A Village Called Sunying
Chinese herbal medicine found its way into my life quietly, when I was still in my teens. During the Cultural Revolution, the year I turned sixteen, political policies of the time led my parents to take me and my younger brother to settle in a very poor little village — Sunying. Fortunately, they were able to keep their original salaries when we relocated. Even more fortunately, my brother and I could continue attending high school.
The village sat at the foot of a mountain, thirty-seven households with many different surnames. Unlike the neighboring villages of Jiangying, where most people were surnamed Jiang, or Yangying, where most were surnamed Yang, this village was called Sunying, yet not a single family was surnamed Sun. The people there did not share a common ancestral line.
My companions were boys and girls about my age, already the main laborers of their households.
Lessons from the Mountain
One of their chief tasks was going up the mountain to cut grass. Grass was the fuel families burned for everyday cooking, and in autumn they had to prepare a whole winter’s worth for their households. But, cutting grass was work I was absolutely incapable of. Even walking the mountain paths empty-handed was a challenge for me, let alone shouldering loads of a hundred pounds like they did. Still, I loved going up the mountain with them to play. My young companions taught me to recognize all kinds of bugs, herbs, and trees I had never seen in the city, and I would learn from them how to find the herbs the purchasing station accepted.
On a clear morning, each carrying a shoulder pole, two long ropes, and a sharp sickle, my companions would head up the mountain, taking a different route each time. They were remarkably capable. Cutting grass meant going where there were no trails. Several couldn’t cut in the same spot, so once they reached the mountain, they fanned out. When the work was done, a whistle would call them back together.
By late autumn the grass stood nearly as tall as a person. When they spotted a good patch, they would cut it down — shua, shua, shua. Then they’d go find the grass they had cut days before, now nearly dried in the sun, tie it into bundles, and carry it home on their poles.
The Treasure by the Tree Roots
With the grass bundled, they were in no hurry to head back; they’d play a while first, find a drink of water by a mountain spring, and poke around the tree roots to see if there were any medicinal plants they recognized — this was their chance at pocket money. Ye ma zhui, gegen (kudzu root), he shou wu, chai hu (bupleurum) — these were the names of Chinese herbs I first heard back then.
These treasures, they would dig up, rinse clean of soil, take home to dry in the sun, and deliver to the herbs purchasing station for a few cents. If they came across a centipede or a scorpion, they would never let it go — those fetched even better prices.
Inexhaustible Wealth
This was the first impression Chinese herbal medicine gave me: if you knew them, they were treasure. Back then I didn’t know what they were good for, nor did I care. I loved the herbs because of the joy they brought my companions.
My friends had the mountain for company and never once felt poor. On the contrary, they felt that inexhaustible wealth lay all around them, within easy reach. All it asked of them was a willingness to work — and they had that in spades.
I never imagined that the bond I formed with those herbs would follow me through everything that came after — back to the clamor of big cities, and eventually across the ocean to America. But it did. And it’s with me still, shaping how I care for myself and my family.
