A Taste of Traditional Chinese Medicine

A TCM pharmacy.
Photo by Sam Steiner.

By Beth Green

Many times when you visit the doctor or pharmacy in China, you’re given a choice: traditional treatments made from herbs and mysterious ingredients, or Western-patented pharmaceuticals.

The first city I lived in in China, in Southern China, had a specific hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine (often just called TCM). At the bus stop outside it, passengers boarded wearing white bandages stained with brown poultices. Pharmacies usually featured both the comforting little rectangular boxes of pills that spelled out the ingredients in both Chinese and English and large dispensaries full of odd natural items that often looked like hedge-clippings or leftovers from a taxidermist’s shop. The air near the hospital and in the pharmacies had a distinctive smell—bitter and earthy.

I was always curious about experiencing TCM, but luckily I didn’t really need a doctor’s opinion in China until the second year I lived there. We’d just moved to a rural city in Southwestern China, with different weather and different food. My skin was not reacting well to the changes—and, distressingly, I’d picked up impetigo from some of the children I was teaching. After an Internet self-diagnosis of skin cancer (my self-diagnoses always include the worst possible interpretation of symptoms), I asked a co-worker to take me to the hospital across the road and see what a real doctor said.

At this hospital, and others I’ve been to since, when you come in to register you pick whether you want to see a nurse for a few yuan, a nurse with more experience for one yuan more, or a specialist doctor for a whopping seven yuan (about a dollar at that time). Not one to skimp, I chose to visit the specialist dermatologist.

The dermatologist had no waiting room; all of her patients grouped together in her small office on stools and listened avidly to her diagnosis and recommendation for the other patients while waiting for their names to be called.

When it was my turn ( I was extremely conscious of the ten pairs of ears and eyes in the room) the doctor didn’t ask me any questions other than if my skin itched. I had my co-worker explain my difficulties but she simply nodded, had me stick out my tongue, and made a note.

“Will you take TCM?” she asked me in Chinese.

“It’s not cancer?” I replied.

She laughed, and so did the other patients behind me.

A TCM store in Hong Kong.
Photo by Brian Jeffery Beggerly.

Relieved of that, at least, I said, “sure, why not?” and so began a six-week course of TCM. The doctor explained that I would see results less quickly than I would if we used Western medicine, but that hopefully I’d experience better skin and more energy after using the TCM.

The treatment was in part restrictive: I had to limit my intake of spicy and oily food, milk products, sugar, and caffeine. I had to eat more green vegetables. So far so good.

It included a topical treatment, which involved combining a paste with the clear contents of a glass vial, stirring it, and then applying it daily to affected areas with a delicate wooden stick. The glass vial was the most frustrating, because it didn’t have a lid: you had to break the tiny top off of it without shattering the rest of the vial and dropping glass shards in the paste; without dropping it on the floor, smashing it and getting glass splinters all over the bathroom; without cracking it and cutting your fingers. It took a few times—and return visits to ask for more medicine—to get this right.

I was also told to up my vitamin intake, which I could thankfully do with nice, comforting, Western-looking tablets.

And I had to drink four servings of a special brewed medicine every day.

The prescription for all this medicine was several pages long, because the doctor listed twenty-some ingredients.

I knew that the prescription was lengthy, but I didn’t realize what exactly was in store for me until my co-worker and I went to the pharmacy counter to pick up the medicines: three plastic shopping bags full of powders, leaves, and twigs.

“Um, what do I do with this?” I asked my friend.

“You cook it,” she said.

Um, yeah.

Medicines before they are cooked.
Photo by Bernhard Scheid.

Luckily, the town had one pharmacy that catered to people who were as incompetent as me in the medicine-preparation department and with a little negotiating, the proprietors agreed to cook up and bag my medicine, even though I hadn’t purchased the initial ingredients from them. It took them a day to prepare, but soon I had about four gallons of a root beer colored drink, hermetically sealed in several dozen small plastic baggies.

I was told to keep this refrigerated and drink it hot every day under certain conditions that I forget now. To warm it up, it worked best if I put a baggie in a bath of hot water for a few minutes, then snipped a corner off the plastic and slurped it out in one foul-tasting go.

Or, sometimes I put it in a coffee cup and pretended I was drinking really bad filtered coffee.

It was a fussy, bewildering way to find a cure, but the impetigo cleared right up, and soon my skin was behaving itself too. I went back to the doctor several more times, for more medicine, until finally she gave me the all-clear.

I have always wondered what was in the medicine she prescribed, but at the end of the day, I’m just happy it worked.

What experiences have you had at foreign hospitals?

Great Travelers in History: Mary Kingsley

1862-1900

By Jenni Gate

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

Albert Einstein

Mary Henrietta Kingsley traveled paths few in history had ever explored in a time when women never traveled alone. Her journeys within West Africa expanded Europe’s knowledge of the region. Despite the inherent racism of colonialist England during the Victorian era, she became an advocate for the people of West Africa, often suffering ridicule as a result. Ignoring popular opinion and the expectations of society, Mary Kingsley paddled up little-known estuaries, walked through jungles, endured insects and reptiles, climbed mountains, and stoked fires on steamships. She met and befriended cannibals and missionaries alike, though it would be fair to say she preferred the former to the latter. She collected specimens of fish wherever she went, and took copious notes of her experiences. Her life was extraordinary but short.

Although she had no formal education, Mary Kingsley grew up in a house full of books about science and memoirs of explorers. Her father, a doctor and writer, traveled extensively throughout his own life. He contracted rheumatic fever on his last journey and returned home where his daughter cared for him until his death. She had nursed her mother for years. Coincidentally, both parents died within a few weeks of one another. Mary Kingsley, then age 30, decided to travel. She had a few academic connections through her brother, who was in law school at that time. Mary read what was known about Africa, asked her acquaintances for advice about traveling there and was roundly told not to go. She was repeatedly warned that it was too dangerous to go to West Africa.

Ignoring all advice, in 1893 she headed to Liverpool and boarded a ship for the Canary Islands, then pushed on to Sierra Leone. She arrived in West Africa with few possessions other than her high-necked shirts and floor-length skirts. Traveling the coastline by steamboat, she made her way past the oil rivers of Nigeria and on to Angola. 

Region traveled by Kingsley

It was the Victorian era, and women did not travel alone. Her shipmates assumed she was a missionary, and they were scandalized to find her still on board the ship after all the other missionaries disembarked at the Canary Islands. Even in Africa, local women continually asked where her husband was. She frequently went into dangerous areas alone, but most often journeyed with African men who helped her by cooking, translating, making camp, and finding pathways.

On her second journey to West Africa a year after the first, Kingsley traversed the rivers of the French Congo and climbed Mount Cameroon (the first English person to climb it). She met and befriended the Fan (or Fang as some sources name them) people, who were known to be cannibals. Exploring by steamboat and dugout canoe, paddling the swamps and streams of the Ogooué River in Gabon, she collected fish from the rivers and lakes to take back to the British Museum as specimens for study. She was thrilled to have this work taken seriously by the zoologist who helped sponsor the trip, Dr. Albert Gunther. At least three previously unknown species of fish were named after her.

Mary Kingsley documented travels on the rivers throughout West Africa. Her writing is evidence of a humorous and curious mind. In Travels in West Africa, she described the dangers of paddling through the tidewaters of African rivers in dugout canoes:

Now a crocodile drifting down in deep water, or lying asleep with its jaws open on a sand-bank in the sun, is a picturesque adornment to the landscape when you are on the deck of a steamer, and you can write home about it and frighten your relations on your behalf; but when you are away among the swamps in a small dugout canoe, and that crocodile and his relations are awake – a thing he makes a point of being at flood tide because of fish coming along – and when he has got his foot upon his native heath – that is to say, his tail within holding reach of his native mud – he is highly interesting, and you may not be able to write home about him – and you get frightened on your own behalf.

About encounters with insects in West African Studies, she wrote:

But it’s against the insects ashore that you have to be specially warned. During my first few weeks of Africa, I took a general natural historical interest in them with enthusiasm as of natural history, it soon became a mere sporting one, though equally enthusiastic at first. Afterwards a nearly complete indifference set in, unless some wretch aroused a vengeful spirit in me by stinging or biting. I should say, looking back calmly upon the matter, that 75 per cent of West African insects sting, 5 per cent bite, and the rest are either permanently or temporarily parasitic on the human race. And undoubtedly one of the many worst things you can do in West Africa is to take any notice of an insect. If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it will go away – for that’s your best chance; you have none in a stand-up fight with a good thorough-going African insect. …

Of course you cannot ignore driver ants, they won’t go away, but the same principle reversed is best for them, namely, your going away yourself. 

And later in the same work:

While in West Africa you should always keep an eye lifting for Drivers. You can start doing it as soon as you land, which will postpone the catastrophe, not avoid it; …it may be just as well for you to let things slide down the time-stream until Fate sends a column of the wretches up your legs. … The females and workers of these ants are provided with stings as well as well-developed jaws. They work both for all they are worth, driving the latter into your flesh, enthusiastically up to the hilt; they remain therein, keeping up irritation when you have hastily torn their owner off in response to a sensation that is like that of red hot pinchers.

After her second trip to West Africa, Kingsley toured England and spoke widely of her travels. She lectured on diverse topics from opening trade to Europeans in the region to the harm caused by missionaries converting native people and destroying whole ways of life in the process. Her opinions, formed from personal experience and observation, were controversial, sometimes creating a backlash in the press. Yet her work was influential in establishing perceptions of West Africa in Europe, and many of her observations are still relevant.

Volunteering as a nurse for the Second Boer War, Mary Kingsley returned to Capetown, South Africa in the late 1890s where she died of typhoid on June 3, 1900. In England between journeys, she had met Rudyard Kipling, striking up a friendship of mutual respect and admiration. In her work, Kingsley often quoted Kipling. At her death, Kipling gave her eulogy before her burial at sea with full military honors.

About her own writing, Mary Kingsley was humble and humorously self-deprecating, as the following story illustrates:

Alas! I am hampered with bad method of expression. I cannot show you anything clearly and neatly. I have to show you a series of pictures of things, and hope you will get from those pictures the impression which is the truth. I dare not set myself up to tell you the truth. … It is a repetition of the difficulty a friend of mine and myself had over a steam launch called the Dragon Fly, whose internal health was chronically poor, and subject to bad attacks. Well, one afternoon, he and I had to take her out to the home-going steamer, and she had suffered that afternoon in the engines, and when she suffered anywhere she let you know it. We did what we could for her, in the interests of humanity and ourselves; we gave her lots of oil, and fed her with delicately-chopped wood; but all to but little avail. So both our tempers being strained when we got to the steamer, we told her what the other one of us had been saying about the Dragon Fly. The purser of the steamer thereon said “that people who said things like those about a poor inanimate steam launch were fools with a flaming hot future, and lost souls entirely.” We realised that our observations had been imperfect; and so, being ever desirous of improving ourselves, we offered to put the purser on shore in the Dragon Fly. We knew she was feeling still much the same, and we wanted to know what he would say when jets of superheated steam played on him. He came, and they did; and when they did, you know, he said things I cannot repeat. Nevertheless, things of the nature of our own remarks, but so much finer of the kind, that we regarded him with awe when he was returning thanks to the “poor inanimate steam launch”; but it was when it came to his going ashore, gladly to leave us and her, that we found out what that man could say; and we morally fainted at his remarks made on discovering that he had been sitting in a pool of smutty oil, which she had insidiously treated him to, in order to take some of the stuffing out of him about the superior snow-whiteness of his trousers. Well, that purser went off the scene in a blue flame; and I said to my companion, “Sir, we cannot say things like that.” “Right you are, Miss Kingsley,” he said sadly; “you and I are only fit for Sunday school entertainments.”

Mary Kingsley wrote two books, Travels in West Africa, published in 1897, and West African Studies, published in 1899, and she published several articles. Her writing was descriptive and full of detail about the surroundings and observations of the people she encountered. The humor infusing her writing makes reading her work still a joy today.

My Virgin Voyage

By Patricia Winton

As I began my first trip to Italy, I became one of 6,000 people stranded at Kennedy airport during the February 1969 nor’easter that shut it down and paralyzed the northeastern United States for three days. I was 23, alone, and a fledgling traveler. Only the kindness of strangers got me to my destination.

I was moving to live near the place I most wanted to visit in the world—Florence. I had booked a seat on a charter flight—the company’s name long forgotten—from JFK to Frankfurt with another flight to Italy. On arriving at JFK, passengers were to call Brown’s Taxi for transport to the North Terminal. I think that ride was included in the charter fare.

The snow began falling on February 9—two days before my scheduled departure. Flights from JFK were being canceled, and people were sleeping in terminals. In Washington, DC, I watched the news with alarm. My plane would surely not go. I called the charter company, and they told me to come on to JFK. By the 11th, snow was falling in Washington, too. Another call to the charter company. More instructions to proceed. I snapped my suitcase shut and called a taxi. Before it arrived, Eastern Airlines called to cancel my flight to JFK. My heart raced as I called the charter company again. They told me that the transatlantic flight was still on. My anxiety level ratcheted up a couple of notches until a friend suggested that I take the airline shuttle.

Shuttle Ticket Sales

The shuttles that ran from DC to New York in those days didn’t require a reservation. You just arrived at the airport and climbed aboard. The beverage carts had been converted to ticket sales counters, and you simply bought the ticket on board. Forty plus years ago, they even accepted cash. As my taxi approached Washington National Airport, the driver told me the shuttle to JFK had been canceled, but the one to Newark was still flying. I gulped and had him drop me there.

As luck would have it, my shuttle seatmate traveled frequently from New York to Washington. “How can I get to JFK?” I asked. “Take the helicopter,” he replied, telling me the route to take once I deplaned, where to turn, and how much it would cost. At the terminal, Shuttle Man pointed me in the right direction, and I soon found myself aboard a helicopter flitting between airports.

As luck would have it, my helicopter seatmate was booked on my charter flight. A travel-wise woman just a couple of years older than I was, she took the lead when we arrived at JFK and called Brown’s. We made our way through the terminal, past sleeping people, past crying babies, past mounds of trash. At the pickup point, we met other passengers for our charter. Eager to depart on time, we joked about “a little snow.” After more than an hour’s wait, our confidence waned. Finally, a big old car—brown, of course, with a few rust spots—pulled up. We looked at each other, shrugged, and five or six of us piled in. There was room for all, plus our luggage.

The taxi ride proved to be just as challenging as the other legs of the trip. Every route the driver tried was blocked by police or snow banks. We were getting dangerously close to departure time. I could hardly breathe. But the driver persevered. He went outside JFK, chugged along highways around the airport, and found another entrance. That strategy worked, and soon we climbed out at the North Terminal. I relaxed then, certain that we’d be airborne soon.

At the check-in counter, we were told to wait, and we searched for a place to sit. A snow plow had deposited snow on the roof; water dripped from the ceiling and puddled on the floor. The snack bar had closed because it had run out of food. The vending machines were empty. It was now past 6 PM. I hadn’t eaten since my morning coffee and toast. My stomach rumbled, and Helicopter Woman shared her candy bar.

At last, a company representative announced that we would not be flying that night. We were herded onto a bus which slid on the slush as it careened toward a distant hotel. There we were served a box lunch (a dry sandwich, some chips, and an apple) and assigned rooms. People had to share, so Helicopter Woman and I joined forces. I worried about sleeping in the same room with a stranger, and I remember tucking my purse under the covers with me. The following morning, we were given coffee and stale donuts before being bussed back to the North Terminal.

Finally, we boarded. Since I’d spent the night unscathed, I stayed with Helicopter Woman. With no assigned seats, my savvy travel companion snagged an exit row and we settled in, stretching our legs. A flight attendant (or stewardess as she was then) soon arrived with a man in tow. “I want a man to sit by the emergency exit,” she explained, “so this fellow will take the remaining seat in the row.” I kept my window seat.

As luck would have it, Emergency Man was booked on the same flight I had from Frankfurt. We teamed up for the remainder of the journey. The flight was uneventful, except that our meals were out of order. We were served the dinner we would have had the previous night for breakfast, and for lunch we had what passed for scrambled eggs and bacon.

By the time Emergency Man and I reached Germany, our flight was long gone, and we couldn’t get another one for a couple of days. He suggested that we take the train and led me to the station. We bought our tickets, had something to eat, and soon were riding the rails south. I admired the gingerbread houses along the German countryside and dozed a bit. My excitement grew as my energy level drooped.

Photo of Red-tiled Roofs by Jasmin Lee

We had a compartment to ourselves, second class though it was, and Emergency Man showed me how those old trains let you convert the seats into makeshift beds. Seats opposite each other could be pushed down until they met in the middle, leaving one end slightly elevated like a pillow. I actually slept, but we were nudged awake by ticket checkers and passport control at the Swiss border. We tunneled under the Alps and stopped again for ticket checkers and passport control in Italy.

My heart rat-a-tat-tatted in my chest. I was here! At the next stop, we bought crusty rolls filled with salami from a cart on the platform. The red-tiled roofs sped by, and I munched my first taste of Italian food as the train wended its way to Florence. 

Join me on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues where I write about food and wine, mysteries and crime. And please visit my new website at www.PatriciaWinton.com

A Cultural Paradise

By Alli Sinclair

The first time I traveled out of the country I exchanged the sandy beaches in Australia for the tropical shores of Bali, Indonesia. With sweaty hands and a sense of adventure I landed at Denpasar Airport, and made my way to a resort in Kuta, Bali’s tourist hotspot.

Gravel roads swarmed with motorcycles weaving between drunken tourists, mostly Aussies and Kiwis. Mangy dogs hung their heads, foraging in the garbage piles for scraps. Hawkers out the front of restaurants touted their menus and shops charmed punters in to buying a sarong or t-shirt with misspelled slogans in English. And the air hung thick with the aromas of peanut and chili, mixed with the kerosene burners the street vendors used to cook snacks and meals. It was utter chaos and I loved it.

In contrast, the resort was clean, almost sterile, relaxing and… well… boring. Outside the high walls lay an island that begged to be explored. A culture rich in history and religion was waiting to be discovered. It didn’t take long before I cancelled my reservation, packed my bags and headed out to explore the real Bali.

In those two short weeks I climbed up Mount Batur and into the crater, taking care to dodge the pockets of steam pouring out of cracks in the rocks. I snorkeled on a deserted beach on the north of the island and cycled for miles along empty roads with nothing more than rice paddies to keep me company. I ate food I couldn’t recognize and had the displeasure of discovering what Bali Belly really is. But it didn’t matter how sick I got, because I was out there, learning about a new world and in the process of changing my own.

On Lovina Beach I met Ketut, a lovely woman in her early twenties with a smile that radiated from deep within. We befriended each other and she took me to her small village about an hour inland. I met her family and we spent the afternoon laughing and enjoying each other’s company with the help of Ketut’s translating skills. I learned a lot about life in Bali, the culture, beliefs and people and I left the tiny village with a stronger sense of what life could be like outside my own country. This experience catapulted me into a life full of wanderlust and I haven’t regretted it for one moment.

That was more than twenty years ago and Bali has changed a lot since then. The one thing I am positive that hasn’t altered is the essence of the people. Friendly faces greeted me everywhere I went, polite questions were asked with genuine interest and an undercurrent of hope ran through the veins of these people. By the time I landed in Australia, I was already planning my next adventure.

My first overseas trip made me realize I wasn’t cut out for the cushy resort-style holidays. Sure, a bit of pampering every now and again doesn’t go astray, but if I wanted to sit in a resort all day, I might as well head to Port Douglas in Australia. Adventure is an essential part of my being as is my desire to learn about other cultures. I need to get off the beaten track and put myself out there, even if it means getting into dicey situations every now and again. I choose to live the experience, rather than sip a cocktail and watch a BBC documentary (although there have been many days on the road when this has been very appealing!).

So how about you? What did you learn about yourself or the world on your first time out of the country?