Snapshots from Asia: Traditional Chinese Medicine for Yuppies
Photograph by Shimin Wong
Those of us who have Chinese friends may have heard them speculate on the "heating" or "cooling" properties of food. The curious among us may even have pressed them to elaborate on this singular notion that foods have "temperatures"—and no, it doesn't refer to ice cream being cold or hot potatoes being hot.
Based on a Buddhist Taoism belief that food is medicine, the kind and amount of food one takes is intimately related to one's health, and the selection of the "right" food is dependent on one's bodily condition at that time. The need to maintain balance—the complementary forces of yin and yang—for optimal health informs the categorization of food into hot or cold, and less significantly, wet or dry groups. Nourishing food is considered bu, which literally means "to repair" but is generally associated with "strengthening the bodily systems."
What you see here is a tiny sample of a wide selection of brews available at a Chinese medicinal hall. It used to be that womenfolk would carefully minister for hours over a double boiler to produce these healthful liang cha, or herbal cooling teas, for the family. Since the modern woman no longer has the time (and, some would say, knowledge) to whip these up, entrepreneurs concoct them in mammoth batches and bottle them conveniently for the grab-and-go crowd.
The Chinese believe that the viler a brew, the more curative power it wields, so if you're thinking that honey-lemon and lime juice don't sound particularly medicinal, you'd be right. These herbal-tea stands tend to be located on busy sidewalks, and locals who harbor no fondness for bitter brews treat these "extras" as healthier, thirst-quenching alternatives to sugar-laden colas.
For those with a yen for the exotic, allow me to point out the bottle of antelope tea in the corner. A garden-variety infusion of shaved antelope's horn, it's none too challenging to the taste buds (my best taste descriptor would be "a distillate of lacquered rosewood furniture"), but plenty beneficial for "cooling down the system."
Need I mention we were barred from bringing our camera into the back of the shop? Serious Eaters who come across one may find it worth their while to hijack a friendly decipherist and go looky at the dried seahorses, giant fungi, and other phallic protuberances inside.
About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
14 Comments:
I found it incredibly interesting. Nice to read up on topics such as this that you do not get to read about in our corner of the world.
Lilartist at 3:01PM on 07/24/07
Interesting post, Ling. I've heard a bit about "hot" and "cold" foods from a friend. Apparently, most my favorite foods are all "hot."
Adam Kuban at 3:23PM on 07/24/07
Your description of the uses of heating and cooling foods was one of the best and simplest that I've had the opportunity to read. It's certainly not a simple subject at all. Thank you for an enjoyable read.
Karen Resta at 3:38PM on 07/24/07
I found it interesting, too. I wonder how (if at all ) Chinese ideas about "hot" and "cold" or "wet" and "dry" foods correspond to the old European notion of "humors" (which foods were also believed to influence)?
msmla at 3:40PM on 07/24/07
This is very interesting to see on Serious Eats, especially since I grew up with family members telling me to avoid this or eat that whenever I was sick or not feeling well. Hot and cold foods were always being shoved in front of me or taken away. Recently my chinese doctor banned cold drinks from my diet (while I suffer through another Taipei summer).
However, I would be cautious to say that it is based in "Buddhism Daoism" beliefs. I think you need to either define that better (i.e. what part of buddhism or daoist thought/ideology/belief ?) or understand and explain the other elements of traditional chinese medicinal thought that also play a huge role in how Chinese view certain types of foods.
Quite frankly this explaination simplifies too much of traditional Chinese medicinal theory (as much as its for "Yuppies", something as complex as this subject is needs much more clarification). You've opened a bag of tricks with this subject, I think an updated post or additional posts are most certainly warranted.
thehungryrose at 5:26AM on 07/25/07
Hmm... I took the following from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_humours
&
http://www.henriettesherbal.com/archives/best/1995/four-humors.html
"The humor theory holds that the human body is filled with four basic substances, called Four humours, which are held in balance when a person is healthy. All diseases and disabilities result from an excess or deficit in one of these four humors. These four humors were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.
This system is alive and well in contemporary Unani Tibb (which literally means "medicine of the Greeks"). It's the primary care medical system for hundreds of millions of people from Western India and Pakistan throguhout Persia and Arabia. Unani Tibb is concerned with the polarities of hot and cold and moist or dry.
It seems the reason we have yet to hear much about it is due to Western antipathy to things Arabic and Muslim."
It certainly sounds like there are similarities, though I'm no expert =p I have to confess I never made the link, even when I was reading what Chaucer's Chanticleer was being fed by his wyfe!
onedaylingers at 6:11AM on 07/25/07
After living in Korea for a year with problematic Irritable Bowel Syndrome - I went to a Chinese medicine doctor there was so amazed at much it has improved my quality of life. While I had no problems with the acupuncture, cupping, hot compresses of pills - I couldn't stand the "teas". Most were so bitter that it was impossible to not taste them, and I would dissolve the powder in the smallest amount of water possible, down it like a shooter and chase it with something to try and alleviate the flavour. Yuck!
But it was worth it, of course.
B
Hand to Mouth
Making Stock of the Situation
A blog for penniless gourmets
handtomouth at 10:08AM on 07/25/07
The Chinese system is similar in ways to both the European humoral system and to the Zoroastrian system, but each system is different, and each system is complex.
From the reading I've done on these systems, it may be that we have not heard much about it in the Western world not because of an antipathy to things Arabic or Muslim but more due to the fact that our concepts of medicine have been developing along lines of science that focus on different ways of measuring and creating wellness. Not a path taken because of antipathy but a path taken because it offered intellectual endeavors that were proving useful. Or so I hope and believe.
What is fascinating to me is that this knowledge (of traditional Chinese heating/cooling foods and medicine) is being transferred out into the world of commerce as opposed to being held in the hands, hearts, and minds of the women in the family who ruled the kitchen. This will obviously create a societal shift (or is part of a societal shift) with a focus on the emotional connection of eating and how that plays out.
As acupuncture has taken its place alongside the methods of Western medicine in being a respected methodology, perhaps the same will happen with the Chinese system of heating/cooling foods.
Karen Resta at 11:47AM on 07/25/07
A great book to read on Traditional Chinese Medicine is 'The Web That Has No Weaver' - it's got a great overview on TCM and clearly illuminates its differences from Western medicine, as well as expressing unbiased, history-based views on the strong and weak points of each system.
It's important not to see healing herbs and diet as separate from acupuncture, however - when acupuncture is Westernized and use in isolation, it is not being used according to TCM principles. Herbs, acupuncture, diet, and other way-of-life changes such as sleep, working hours, etc., are all part of an overall treatment plan that a practitioner creates with the patient to improve health.
While Western medicine focuses on finding the cause and treatment of each symptom, TCM sees symptoms as part of larger overall imbalances in the body. This is why Western medicine is often more effective for acute problems, such as tumors and infections, and why TCM can have a bigger impact on chronic pain and difficult-to-treat illnesses like IBS. So herbs alone, or dietary changes alone, or acupuncture alone, can help, but the TCM perspective is that they must all occur together to be most effective.
producestories at 12:19PM on 07/25/07
I see there are plenty of people more learned than I on this subject who are generously adding to this thread =)
Adam: You have my complete empathy on your fave foods being "heaty." I love lychees and gobble them fresh every time I'm back home. Unfortunately, the Chinese have a saying that translates to "three lychees equals a bolt of fire" -- which pretty much means it's heaty as hell! If I've overindulged, I always know it by the next day -- a horrid sore throat comes on =(
Karen:
"What is fascinating to me is that this knowledge is being transferred out into the world of commerce..."
I think it's wonderful that the average person now has greater access to traditional medicine. At the same time, I'm appalled by the unscrupulous entrepreneurs who capitalize on it -- by taking inexpensive boxthorne fruit and marketing it (at jacked up prices) as organic "Tibetan Goji berries"; or similarly inexpensive "flowerless fruit" as "Persian fairy figs."
onedaylingers at 3:53AM on 07/26/07
My knowledge is definitely "bits and pieces" type, onedaylingers. :)
And I wonder if any or all of the books I could find to read on the subject would give me the same sort of knowledge that could be given by the experience of growing up with the women of the household offering it subliminally day by day within a home environment.
I agree with you about the marketing ploys - they are fantasies drawn to enhance our daily lives in some interesting ways (in that a creative picture is drawn of a reality that existed as something else basic and real previous to the re-drawing) but bottom-line are meant to move us in one particular way: pulling out the big bucks and handing it over.
Aside from the food directly, as a woman born and raised in the US who is interested in how women here are the same or different than women elsewhere (particularly in their social or cultural freedoms or limitations), I've been fascinated by the balance of power that I've been told exists in traditional Chinese homes that seems to emanate in deep and meaningful ways *from* the kitchen, from the women in the kitchen. This oral tradition of passing kitchen craft/art information (including the complexities of heating and cooling foods) from mother to daughter - will it end in this generation, as this thing that has mostly been a home tradition becomes a business concept?
We've seen the passing of that tradition in a large way, here. And of course it is a mixed bag of blessings, as are most things.
Karen Resta at 7:53AM on 07/26/07
Ayurveda also has the concept of "hot" and "cold" foods—they're associated with doshas, which are analogous to humours. All my favorite foods, my mother continually warns me, are wrong for my dosha, and will give me what they call "udambu shoodu" (body heat, oh-so-appealing) in Tamil. And I'll be damned if eating them doesn't make me feel, psychosomatically, as though I'm overheating—all my self-aware scoffing done to no avail.
N
Hand to Mouth
handtomouth at 8:21AM on 07/26/07
I've been trying to post a link to a discussion on this topic that became rather uh . . . vibrant at one point :) but am not succeeding at the task. If you would like to read more, the topic is in the eGullet Chinese forum under "The Chinese Philosophy of Food - Balancing the Yin and the Yang".
Karen Resta at 8:21AM on 07/26/07
Karen:
"I wonder if any or all of the books I could find to read...would give me the same sort of knowledge that could be given by the experience of growing up with the women of the household offering it subliminally day by day..."
I've found that most of my friends (me definitely included) tend to have flimsy concepts of TCM. In the sense that we often know what's good for X condition, what one should avoid for Y symptom, but we don't always know the "why" behind it. A common refrain is "because the old people say so." (Hence the saying: "Old ginger is spicier than young ginger" i.e. Our elders are far wiser than us, do not question them!)
"This oral tradition of passing kitchen craft/art information (including the complexities of heating and cooling foods) from mother to daughter - will it end in this generation, as this thing that has mostly been a home tradition becomes a business concept?"
I know my mom still calls up her mom and grandaunt for TCM and home cooking counsel -- the same way I do her! It's also considered completely acceptable to ask perfect strangers (I usually go for older, matriarch-types) at medicinal halls or even supermarkets for advice.
Having said that, if the number of young people choosing to bypass traditional universities to study TCM and alternative healing at properly accredited colleges in Australia and New Zealand are any indication, I very much doubt the knowledge will ever be completely lost. Diluted, perhaps. But not lost.
onedaylingers at 11:28PM on 08/09/07