The Future of Chinese Medicinal Cuisine
China Ethnic Medicine Association · Zhu Guoben
Chinese medicinal cuisine (yaoshan) is a discipline closely tied to Chinese medicine. It springs from medicine and food share origin, forms after the Qin and Han, matures in Tang and Song, flourishes in Ming and Qing. After the 1950s, with the people's life still at the warm-and-full stage and the big-pot meal, it briefly waned. In the 1980s, with reform and opening, it revived.
The thesis medicine and food share origin has scholarly consensus. Shennong tasting the hundred herbs first sought food, not specifically medicine. In the legendary Shennong era, the ancients ranged broadly across nature, tasting; in seeking food they at the same time found medicine — matching the primary-accumulation process of traditional medicine.
Later development of Chinese yaoshan is more properly named TCM yaoshan. TCM yaoshan is, under the guidance of TCM basic theory, the organic combination of food and herbs, suitably cooked, for yangsheng, health-care, and disease prevention/treatment — a special class of food. TCM theory is the soul; flavor and effect are the features. Without TCM theory, it is only a pile of foodstuffs and drugs. With TCM theory, there is rule of pairing and best effect. To be exact: Chinese food-therapy (shiliao) predates TCM as a discipline; the Zhou Li — Heaven-Officials on food-doctors is an important record of our medical-administrative system. The food-doctor of the Zhou court oversaw food and drink hygiene, prevented food poisoning and gut disease. Centuries later, the Neijing appeared. From then on, food-therapy and food-treatment have remained one of TCM's principal contents. Of course, much folk experience and creation also fed in. From food-therapy to yaoshan, yaoshan to custom — moving from special to general, individual to systematic. Yaoshan is not a gift offered up by the medical hall — it first came from folk creation. The medical world's yaoshan achievements often refine folk experience and gather many strengths. Yaoshan also crosses with food-ingredients science, modern nutrition, Chinese cookery, sociology, ethnology — and bears their features. Yaoshan does not make food into bitter medicine; it makes medicine into fine food. No effect — no yaoshan; no flavor — also no yaoshan. These intersections have already pushed beyond TCM's borders, so I still hold to the concept Chinese yaoshan.
After 1980s revival, with attention and support from all sides, many yaoshan enterprises arose. The main idea: as people move to a moderately-comfortable life, they seek higher life-quality, longevity — health products and yaoshan meet the need spend to buy health. Reality proved more complex. Many yaoshan enterprises, after a hot start, collapsed. Reason: their ideal analysis was far from social effect and social need. Yaoshan itself cannot satisfy every patient; luxurious yaoshan restaurants are no fit place for such customers to often visit. I once inscribed for a yaoshan restaurant: "After grass becomes medicine it is prized; when medicine enters the meal, it greets guests." But such guests-greeting slogans led yaoshan business astray from food-therapy. When the menu has "Dog-whip yang-warming soup", "Dongchong-xiacao stewed chicken", "yaoshan banquets" — yaoshan has departed common formulas treat disease and biàn zhèng lùn zhì and become an appreciative, tasting, aristocratic, flaunting, formal rich-feast. No yin-yang, vacuity-excess, male-female, old-young distinction — a table-load of yaoshan — both over-tonifies the customer and exceeds the common person's wallet.
Some have studied yaoshan in Dream of the Red Chamber — instructive. The Jia family in Dream: a poetry-and-ritual, hat-and-tassel family, bell-ringing tripod-dining household. The red-chamber yaoshan: by person, illness, time — exquisite, small portion, light dish, never overtaking the meal, never seizing host's place. Especially Xue Baochai's discourse, worth careful reading by every yaoshan operator. Chapter 45 of Dream, Xue Baochai visits Lin Daiyu at Xiaoxiang Lodge; reading the prescription, she says:
"I look at your prescription. Renshen and cinnamon seem too much. Though they tonify qi and lift spirit, you should not be too heated. By my view, level liver and strengthen stomach first; with liver-fire down, it cannot subdue earth, the stomach-qi is free, and food can nourish. Every morning take an ounce of yanwo (bird's-nest) with five qian of rock sugar, in a silver pot, made into porridge; once you get used to it, better than medicine — most nourishing to yin and supplementing of qi."
Xue Baochai's yaoshan discourse, in literary form, hits yaoshan's mark.
Earlier yaoshan also detached from clinical practice — could not be promoted in hospital nutrition kitchens, and could not match the doctor's drug treatment, so those who most needed yaoshan could not enjoy or afford it. Another major reason for the earlier difficulty.
So I hold that future Chinese yaoshan should heed:
(1) Hold to TCM theory as guide. Match food-and-herb nature with the body's vacuity-and-excess: vacuity, supplement; excess, drain; cold, warm; heat, clear. At least separate yin and yang; do not commit vacuity-on-vacuity, excess-on-excess; aim at yin level, yang dense.
(2) Hold to food first, drug auxiliary, drug-in-food, treatment-in-care: drug-nature in the food, not food-in-drug-soup; unite efficacy and flavor.
(3) Hold to Chinese cookery. Take modern science and nutrition knowledge, but keep Chinese cookery's character.
(4) Combine with TCM clinical practice: every disease and every stage should have a fitting yaoshan. Yaoshan should enter the patient kitchen or be located near hospitals.
(5) Hold to the cultural views and life-habits of each ethnic group; let yaoshan keep its cultural content; at the same time take in foreign experience. When foreigners want Chinese yaoshan, respect and serve them.
(6) Encourage neutral, single-herb, popular yaoshan snacks — lotus-seed soup, lily soup, longan soup, mung-bean soup, red-bean porridge, coix porridge. Plebeian yaoshan — single in nature, simple to make, cheap and fine — for sustained eating and easy spread. But also study the exquisite high-end yaoshan of Court yaoshan or Red-chamber yaoshan. Red-chamber yaoshan has aristocratic air. For Chinese yaoshan, both plebeian and Red-chamber — both to be studied, both to be developed.
(7) Encourage formula-specific yaoshan for specific specialties — chronic and elder disease especially — by person and illness, e.g., diabetes yaoshan, nephritis yaoshan.
(8) Encourage season-specific yaoshan, fully embodying human-and-Heaven correspondence: nurture yang in spring-summer, yin in autumn-winter — especially winter tonics for the elderly.
(9) Encourage Chinese yaoshan's modernization — high quality, stable, fast, convenient, cheap.
(10) Encourage Chinese-character yaoshan restaurants — Chinese bearing and cultural atmosphere; full menu; refined cookery; daodi and top materials; service that makes the guest feel at home.
Zi Chenglong: Chinese medicine has outstanding effect on disease, but TCM always praises "the superior physician treats what has not yet become illness", advocates "three parts medicine, seven parts care", "drug-tonic is not as food-tonic". I hold that this is the heart of yaoshan.
July 1999, Beijing.