No experience in the modern Middle Kingdom is quite complete without a gratuitous gawk-fest at a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) clinic and pharmacy.  Each city and town has at least one well-established TCM clinic overflowing with the more traditional-minded locals who go there for everything from acupuncture to moxibustion to their daily doses of herbal god-knows-what.  Traditional Chinese Medicine really is an essential element of modern Chinese identity, and going to the local TCM pharmacy and clinic is a worthwhile experiment in cross-cultural understanding.

Getting a good firm grip on that understanding, however, requires a lot of patience and a wide-open mind.  To most foreigners and even some Chinese, TCM is weird, complicated, enigmatic, and unpronounceable.  Whereas Western medicine emphasizes the identification, labeling, and chemical treatment of disease, TCM does not really recognize “disease” and instead seeks to adjust systemic imbalances using treatments like massage, cupping, acupuncture, Tai Chi, and medicinal teas, soups, and wines brewed from herbs and animal parts (vegan, be ye warned). 

If you’re feeling up to an exam, be prepared for some weirdness and have a translator with you.  The TCM doctor evaluates absolutely everything about a patient, including his or her demeanor, skin texture and color, voice, breath and skin odors, and the quality of their eyes, nails, hair, and nose.  The doctor will almost certainly spend a great deal of time examining your tongue, since the color, shape, activity, and “surface fur” of which reveals a lot about your general health to the doctor.  A bright red tongue with thin white “fur,” for example, generally means an excess of internal “heat.”  Another important aspect of the TCM exam is palpation, or the reading of the pulse.  TCM practitioners recognize about thirty different types of pulses.  A “slippery” pulse, for example, comes and goes “like pearls rolling around in a dish” and can indicate pregnancy, while a “string” pulse is forceful, long, and straight, and is a sign of pain.  The doctor will probably also ask you questions about your sleeping patterns, diet, bowel movements, lifestyle, and medical history. 

After your exam the doctor will prescribe some sort of medical regimen.  TCM treatment is a long, slow process, so if you plan on buying into it, be prepared to stick with it for months or even years.  In fact, TCM treatments are best used as prophylaxis rather than corrective treatment.   If you’re lucky, you’ll get away with a lesson on qigong, or breathing and mediation exercises.  More intense treatments like cupping and acupuncture are reportedly more than a little nerve-wracking and can toe a very thin line between discomfort and pain.  Even the herbal treatments can be tough to swallow, and hard on your wallet.  Bitter TCM draughts can include everything from the mundane (ginger, chrysanthemum, lotus root, and garlic) to the strange, expensive ingredients, such as:

Ginseng root suspended in wine, which, depending on the size and quality, can cost several thousand RMB.

Cordyceps are also popular.  They're known as dong chong xia cao, which means “winter worm summer herb,” a poetic way of saying "caterpillar fungus."  They’re the result of an unholy relationship between a species of fungus and the larva of the ghost moth.  In 2005, a kilo of the stuff cost anywhere between ten and sixty thousand RMB.

Deer antler is thought to nourish the blood, bone, and joints.  Dried seahorses are kind of a cure-all that practitioners use to treat ailments from asthma to impotence.

The most unusual ingredients you will probably not find in the pharmacy, at least not out in the front room.  Wines made with the bones, eyes, and penises of big cats are highly prized (and usually illegal) TCM treatments for libido deficiencies, and inhumanely harvested bear bile is used to treat digestive ailments.  Not to worry, though.  The worst you’ll probably get is a prescription for a bitter tea containing a dozen or so herbs and maybe some brown pellets resembling rabbit food. 

Of course, if you aren’t up to the exam and medicinal oddities of the TCM pharmacy, you can always just browse the shelves as you cultivate an unexpected appreciation for the pungent herbal aroma even as your brow furrows in utter bewilderment.  Without a doubt the Chinese medicine clinic is one of those fundamental China experiences not to be missed.

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