Ran an errand at Wong Yiu Nam over the weekend. I used to tag along with my grandmother to this very shop for Chinese herbal remedies when I was a little girl. I had quite forgotten how to shop here.
Purchasing medicines at a traditional Chinese medical hall is quite similar to baking a cake, really. First you need a written prescription (much like a recipe), which can either be written by a Chinese physician or a family's secret formula passed down from generation to generation. You hand it over to the nice elderly man behind the counter and he locates the ingredients from a large wooden chest of drawers behind him then weighs each out with precision.
Purchasing medicines at a traditional Chinese medical hall is quite similar to baking a cake, really. First you need a written prescription (much like a recipe), which can either be written by a Chinese physician or a family's secret formula passed down from generation to generation. You hand it over to the nice elderly man behind the counter and he locates the ingredients from a large wooden chest of drawers behind him then weighs each out with precision.
Almost anything imaginable (and unimaginable) can fall into the Chinese medicine category - flowers and fauna, fruits and nuts, roots, twigs, barks from trees, reptiles, grubs ...
... parts of animals (bones and shells, horns and antlers are considered the more "normal" stuff). And some sea creatures, like the sea horse and sea dragon above. I know, I know ... I agree that it isn't always easy to swallow.
Mortar and pestle
No comments:
Post a Comment