication, and slapped her as part of her treatment.
He calmly explained her feeling unwell was due to toxins leaving the body.
In reality, she would soon be dead. But it would take until today – nearly eight years later – for Xaio to be convicted of her manslaughter.
Yet it was not his first brush with the law.
A sketch by court artist Elizabeth Cook of defendant Xiao, flanked by a security guard, during his trial in Winchester
An image on Xiao’s Facebook page of bruises caused to the forearm of a person engaging in the paida lajin method
A significant purple bruise, appearing as though made with the palm of a hand, appears on a paida lajin participant’s tummy
A person covered in red marks across the backs of their legs after taking part in paida lajin
A person shows off their injuries after a slap therapy session, with a huge black mark seen on the right side of their lower back
Xiao was born in China in February 1963, as Chairman Mao geared up to begin the cultural revolution which resulted in a decade of social and political turmoil.
By his mid-20s, Xiao had a business qualification and was working in two of the most famous banking districts on either side of the globe, in New York and in Hong Kong.
But on reaching 40, Xiao ‘withdrew from the financial world and began reading, writing and roaming around’.
Boosted by the apparent success of his novel called Sex and Stocks, which he later claimed became a ‘best-seller’, Xiao decided to write his next book about Chinese medicine – an area about which he knew virtually nothing.
Xiao embarked on a period of travelling across Asia, seemingly bumping into people who, by chance, were able to teach him about Chinese medicine.
He said he was able to heal 100 people a day in Tibet through acupuncture, despite only learning it a month earlier.
Xiao subsequently opened a clinic in Beijing, where he first started spreading the word of paida lajin among his patients.
Fast forward two decades, and empowered by an endless stream of anecdotes apparently confirming the authenticity of his craft, Xiao had become a major name in the world of holistic treatments.
He opened the Pailala Institute in California, espousing the benefits of ‘healing yourself naturally’, including claims that a woman successfully got rid of a breast tumour by slapping herself on the affected area.
His fame gave him a platform to further discredit Western medicine as ‘evil’, and ‘like pesticides sprayed on crops – effective, but also harmful’.
He claimed paida lajin was ‘effective against most diseases known today, including various chronic, acute, infectious and difficult diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s’.
And he said the method was ‘safe, with no toxic side effects’, and that ‘you can save millions of people. It’s just a slap – very easy.’
Those who practised it could become ‘slimmer and better-looking and even increase (their) sex drive’.
Videos on the Pailala website and Xiao’s YouTube channel demonstrated the techniques used to help in that department.
In one, a grinning Xiao could be seen making diagonal movements with a flattened palm against his groin.
Xiao performs a slapping motion on his arm in one of several videos uploaded to his organisation’s website
Xiao said slapping can have a significant positive impact on a participant’s sex life
‘All this energy here will become much stronger, he said.
‘It will go to the right destination – you will see what I mean.’
In another, he rolled up his sleeve and slapped his arm until it quickly reddened as he talked through how to help someone suffering a heart attack.
‘When you encounter this heart attack, don’t panic,’ he said, sagely.
‘There is a very simple thing. You can do it in one minute, you can save many lives.’
He even told a story of how a young girl was congratulated by ambulance staff after slapping her grandmother ‘back to life’ when she had a heart attack.
His trial at Winchester Crown Court this month heard Xiao claim there were three stages to the healing process, and that illnesses like Mrs Carr-Gomm’s was ‘darkness before dawn breaks’.
Pain, vomiting, insomnia, giddiness and loud crying – all experienced by his tragic follower – were completely to be expected, he said.
All the person had to do was unblock the ‘meridians’ of the body – channels which, according to Chinese philosophy, carry energy – by slapping.
Mrs Carr-Gomm’s severely deteriorating condition should have been a warning to Xiao – for, tragically, he had been in a similar situation only months earlier.
He was convicted at a court in Australia in 2019 of manslaughter by gross negligence for breaching the duty of care he owed a diabetic six-year-old boy at one of his paida lujin workshops in Sydney in 2015.
Xaio had told the boy’s parents to stop giving him insulin before embarking on a programme of slapping and stretching.
The judge said Xiao ‘clearly expressed to people a disdain for Western medicine, implicit in it is a view of the superiority of traditional Chinese medicine’.
He was jailed for a minimum of seven-and-a-half years, meaning he would not be eligible for parole until October this year.
He was only able to go on trial in Winchester after being extradited to the UK to face justice.
Xiao maintained his innocence, pleading not guilty to gross negligence manslaughter by claiming he did not have a duty of care over Mrs Carr-Gomm, to whom he had made ‘absolutely clear’ he was not medically trained.
The jurors, however, were not taken in by his story, and he was convicted.
Xiao often described paida lajin as a ‘way of life’. A significant portion of the rest of his will now likely be spent in a prison cell.
