The Herbal Marketplace

Every neighborhood of every city in Taiwan has stores selling herbal medicine. However, in the capital city of Taipei, one neighborhood is actually composed nearly entirely of herbal medicine shops. This area is called di hua jie and is located near the harbor north of downtown. It spans several city blocks and is perhaps the most concentrated place on the island to see impressive herbal specimens.

The entire district is a feast for the senses. Enormous sacks of flowers brimming to the top with colors are everywhere. Dried fruits and dried seafood products abound, which creates a bizarre and complex smell and provides no end of interesting snacks while you shop around. Normal tropical dried fruits abound, of course, but a few interesting ones instantly strike the Chinese herbal enthusiast. For example, lotus seeds cooked with sugar until slightly sweet are very popular with Japanese tourists; they are served dry and have a nutty and sweet flavor, not unlike a roasted chestnut with a hint of sugar. Another specialty is dried longans, but not the seeded and baked ones used in TCM. Instead, the longans are dried in the shell, and can be transported, cracked open and eaten. They taste very fresh when processed in this manner.

Di hua jie is an excellent place to see medicinals that are rare or hard to find in their authentic state in the West. Many such items are minerals. The pharmacies of di hua jie are host to a variety of different sizes and grades of natural pearls, which are primarily used in facial creams or powders for insufflation to treat sore throats. Some are mixed into powder, some are sold as face creams, but the best are kept in little glass vials that are ground on demand. Natural pearls are tiny little irregular things and are quite expensive. Other minerals that are rarely encountered in their higher grades in the West include amber and cinnabar. Seeing the beautiful color of a huge vial of red cinnabar makes one realize why it was the origin of such lore in Taoist history. The poisoning induced by the excessive consumption of cinnabar was said to make the body appear lifelike after death and slowed the decomposition of the body; this is one of the reasons why it was explored as an ingredient in the quest for immortality. Now it is mostly used in medicine for sore throat powders and draining heart fire.

Ginsengs are naturally a favorite display product. Some shops have roots that look amazingly human-like; we saw some that looked just like little people dancing. As everywhere, the ginsengs are separated into Korean or Chinese red ginseng and American ginseng; the latter is virtually exclusively wild or cultivated in Wisconsin, roots cultivated elsewhere are much less expensive. Nice wild ginseng roots are kept in locked cases in ornamental displays.

Herbs are widely used in foods by the Chinese. Many herbs are ground to a fine powder for use in making instant beverages, generally mixed with milk or soymilk. Chinese wild yam, polygonum, coix, medicinal black beans, and mung beans are common for this and very aromatic and pure almond powders are sold for their flavor as a beverage additive. Chinese hawthorn fruits are sold either in little round sweet pills or in jars after being stir fried with sugar (highly addictive, I've eaten about 250 g in the past two days!). Little packets of pre-made formulas are sold to be cooked with different foods- one recipe is for chicken stewed in wine, one is for large intestine soup, another is for making shi quan da bu tang pork ribs, yet another is for si wu tang chicken soup, they go on and on.

Many shops make their own pills and wines. Most are little black honey pills, typically made according to a particular recipe kept in secret by the shopkeeper. The formulas are similar; most shops have one for wind-damp pain, another for supplementing the kidneys, another that is based on si wu tang, one to strengthen the bones, etc. Wines can be incredibly complex and expensive, and are all secret family recipes in most cases. Some places have gelcaps of coptis extract, others have a variety of powders for skin problems, and some have doctors on hand to diagnose and write prescriptions.

Wood products are particularly fascinating in such markets. Many shops have fancy stuff like thick Vietnamese cinnamon bark, while others have special pieces of aquilaria (chen xiang). Most chen xiang sold in the West is of very poor quality or downright fake. True chen xiang sinks in water and is very dense. Some shops have very fancy chen xiang in a big glass case, but then will pull out the "real" stuff to show you the most authentic and expensive varieties and tell you that the stuff in the case is for people with no ability to discriminate the real thing. Good sandalwood is also frequently seen in such places, but it is nowhere near as expensive as chen xiang.

Whatever personal feelings one has about the use of animal ingredients, there are some fascinating specimens to be seen on di hua jie. Cow bezoar is one of the most impressive, and some shops have big jars that contain enough niu huang to fetch tens of thousands of dollars. Other cow products include a bizarre stone that comes from their stomach. Huge seahorses and pipefish can be seen along with a variety of grades of sea cucumbers. Deer products are common, such as deer penises in several sizes and shapes. Deer tails and deer antlers abound, but I have (thankfully) never seen the rather shocking deer fetuses in Taiwan like they sell in Hong Kong. The big jars of snake penises are not very common in di hua jie, rather they are sold in the red light district. A virtual museum of bizarre animal products, to say the least. A bit macabre.

Many pharmacies stock granule extracts, with hundreds and hundreds of formulas and single herb extracts. Most professionals prescribe common things that are effective and affordable; most of the consumption of strange and expensive penises and such are based on folk medicine and the desire to buy expensive stuff to show off. This district generally offers granule extracts at a 25% discount from the list price.

Finally, mushrooms are incredibly common and varied in di hua jie. Huge bags of shiitake mushrooms from Japan and China can be seen in a variety of sizes and shades. Also noteworthy are several grades of black wood-ear mushrooms, typically wild-harvested from various regions (cultivated ones are cheap and common in any supermarket, either fresh or dried). Very nice qualities of cordyceps can be spotted, often Tibetan in origin; wild Tibetan cordyceps is quite expensive. Ganoderma is also very common, both in wild and cultivated forms. Cultivated "antler" ganoderma has a very unique shape and is slightly more expensive than cultivated mushroom forms, but the effect is similar (although arguably more potent).

Whether you are shopping or browsing, knowledgeable or naive, there are many things to be seen in a Chinese herbal market. Some look magical, some look disgusting, some look ordinary, and some just open your eyes a bit wider. The variety of ways in which natural substances have been used throughout history is amazing. The clinically effective agents of modern Chinese medicine and the substances of legend and early shamanism live on together, providing the shopper or the gawker with an endless amount of stimulation for the eyes or the body. Whether you see the herbal districts or not, they will continue as they have for thousands or years. Anyone who sees them in their full splendor will leave with a little more experience than they came with, yet will still walk away pondering many questions that will never be completely answered.

Herbal Medicine Shop

Mushrooms and Temples

Taiwan has many temples tucked away in the cities, but its best temples are located out in nature, typically in areas where the natural feng shui alone is inspirational. While some city temples are surrounded by fortune tellers with their complex face charts and blind people offering massage with their sensitized hands, my favorite temple complex is out away from the sprawl of civilization. My fondness for this temple developed because I studied Chinese at a university just below it when I was in undergrad, and the hike to the temple’s mountain summit was my weekly ritual. I did the climb not so much for any spiritual ascent, but simply for the exercise, clean air, and the bottle of homemade reishi mushroom wine that I brought home with every trip.

The temple complex that I am referring to is called zhi nan gong; it is one of the largest temple complexes in northern Taiwan. It consists of a group of large temples and small shrines, and is conveniently located just outside of Taipei. This temple complex has something for everyone; whether you are fascinated by Taoism, Buddhism, local culture, nature, medicine, fireworks or tea eggs, you will find what you seek at zhi nan gong.

The temple is surrounded by picturesque mountains covered in subtropical forest, and has a spectacular view of not only Taipei city, but also of a beautiful tea park on the adjacent mountainside. The tea park is composed of about 60 teahouses that all cultivate their own tea on-site, giving locals a place to sit outside and brew endless pots of fresh world-class oolong tea until the arrival of dawn. Do keep in mind that although a trip to the teahouse makes for an idyllically romantic date, the spirit residing at zhi nan temple is reputed to bring bad luck upon unmarried lovers who visit there; play it safe and do the tea park on a separate trip.

To get from town or the tea park to the temple will take a bit of exercise, as it is one thousand steps up the staircase to the temples at the top of the mountain. Along the way, you will find a pond with lots of cute little turtles, statues of all the zodiac animals, and houses that make you feel like you have gone back in time by 60 years. If you are an aficionado of medicinal herbs, you will find a treasure house of ganoderma mushrooms awaiting you at the top of the climb. Even if you aren’t an herb nerd that will traverse a mountain to see some special mushrooms, the scenery will suffice to keep you hiking.

Three temples share the mountaintop. In the typically inclusive spirit of Chinese religions, three totally separate religions share the space without conflict. The Taoist temple is the largest, but the slightly smaller Buddhist temple boasts an imported Indian statue of Sakyamuni Buddha and some seriously large gongs. The smallest temple is for the local deity, the tu ti gong that presides over the local area. This is the temple to go to if you want eggs hard-
boiled in concentrated tea.

Temples like zhi nan gong see a relatively significant amount of religious activity, in part because the religious practices of Taiwan were not influenced by China’s cultural revolution. Nonetheless, a white tourist won’t get too much in the way if they remember to smile and don’t snap photos of people in prayer. Of course, buying some fireworks and tea eggs is always a good way to amass good karma and win the approval of the locals.

As you exit the temple, you will encounter a small shop that specializes exclusively in ganoderma (reishi) mushrooms. The sweet little man who runs the shop has a number of prized specimens enclosed in glass cases. He has all different forms, wild and cultivated, antler-shaped and mushroom-shaped. He makes “wine” from the mushrooms, which actually has a reasonably nice flavor, a surprise because ganoderma mushrooms are notoriously bitter. I'm not sure exactly how the wine is made; it is low in alcohol and is not a simple alcohol extract. The shopkeeper has something of interest for any herbalist: those who like to get a buzz while they achieve health and longevity can opt for the wine, those who endorse only teas can buy some pre-sliced ganoderma, and the abstainers can pick up a nicely-shaped specimen as a souvenir. He has one mushroom that is virtually the size of his desk, far too heavy to carry down the hill. I suspect that the secret to the old man’s longevity is that he gets exercise from frequent hikes up the mountain, each time carrying a giant slab of fungus .

The majority of ganoderma mushrooms currently used are cultivated, although the discovery of a feasible cultivation technique came only recently. Prior to cultivation, ganoderma enjoyed a legendary status as a rare fungus that was highly sought and difficult to acquire. It had connotations of health and longevity, even immortality; it was pursued by the first Emperor of China, among many others. Ganoderma mushrooms are found as a motif in Chinese artwork, and are carved into the intricate designs found in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Ganoderma, otherwise known as reishi (its Japanese name) or líng zhī (its Mandarin name), is increasingly well-known in the West because of the impressive research that has been done on its medical applications. Different forms have different clinical uses. Cultivated forms take on several different colors, and can be seen in “antler” forms as well as traditional mushroom forms. Wild ganoderma can be incredibly expensive, costing several thousand dollars per pound. Since cultivated forms are cheap (<$20/lb), they are more commonly used; the pre-sliced forms are easier to deal with because the density of the mushroom requires a stout slicing machine to make it manageable. Despite the famous status of ganoderma, it is not widely referenced in English literature on Chinese medicine. Below is a brief summary of its properties, translated from a contemporary textbook on Chinese medicinals:

Líng zhī (灵芝)

English: ganoderma.
Latin Pharmaceutical: Ganoderma.
Source: Ganoderma japonicum (Fr.) Lloyd, G. lucidum (Leyss. ex Fr.) Karst.
Nature and Flavor: sweet; balanced.
Channel Entry: heart, liver, lung.
Actions: Nourishes the heart and quiets the spirit; suppresses cough and dispels phlegm; supplements qi and nourishes the blood.
Indications:
1) Disquieted heart spirit manifesting in insomnia or fright palpitations: Líng zhī has a sweet, balanced flavor and enters the heart channel; it is used here because it supplements heart blood, boosts heart qi, and quiets the spirit. It is used to treat patterns of insufficiency of qi and blood causing the heart spirit to be deprived of nourishment. This manifests in a disquieted heart spirit, insomnia, fright palpitations, profuse dreaming, forgetfulness, fatigue of the body and spirit, and poor appetite. In the clinic, it may be used as a single agent, swallowed as a powder; it may also be combined with dāng guī (Angelicae Sinensis Radix), bái sháo (Paeoniae Radix Alba), bai zi rén (Platycladi Semen), suān zao rén (Ziziphi Spinosi Semen), and lóng yan ròu (Longan Arillus). [Sorry, no display for 3rd tone mark] Modern preparations include tablets, syrups, and capsules, which are said to have a definite effect on qi and blood vacuity patterns of insomnia and forgetfulness.
2)Cough and panting with copious phlegm: Líng zhī is used here because it supplements the lung and boosts qi, and also transforms phlegm, suppresses cough, and calms panting. It treats patterns of phlegm-rheum, and is particularly effective for cold patterns of cough with copious phlegm and panting.
3) Vacuity taxation: Throughout the ages, materia medica texts have indicated that líng zhī is an important medicinal for supplementing and strengthening. It is used for vacuity taxation with shortness of breath, no thought of food or drink, and reversal cold of the extremities, possibly with vexation, agitation, and dryness of the mouth.
Dosage and Instructions for Use: 3–15 g in decotions, 1.5–3 g as powder.
Modern Applications: Líng zhī is also used to treat angina pectoris, hepatitis, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and leukopenia.

Ganoderma photos

Lower photo: Ganoderma shop near zhi nan temple, Taiwan
Right side: Huge ganoderma mushroom, Taiwan
Upper photo: A ganoderma merchant's display in Guangzhou, China

Food and Medicine in Taiwan (E.B.)

The enjoyment of food is a central pillar of Chinese daily life. In Taiwan, people prize variety and generally believe that nutrition and health are provided by adequate diversity in the diet. Rich foods are complemented by lighter foods, vegetables are ever-present, and the simplicity of home-cooking is offset by the complexity of flavors found in restaurants. The density of restaurants, night market food stalls, and small eating establishments in Taiwan attests to the degree to which locals enjoy their food.

The separation of medicine and food in Taiwanese culture is significantly more blurred than it is in the West. In Taiwan, food is influenced by Chinese medicine more than it is in mainland China, although medicinal food is making a comeback in many Chinese cities. Soups cooked with supplementing herbs are extremely popular in Taiwan, as are medicinal desserts. However, the most striking thing is not the quantity of obviously medicinal products on the menu, it is the fact that the average Taiwanese person is well-aware that the nature and flavor of all the things they consume has an effect on their health.

Many medicinal products have infiltrated the Taiwanese kitchen, but many other components distinguish Taiwanese food from other varieties of Chinese food. One culinary ingredient that is distinctly Taiwanese is basil. Although much of the food in Taiwan corresponds to Chinese food found elsewhere, basil has never caught on in Chinese cooking in a major way outside of Taiwan. The basil that they eat is essentially identical to what we call Thai basil in the US, a slightly spicier, less sweet variety than Italian Genovese basil, less suited to pesto and more suited to delicate flavors like Thai curry. The Taiwanese do some serious justice to this little green herb when they prepare the island-wide classic dish “Three Cup Chicken.”

In future columns, I will give recipes for dishes with more obvious medical value, but “Three Cup Chicken” is such a unique and famous Taiwanese dish that it deserves the honor of the first entry. Plus, I love the flavor of basil. While we have basil in the US and are familiar with its delicate flavor, few practitioners are aware of its medicinal value.

Basil

In Chinese medicine, basil is considered to be warm and acrid. It is said to enter the lung, spleen, stomach, and large intestine channels. Its actions are to course wind and move qi, transform phlegm and disperse food. It also quickens the blood and resolves toxins. Basil treats headache from external contraction of evils, as well as food accumulations and qi stagnation, pain in the stomach duct, diarrhea, menstrual irregularities, knocks and falls, snake and insect bites, and itchy dormant papules.

The following recipe is courtesy of Nigel Wiseman, reprinted here with permission.

Three Cup Chicken (san1 bei1 ji1)

Taiwanese three cup chicken is a masterpiece that combines basil with garlic, ginger, and chili. The three cups mean: One cup of dark sesame oil, one cup of Taiwanese clear rice wine, and one cup of soy sauce for a whole chicken. In the recipe we give here, we halve the quantities. If you find the taste of dark sesame oil too strong, you can use light sesame oil.

The people of Taiwan love basil. They add it when stir-frying oysters or eggplant; they also serve it with boiled goose. It is also commonly, but not always, added to Three Cup Chicken.

INGREDIENTS
½ chicken
30 g old ginger
10 cloves garlic
1 red chili, sliced
2 scallions cut into sections (optional)
½ cup Taiwanese clear rice wine
½ cup soy sauce
½ cup dark sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar
A few sprigs of basil

METHOD
1. Chop chicken in small lumps. Pat the garlic with the flat of a cleaver, remove skin, and reserve for use.
2. Heat the sesame oil in the wok, add the ginger and fry to nearly a frazzle. Add the garlic and fry a little longer, being careful not to burn the garlic. Add the chicken and stir. Next, add the clear rice wine, soy sauce, sugar. Turn a few times, and then cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, taking care to ensure that the juices do not dry out. A minute before you finally turn out the flame, add the chili and basil.

TIP
Many dishes use new ginger, which (like new potatoes) has a thinner and smoother skin. By contrast, this recipe calls for old ginger, probably the only type available in most places in the West.

Enjoy!

Language and Expression (E.B.)

This blog aims to provide novel Chinese medical information. My blog is focused on Chinese medicine in Taiwan, so I am covering topics related to culture, medical education, language, and local trends in Chinese medicine. Since I am obsessed with food, I will maintain a thread that focuses on the integration of medicine and food in Taiwan as well. For this theme, the medicinal properties of foods will be translated and posted, and recipes will be provided. The translated properties of foods will be expressed in terminology standards set down in the Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine, for reasons explained below.

As readers, we like clear expression with a smooth, friendly flow. Professional readers tend to want something more technically accurate and advanced, while people in the general public want something immediately accessible. It is very hard for writers to strike a neutral ground between these two poles without either sacrificing accuracy or sacrificing accessibility. In many disciplines, technically accurate information is impossible to convey without the specialized jargon used within the field. A general column such as this blog requires accessible information so that it may be enjoyed by all readers, yet it also requires accuracy so that it is useful for students and professionals. For this reason, technical or translated information will be expressed in a manner consistent with the guidelines set down by the Council of Oriental Medical Publishers. Hopefully this will allow for a fun presentation of novel material without sacrificing the integrity of the Chinese medical concepts.

What is the point of using standardized terminology in the first place?

One short answer is that consistent terminology is used by default because it is the preferred medium of translators. Translation of primary sources produces generally more reliable information than summarizing secondary sources written in English, in which the original concepts may have already been simplified or interpreted through a scientific or metaphysical lens. We generally agree that we want minimally distorted information, so we place a high premium on material that “comes straight from the dragon’s mouth.” This means that we depend on translators to provide us with unfiltered, real Chinese medicine.

The initial translation of information into the English language should prevent the loss of important concepts found in the original work. While distortion and simplification is rampant in books on Chinese medicine for the general public, practitioners typically seek reliable information that stands up to professional scrutiny. Since only one complete system of translation has been developed to go from Chinese medical language to English, the vast majority of people bridging the language gap use the same standards and term choices. No matter what our preferences are as readers, the material available for us is affected by the translation method preferred by the authors of the work.

Many people ponder why terminology should be standardized, what we stand to gain, and what we stand to lose. Yet while the readers are busy debating the pros and cons, virtually every language student in this generation has made a B-line for the resources offered by Practical Dictionary terminology. The few books by Unschuld and Flaws on language study round out the core line of texts by Wiseman and Feng, and these books are literally the only developed materials that students have to study medical Chinese. Thus, future texts will increasingly appear in Practical Dictionary terminology, simply because almost all new translators use it as a basis for their language acquisition.

Everyone who has studied a complex language such as Chinese knows how much there is to learn and they look to others who have broken ground before them. In any discipline, we consult the research of our predecessors; no one starts from scratch without mastering the materials that are already developed. In order to understand why so many people who study Chinese medical language appreciate the rationale for Wiseman terminology, we must consider the situation that they are in when they begin to study medical Chinese.

Take a moment to imagine the challenges that a novice translator has in store. They are faced with hundreds of pages of dense script, which appears to the untrained eye to be a spidery mess of complex micro-hieroglyphics. No matter how good an individual’s language skills are, they are looking up dozens and dozens of words on a daily basis, even after they have a decent foundation. Consider then the complexity of the subject, as well as the fact that each individual word out of the thousands that they must read has its own little story, its own shifting meanings across time, and multiple nuances under different circumstances. There are literally thousands of words that must be researched and systematically understood, which is generally achieved by correspondence with Chinese doctors and by consulting Chinese dictionaries.

To really understand why so many language students embrace Practical Dictionary terminology, we must consider the fact that only one generation ago, no consistent English terms were pegged to Chinese source characters; thus, the mastery of a single page of Chinese information required hours and hours of term research. Now a new-generation language student has access to over 20 years of term research that has already been developed with academic precision. While this development has had only a modest impact on the average practitioner, it has completely revolutionized the lives of the language students.

The development of term dictionaries has removed the most substantial barrier to language acquisition, so we can safely anticipate a vast proliferation of English resources on Chinese medicine in the near future. All these new materials will be coming from a generation of authors who have learned medical Chinese by using Practical Dictionary terminology, so we can naturally predict that most new texts will use these same consistent terms. The fact that Practical Dictionary terminology is backed by solid academic arguments is readily apparent to most translators, and the majority of translators will elect to use Practical Dictionary terms in their translations in order to distinguish their work as professional and dependable.

The aim of this blog is to bring new information to the Western TCM community. Fun tales will be conveyed, yet technical info will be preserved. Taiwan is full of stories just waiting to be told on the subject of Chinese medicine. This column will cover everything from the little old men doing Qi Gong on the hillsides to the aphrodisiac vendors in the snake markets. We will explore the entire range of healthcare options, from hospitals with long lines to temple-side shops specializing in medicinal mushrooms, and everything in between. The aim is to paint an accurate picture of Chinese medicine in its homeland, intact with its undiluted culture and theory. If I can convey even a tiny hint of the joy of discovery and the thrill of adventure that awaits us in the Orient, future TCM graduates will be flocking to the East in droves to get the real story straight from the dragon’s mouth.

All comments and suggestions for future columns are welcome. Please contact me at ericbrand@gmail.com

Eric in Taiwan (photo)

Eric in Taiwan