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6/17/10
Today we came to the hospital with a pleasant surprise awaiting us. A large red banner welcomed everyone on our program to the hospital. Even though we had already been in Kunming and to the hospital for a week and a half, we still greatly appreciated it. After that we had the most entertaining lecture yet by Professor Tang. She apparently lectures around the world, including at Yale University, and it was obvious she had experience by how she made the lecture both entertaining and educational. She taught us about how to keep healthy in a natural way, TCM in food, and some Chinese sayings about how to keep healthy. Those sayings include:
“Radish in the winter and ginger in the summer keep the doctor away.”
“Running water keeps fresh.” (I’m not sure what this one means, especially since the water in China isn’t good to drink unless bottled.)
“Three healthy half hours a day: Morning exercise for thirty minutes before breakfast, thirty-minute nap at noon, and evening walk after dinner for thirty minutes.”
“Dig a well before you get thirsty.”
Professor Tang also taught us some recipes of her own that use TCM to treat
common colds. She says that the best medicine is in the kitchen. Some key medicinal foods are ginger, garlic, green onion, vinegar, dry red peppers, dry green beans, and Chinese red dates. I’m proud to say that my mom uses the first four of those ingredients in almost every meal she cooks. It’s no wonder our family hardly gets sick.
One of the professor’s recipes was for chicken soup, and she says that every soup should have ginger. For this recipe, one whole chicken needs to be placed in a pot 1/3 full of water. Boil it for twenty minutes and then ladle out the foam on the water. Then put the chicken in a crock pot, add ginger, salt, and any additional herbal medicines you think are necessary, and steam for over four hours. Then the chicken is ready to serve with whatever broth you deem fitting.
Naturally we were all ready for lunch after that lecture, so most of us went to the hospital cafeteria. I can never finish the meals they give us there because they give us a huge bowl of rice, a choice of vegetables and a choice of meat all
for 8 元, a little over a dollar in US currency. After lunch we headed back to the hospital for our afternoon lecture, which was on Chinese herbal medicine preparation.
For this lecture, we went to the hospital’s basement level where they had the Decoction Room. In this room, the medicinal parts of herbs are extracted. The basic decoction process is to take dried and chopped herbs and boil them for about 15-20 minutes. The liquid, containing all the useful components of the herbs and none of the useless pulp, would then be drained and could be used in tea or just consumed in its original concentrated form. For herbs that are poisonous or have side effects, a long pre-decoction procedure usually taking 2-4 hours is needed to prepare those poisonous herbs. For small berries and seeds, they need to be wrapped in cloth before being placed in the decoction container, otherwise the unneeded parts of the ingredients would boil into the decoction liquid as well.
After the lecture they ran a demonstration of the decoction process for us, giving us all stations for us to monitor the decoction of the herbs. Basically all we did
was place the herbs into the stainless steel container, fill it with water, and then they would turn on a machine that heated the containers to boiling. Stainless steel containers are used instead of copper or other metals because those metals would potentially chemically react with the herbal ingredients and change their properties. Also, the time for boiling varies between ingredients, and if one boils them for too long then the extract becomes useless. The ingredients we used, which included hawthorn berries, licorice, and various other herbs, needed to be decocted for 20 minutes. After the decoction process was finished and the decoction liquid was collected. Only the liquid prepared at the doctors’ stations was collected, and since Shika and I were stationed right next to the doctors, the liquid we monitored was collected as well.
The liquid was served into cups for us all to drink like tea. Unfortunately, it was disgusting. At first it had a sour taste which was quickly followed by bitterness and a sickly sweet taste from the licorice. Being made from herbs, the liquid was supposed to be really good for one’s health, but I could only drink 1/3 of my cup
before I put it down.
Fortunately, the dinner we had that evening quickly made up for the foul-tasting medicinal liquid. It was a Chinese medicinal food dinner and the best food I have had on this trip so far. As the dishes were being served, the restaurant owner explained to us where the food came from and how it was good for us. He was especially proud of the mushrooms, which he boasted were homegrown in Yunnan and were the best in all of China. I never liked mushrooms before, but after trying those mushrooms I filled almost my entire bowl with them. All the chicken and beef dishes came from local ranches and was thoroughly cleaned and cooked before being served.
There was a cucumber dish that was absolutely delicious with a sweet sauce that had a tinge of spiciness. They also served meatballs made of this extremely tender ground beef with mushrooms inside, and they were moist from being marinated. There were about a dozen other dishes as well and I had to sample only one or two of everything to keep from getting full before the last dish. They were all delicious and
I loved how the owner explained each dish’s nutritious and medicinal benefits. Diet plays a very important part in disease prevention and treatment in TCM, and cooking the herbal medicine into the food or just serving certain herbs is definitely the tastiest way to consume herbal medicine.
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No Knee Mcgee
Christopher Lange
Picture of you
You finally took a picture of yourself! The dinner sounds good even though it was healthy. I miss the lazy susans already :(