There are a number of herb gardens in Hong Kong. There’s one within the Botanical Gardens, near the seat of presidency. There’s one other within the Chinese language College of Hong Kong, an establishment traceable partially to the revolution of 1949, when mainland students had been scattered to the 4 winds. However the one which all the time caught my consideration is tucked away, on one of many many paths winding by way of the Lung Fu Shan Nation Park.
With its considerable references to medication, the backyard at first look looks as if a portal into one other period. Within the English-speaking world, whereas herbs nonetheless adorn the kitchen shelf, their relationship with therapeutic has taken on archaic associations. In China, the place the very phrase is commonly expressed by way of the characters for “medication” and “grass”, a number of lots of of herbs nonetheless play an necessary position in conventional healthcare practices. However few younger individuals these days might title a lot of them, or would come throughout them.
If gardens exist on a spectrum, this one is on the wilder finish and, as if in live performance with the forgetting of their names, the herbs haven’t all the time appeared of their finest state. Final winter, to the extent that it happens in Hong Kong, nettles had sprouted and the free grass was trampled. The pots had been weathered, and a few had fallen over. Just a few flashes of purple — probably thistles — broke up a jumble of stalks and leaves.
Over 4 years of often passing the backyard, I had by no means earlier than seen anybody tending to it. However this time there have been two males, one middle-aged and one aged, and a minimum of a foot shorter. Most of the herbs had been stolen prior to now few years, defined Alfred Ho, 54, the youthful of the 2.
They had been a part of the strolling group that had established the backyard a long time earlier. A small wood stand on the premises displayed laminated playing cards of varied herbs: firecracker vine, which is nice and impartial; Chinese language mesona, which is bland and chilly; and white mugwort. There was artillery clearweed, goosegrass, four-o’clock, peppermint, xiao qing and sea cups.
“Use solely as prescribed by the doctor,” an indication stated.
The opposite gardener, who was born in 1934, didn’t converse a phrase of English, and his native Cantonese gave the impression to be rooted within the land itself. There was an unmistakable cheerfulness about him, as if he had been in simply the fitting place. Chan Siun-kuen, because it seems, is aware of all about herbs.
“I need an increasing number of individuals to know [about them],” he later advised me.
Nicolette Perry, who has a PhD in pharmacognosy (the examine of medication from pure sources), runs the Dilston Physic Backyard in Northumberland, which has round 700 medicinal crops. She remembers being “amazed” on a visit to Kenya final yr; there have been “five-year olds saying ‘I’d take this tree and take this leaf and put together it and drink it’”. However of Dilston’s estimated 2,000 guests a yr, “many are unaware of the standard and trendy makes use of” of herbs, she says, particularly in contrast with different international locations.
The UK, which now shows herbs largely for decorative or instructional functions, is only one instance of a wider disconnection. It “used to have its personal enormous historic indigenous information” of herbs, however this was “primarily misplaced” after the chemical revolution of the nineteenth century.
“We’ve moved from rural to city areas,” she says. “That’s additionally added to our lack of awareness. We haven’t been capable of develop them [in quantity or variety] like we used to.”
Chan Siun-kuen had adopted that trajectory himself, having moved to the city metropolis of Hong Kong from rural southern China in 1949, when he was nonetheless an adolescent. It wasn’t till his forties, after 25 years working in a print manufacturing firm, that he started to rediscover the countryside.
Within the Nineteen Seventies, the territory’s industrial increase, which later unfold to mainland China, led to worsening air pollution. Chan took up mountain climbing within the hills, discovering in his fellow walkers a shared enthusiasm for the world’s flowers. He had additionally began to volunteer for the district council, serving to with fireplace prevention. “At the moment, lots of the buildings had been nonetheless manufactured from wooden,” he remembers.
The realm through which he hiked, now filled with well-marked trails main as much as Victoria Peak, was a distinct matter again then. The panorama was frequented by the triads, a set of highly effective underground societies that operated outdoors of the regulation. They laid out furnishings and provided breakfast, lunch, dinner and, for a price, video games of mah-jong. When the federal government needed to determine a rustic park within the late Nineties, Chan, who had been mountain climbing previous them for years, turned a intermediary.
“It was very complicated,” he says. He advised the triads the federal government’s new nation park can be “for the individuals”, and so they “aren’t the enemy of the individuals”. Ultimately, they moved out.
By now an increasing number of individuals hiked within the morning: there was a bunch, the Morning Walkers’ Affiliation, of which Chan was appointed chair in 1999. Round a 10-minute stroll from the mah-jong tables they planted a backyard, with the help of the Hong Kong authorities and Hong Kong College, to advertise herbs and Chinese language medication. They established “round 300 species”, says Ning Wang, assistant professor within the Faculty of Chinese language Drugs, who was concerned within the undertaking a few decade in the past.
At the moment, labels function Latin, English and Chinese language descriptions. Cactus, for instance, is written as “angel’s palm”, and is described as “bitter”, “chilly” and “transferring qi and activating blood”. The language attracts on the rules of conventional Chinese language medication, which continues to be broadly utilized in pharmacies on the mainland. Many playing cards embody the character qi, which Wang says is taken into account as “the inspiration that builds our physique” in Chinese language medication.
For Chan, this was not new territory. “After I began the backyard,” he says, “I learnt about Chinese language herbs once more.”
As a younger youngster, the hills Chan Siun-kuen used to climb in Guangdong had been completely different from these of Hong Kong. He used to go along with his father, who beforehand labored as a bone-setting physician, treating dislocations. However given meals shortages attributable to the Japanese invasions of the Thirties, he as an alternative wanted to work as a farmer.
He would level out and acquire herbs as they walked. There was a big herb store in Guangzhou that he typically visited, Chan tells me.
Conventional medication, which matches again “hundreds of years”, is “intently associated to Chinese language historical past and Chinese language tradition”, says Wang. Shennong, one of many mythological rulers of historical China who is claimed to have taught people using the plough, is the reputed writer of one of many first texts documenting the makes use of and advantages of herbs. The Sixteenth-century naturalist and acupuncturist Li Shizhen categorised greater than a thousand.
At a public herb backyard in Shanghai, there’s a statue of Li . “Some individuals could also be acquainted with Chinese language medicinal herbs, however they don’t know their makes use of,” says a 71-year-old girl, sitting on a bench outdoors the backyard along with her granddaughter and her good friend. “Older individuals like us find out about it.”
Mugwort, she explains, might be dried within the solar; dandelions cut back irritation; leeks are additionally a type of medication. “Individuals of my era study from their elders,” she provides. Anyway, when she was rising up within the countryside of the Fifties, she says, how might she and her siblings ever afford to see a western-style physician?
Chan’s was an interrupted childhood. His father was killed by Japanese troopers, who had seized Guangzhou in 1938. On the age of eight, with 4 siblings, he turned a farmer himself. By his early teenagers, he might carry 100 jin, an quantity equal to roughly 50kg. When the battle ended, his mom took him to Hong Kong, the place it was “simpler to outlive”. He stayed on alone, although she ultimately moved herself, a long time later.
There’s one reminiscence of the mainland that stays with him. One of many household’s cows had fallen ailing, and he recalled a herb to assist in such conditions. He used it, and it lived. His father had taught him, within the hills behind the village.
“There have been no cameras again then,” he says. “However I nonetheless keep in mind his face.”
A backyard misplaced and a backyard regained, and nonetheless Chan Siun-kuen can’t relaxation. Twice every week, along with his good friend Alfred Ho, he goes to the Lung Fu Shan herb backyard. The herbs could preserve getting stolen, which saddens him, however whoever it was a minimum of noticed a sure worth in them, he says.
There are fewer herb gardens of this type now, Ho suspects. He says lots of the group’s members are getting outdated; they’ve despatched a proposal to the federal government to assist additional develop the backyard, in order that they’ll pursue their mission of selling Chinese language medication and herbs.
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It’s not that there is no such thing as a curiosity; what appears to be forgotten could actually be too deeply ingrained. In China, a video that lists by title dozens of herbs lately went viral. “It seems that the countryside by my hometown is roofed in gold,” wrote one on-line commenter. “In Sichuan we fed them to pigs and cattle,” says one other. Nicolette Perry cites an identical sentiment. “You positively get individuals saying my grandma used to make use of this,” she says of things such because the backyard’s liquorice root.
At Hong Kong College, Wang, who is also from Guangdong, says that he has used the Lung Fu Shan backyard to show college students. His college is putting in a brand new herb backyard. However a lot of the information of herbs is in Chinese language society conveyed by way of “the tradition inside the household”. They is likely to be utilized in soups, simply as elsewhere a drink would possibly as soon as have contained a tincture.
There are an estimated 10,000 forms of crops and animals that can be utilized as medicinal sources in Chinese language society, Wang says, in contrast with solely round 1,000-2,000 which can be utilized in “scientific follow” as medicines. A lot of them survive “as a folks medication in the neighborhood” however are “not likely recorded as within the Chinese language medication textbooks”.
“The information might be preserved nonetheless,” he provides. “[It’s] simply not preserved in a really systematic method.”
For Chan, there was no time for varsity. However the earliest classes nonetheless offered the deepest instruction. In the event you ask him the title of the plant he fed to his cow, a lifetime in the past, he can keep in mind it immediately. It’s planted in a backyard, shielded by timber, on one of many many paths winding by way of the Lung Fu Shan Nation Park.
Cing sing syu. You might want to take the wooden of the plant, clear it, chop it very finely, combine it with rice, after which right into a congee. And now, no translation is required, as a result of the language is historical, and it’s in his palms. That is the way you maintain the cow’s nostril, and that is the way you push down on its tongue, so that it’s going to not reject the remedy, so that it’s going to, in opposition to all the percentages, survive.
Thomas Hale is the FT’s Shanghai correspondent
Further reporting by Wang Xueqiao
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