医生

医生 (yīshēng) is the standard Chinese word for 'doctor' — a medical physician of any specialty. The literal reading is 'medicine person / medicine-born,' and like 老师 (teacher), it's used both as a job title and as direct address: you say 医生 or 李医生 (Dr. Li) to your doctor's face, never the Western 'Mr./Dr. + surname' pattern alone. Two points for English speakers: first, 医生 covers MDs only — not PhDs. A 'Doctor of Philosophy' is 博士 (bóshì), a completely different word. Second, in northern Chinese speech and traditional Chinese medicine clinics, 大夫 (dàifu) is interchangeable with 医生, though 医生 dominates in writing and southern speech.

Note: 医生 is also a term of address — you call your doctor '医生' or '李医生' (Dr. Li) directly. Hospitals and Chinese-medicine contexts sometimes use 大夫 (dàifu) instead, especially in northern China.

Memory hook: 医 (medicine) + 生 (a person) = a medicine person = doctor.

医生 appears in 2 podcast episodes at natural native speed, with full Chinese script, pinyin, and line-by-line English translation.