Inside a Chinese herbal store
Posted by DAAN on September 11, 2008 under Herbs | 
Insight into “what’s inside all those jars” in a Chinese herbal store:
Along the walls of herb shops are neatly arranged shelves of jars or miniature drawers in which wondrous remedies for what ails you are stored. For the newcomer this can be intimidating, as the labels are all in Chinese and there are no familiar brand names. There’s not a Bayer or Vicks among them.
“What’s inside those little drawers?” I ask suspiciously. “And how are they arranged - alphabetically or by potency?”
Clara Wong, doctor of acupuncture, tells us at her shop on Smith Street that there are many categories of herbal medicine, and each vendor has a unique system.
There are about 5,000 different species of herbs in existence, and of these about 2,000 are used as medicines. Some are more frequently prescribed than others, and a typical dispensary will stock about 500 herbs.
A visit to an herbalist begins with a consultation about one’s health, including eating and sleeping patterns, followed by the taking of one’s pulse and examining one’s tongue.
The herbal aspect, according to Dr. Wong, accounts for only half the scope of Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine treats the body as a whole, only occasionally targeting a disease - a distinct contrast to Western medicine.
Chinese herbs are rarely taken as a single dose. In a typical transaction, there will be several items packaged for a take-home mix that one boils to a soup or tea.
A slight cold takes at least seven herbs; a serious flu might take 24. The prescription might consist of buds, twigs, seaweed, tree bark, roots and seeds. More exotic products sold in this trade include sea cucumbers, seahorses, lizards, deer musk glands, shark fins, antlers and crocodile bile.
(Hey, if you can handle them in those Harry Potter stories, you can certainly stomach them in a MidWeek feature story.)
A boiled-down concoction is digested so the natural ingredients can do their work in your bloodstream. Sort of the chicken-soup theory of wellness.
“A balance of yin and yang is essential in good health,” according to Letoto. “The concept of harmony is central to Chinese medicine.”
Yin-yang is simply a symbolic way of defining opposite forces that are at work in everything. So if you have a cold, a bowl of hot soup - chicken or herbal - should help.
Chinese believe food and herbal medicines correct yinyang imbalances.
