Rose Cheung - Healing Herbal Soups: Boost Your Immunity and Weather the Seasons with Traditional Chinese Recipes

Chinese herbal pharmacy Wing Hop Fung in Southern California.

PART I INTRODUCTION to CHINESE HERBAL SOUPS

T he universe creates life on this Earth. It also crafts an unimaginable support system for everything that we see, feel, and touch.

Unfortunately, as we humans increase in wisdom and technological advances, we have lost touch with the natural way of eating. We no longer understand how to cure ourselves of sickness by consuming the right plants, flowers, and herbs that surround us. The primitive idea of eating for survival has been replaced with a completely different concept of eating for pleasure and taste.

Scientific advances in medicine and technology have made us forget about the old and the traditional. Our modern lifestyle creates stress, fatigue, pollution, and the world of preservatives in our food. Together these bring on illnesses that we either ignore or try to fix through medicines that alleviate symptoms but do little to cure the underlying cause.

Southern Chinese (the Cantonese) believe that health can be maintained by drinking herbal soups, that is, mixing herbs with meat and vegetables in order to create healing broths to weather the seasons. This is commonly referred to as the Nurturing Life with Soup concept. The fact that the Chinese population has not only survived but flourished is great evidence that their health maintenance system through diet worksor at least something they do is right.

The practice of making herbal soups is a tradition that extends far beyond China. Recipes have been adopted and adapted throughout the Orient and Southeast Asia in Japan, Korea, and Singapore, among others.

Note that herbal soups are not the same as the medicinal decoctions prescribed by Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners. These are formulas you can obtain after a personal consultation with a Chinese herbalist, and they are personalized for each persons illness and constitution, so only that person should be drinking the herbs. In Cantonese, we jokingly refer to these concentrated liquids as bitter herbs because they are usually blackish, harsh tasting, and pungent, and for those who are very sick, the decoction might even have a muddy consistency.

In contrast, Chinese herbal soups are a much more pleasurable experience. They are translucent broths that are easy to drink and work as natural remedies for common ailments. Once you consume one, you should immediately feel a healing, peaceful effect.

I grew up in Hong Kong with four sisters. My mother and grandmother cooked all kinds of herbal soups as part of our daily diet. It didnt matter if we had a cold from playing in the rain or a stomachache from eating too many oily, greasy foods during Chinese New Year. My mother and my grandmother always knew which soups to make to clear out our blocked systems and bring them back to health.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), also referred to as Oriental medicine, is one of my great passions. TCM is a medical system that dates back to the third century BCE and is designed to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease through herbal medicine and therapies like acupuncture and moxibustion (a type of heat therapy).

I have seen how Western medicine fails to cure certain illnesses and sicknesses. Over twenty years ago, my mother was diagnosed with lymphoma, and the oncologist told her she had only three years to live. We ended up getting a second opinion from a Chinese herbalist. Thanks to the herbal formulas he prescribed for my mom, she lived another thirteen years before she passed away.

TCM isnt just for chronic diseases. Many of my American colleagues and friends suffer from small illnesses like cold sores, upset stomach, or dry lips and are not aware that they can help themselves by eating the right mixture of food with some herbs.