In recent decades, rehabilitation medicine has been developing rapidly in China and has become increasingly important to society. Foreign studies have reported that active rehabilitation treatment for a serious disabling disease such as stroke (cerebrovascular accident) can enable 90% of patients to regain the ability to walk and take care of themselves, and 30% of them can resume some light work. In contrast, those who did not undergo rehabilitation had a corresponding recovery rate of only 60% and 5% in both of these areas. In terms of morbidity and mortality, the rehabilitation group was also 12% lower than the no-rehabilitation group. Therefore, rehabilitation is important for stroke patients. However, stroke patients with hemiplegia often take a wrong turn or are misguided in their treatment. This is caused by the treatment. So, what misconceptions should patients and their families avoid? Myth 1: Patients have already been treated with medication, so as long as they are well rested and well nourished, they can gradually recover and do not need rehabilitation. The word “rehabilitation” is said to have first appeared in the Old Book of Tang around 900 A.D. In the book, it is written that “Wu Zetian recovered from her illness”, but in fact, Wu Zetian was not disabled after her illness, but recovered completely from her illness. The WHO Expert Committee on Medical Rehabilitation defines rehabilitation as “the application of a variety of useful measures to alleviate the effects of disability and to enable persons with disabilities to social reintegration.” From this definition, we can see that rehabilitation is fundamentally different from drug therapy. The purpose of rehabilitation is not to cure the disease, but to restore the function of the patient or person with a disability. In other words, if the patient can recover 100% after the disease, there is no problem of rehabilitation. Only if the patient does not recover 100% after the disease, such as a stroke that leaves different degrees of hemiplegia, there is a problem of rehabilitation. The method of rehabilitation is not drugs and surgery, but various methods of functional recovery training represented by movement therapy. It is because the treatment purpose and method are different from clinical medicine that a unique medical specialty with distinctive characteristics has been formed. Our experts have also made some control observations on stroke hemiplegia, for example, the recovery rate of walking in hemiplegic patients: 89.7% in the rehabilitation group and 65.2% in the neurology-only group; the average hospital stay: 74.4 days in the rehabilitation group and 106.1 days in the neurology-only group. This shows that stroke hemiplegia is not a disease that can be gradually recovered by drugs, rest and nutrition, and that early rehabilitation is necessary to achieve maximum functional recovery. Myth 2: Rehabilitation for stroke hemiplegia is acupuncture and massage. Rehabilitation is a systemic project that includes: (1) Movement therapy: It is used to restore the motor function of hemiplegic patients, mainly one-to-one (i.e., one rehabilitation therapist to one patient) manual therapy. The treatment method is based on the principle of central neurodevelopment, restoring the patient’s motor and sensory functions and inhibiting abnormal movements and reflexes through easy-to-use and facilitation techniques. It is also combined with the use of some exercise equipment to promote the patient’s motor ability. (2) Occupational therapy: It is a rehabilitation treatment targeting upper limb motor ability, coordination and fine hand activities, with the aim of restoring the patient’s ability to perform activities of daily living. (3) Physiotherapy: such as functional electrical stimulation, biofeedback therapy and corresponding physical therapy to improve the muscular and circulatory problems of the hemiplegic limbs. (4) Speech therapy: Patients with concomitant speech dysfunction are treated to improve the patients’ verbal communication ability. (5) Psychotherapy: Patients with stroke hemiplegia are often accompanied by depression and anxiety and need to be given appropriate psychological intervention. (6) Rehabilitation engineering: For hemiplegic limbs, appropriate orthopedic braces can be configured to stop limb deformation and assist functional activities. (7) Rehabilitation care: functional position placement and passive activities of the limbs in the early stage of patient onset or bed-rest period, prevention of respiratory, urinary and gastrointestinal complications, etc. According to the theory of Chinese medicine, hemiplegia belongs to “loss of tendon support and blockage of meridians”, so acupuncture and massage treatment can open the meridians. In the rehabilitation of hemiplegia in stroke, acupuncture and massage do play an important role and make the rehabilitation treatment more Chinese. However, acupuncture and massage cannot replace rehabilitation therapy. Myth 3: The more care and support the family provides to the patient, the faster the patient’s recovery. In 2003, Jiang Zhongli and Li Jianan et al. in China reported a very interesting observation that family size became a hindering factor in the recovery of patients’ ability to perform daily living. In families with a large population, patients recovered poorly in their ability to perform daily living, and conversely, in families with a smaller population, patients recovered better in their ability to perform daily living. This phenomenon indicates that the awareness of “raising children for old age” is deeply rooted in our population. Due to the large number of family members, children compete for filial piety, fearing to get a bad reputation as an unfilial son. Therefore, although the patients also received rehabilitation treatment during hospitalization, they did not have a strong sense of rehabilitation in daily life activities, and the recovery of motor function and self-care ability of the hemiplegic limbs was poor. In contrast, in families with small number of patients, patients can only do many things by themselves, and their awareness of self-care is quite strong, and the recovery of motor function and daily living activities of hemiplegic limbs is higher. Therefore, family members of the patient should establish the awareness of rehabilitation and actively cooperate with the medical staff to provide rehabilitation treatment to the patient. Myth 4: Rehabilitation therapy is not effective in the post-stroke period. Rehabilitation treatment for stroke hemiplegia should be started as early as possible, usually about a week after the onset of the disease. The optimal rehabilitation period is 3 months after the onset of the disease. There is also some effect on patients who undergo rehabilitation more than 3 months later (post-stroke phase), and the key is the correct approach. Foreign reports indicate that there is no end to the recovery process of brain injury, only a gradual slowing of the recovery process. Recovery of motor function can last up to 1 or 2 years after the injury, and some studies have even confirmed that it can last more than 5 years after the formation of fixed damage. In China, there is also a report that a group of patients with an average duration of 11 months of recovery and sequelae, who had never received rehabilitation guidance and were plagued by “disuse syndrome” and “misuse syndrome”, were able to “correct” their motor function through rehabilitation therapy. The patients who have never received rehabilitation guidance are suffering from “disuse syndrome” and “misuse syndrome”, and have partially recovered their motor functions through rehabilitation. In China, due to the development of rehabilitation medicine in different regions and medical costs, many stroke patients with hemiplegia have not received rehabilitation treatment, but they still have “rehabilitation potential”, and rehabilitation treatment can improve their motor function and daily living activities. Happily, with the development of rehabilitation medicine in China, community-based rehabilitation has also gained the attention of the whole society. The Community Rehabilitation Implementation Plan has been incorporated into the “Eighth Five-Year Plan for the Disabled in China” and is being gradually implemented. In the future, many patients can continue to receive rehabilitation treatment in the community after being discharged from the hospital.