Tag Archives: China

Autumn 2024, Posts

Using Images of Objects for Healthcare in Sixteenth-Century China

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By Cheng He

Late-sixteenth-century China witnessed the increasing publication of illustrated books of various kinds. This includes books on health preservation, which deals with treating illness and everyday practices that are good for one’s health conditions and longevity. Sleeping, eating, drinking, walking, reading, writing, playing musical instruments, traveling, collecting, and appreciating art objects were all related to nourishing one’s life. In 1591, the book Eight Discourses on the Nurturing of Life (Zunsheng bajian) was published. It covers the aspects mentioned above, and illustrations accompany a few sections. In addition to images that introduce gymnastic exercises, which have been discussed in academic research, there are also some images of objects. 

Fig. 1: Hamper for cold food and drink, in Zunsheng bajian: Eight Discourses on the Nurturing of Life (1591), Vol. 8, 40b. Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library, Chinese Rare Book Collection.

The first group of illustrations of objects is in the chapter on traveling in natural landscapes with friends. It is both a physical and spiritual pleasure to immerse oneself in nature, to enjoy the scenery, food, and drink of each season, and to create poems to record precious moments.

Fig. 2: Hamper with a stove, in Zunsheng bajian: Eight Discourses on the Nurturing of Life (1591), Vol. 8, 41a. Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library, Chinese Rare Book Collection.

In this chapter, two images introduce the internal structure of hampers and ways of packing (Figures 1 & 2). The author, Gao Lian, mentioned that he made both hampers himself. The first one is for cold food and drink, with upper layers for plates of different sizes and a lower layer for flagons and wine cups. The second hamper is equipped with a small stove in the lower layer. One can place pots for tea, wine, or congee in the middle layer for direct heating. Rather than depicting the food or drink themselves, the illustration is more about better utilizing the space for packing, which is also an element that helps the reader enjoy the trips.

The second image on flagons further emphasizes the practical purpose of using it (Figure 3). It shows two types of flagons: one round and the other gourd-shaped. Accompanying texts introduce their materials and uses. Here images simply show the shape of flagons as a visual introduction.

Fig. 3: The flagons, in Zunsheng bajian: Eight Discourses on the Nurturing of Life (1591), Vol. 8, 41b. Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library, Chinese Rare Book Collection.

However, illustrations are far more than just practical methods of  instruction. In other cases, they were as crucial as the text. A considerable quantity of illustrations in Eight Discourses are in the chapter on inkstone. One can grind an ink stick against the inkstone with water to make ink for writing and painting. Finely made inkstones vary in shape and materials, and are valuable collectibles commonly seen in study rooms. Literate people used them for writing or painting, appreciating the stones’ aesthetic quality, and thus gaining pleasure and cultivating their spirit. In the book, Gao shows his preference for inkstones over other collectibles. He carefully introduced the ways of appreciating and preserving inkstones, explaining the desired textures and colors of stones for grinding ink. He was sad that inkstones were less valued than gold or jade, easily lost or hidden at corners. 

His concern is demonstrated first through the number of illustrations: Gao included images of twenty high-quality inkstones that he claimed to have seen in the recent decade (Figures 4 & 5). Afraid that these fine works would be lost or damaged in the future, he made images as a record, stating that “I’m ashamed of my limited painting skill, failing to portray these inkstones fully.”1 This suggests that, for Gao, images can serve as a more helpful method than texts for describing objects or instructions for collecting.

Fig. 4: Inkstones, in Zunsheng bajian: Eight Discourses on the Nurturing of Life (1591), Vol. 15, 24b–25a. Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library, Chinese Rare Book Collection.

Compared with the illustrative images with inserted texts on hampers and flagons, the images here are more prominent and separated from the texts. Although aid is needed from the text to know the different materials and sizes of each stone, we can notice that more details are added to portray the patterns, textures, and shapes. The stone in Figure 5 is called “silver thread inkstone.” Besides the dimension, black color, and jade-like gentle texture, Gao emphasized that the silver thread patterns are “picturesquely intersected within the stone.”2 Therefore, images are both visual descriptions and aesthetic expressions. When appreciation of art works became a part of pursuing health, the images of health instruction went beyond illustrative functions. Illustrations of inkstones are not only visual translations of texts explaining “how to preserve health” but also convey artistic qualities that texts can hardly capture. 

Fig. 5: “Silver thread inkstone,” in Zunsheng bajian: Eight Discourses on the Nurturing of Life (1591), Vol. 15, 30b. Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Library, Chinese Rare Book Collection.

Images in Eight Discourses illustrate the concept of health preservation in sixteenth-century China; it was crucial to nourish one’s spirit with entertainment and art in addition to daily practices such as eating, sleeping, or exercising. Although the reasons for including or not including specific images can vary, these illustrations provide clues for understanding images in recipes for health. In Eight Discourses, images were deeply associated with the author’s own experience: he made or saw those objects with appreciation. For Gao, Images as recipes helped visualize texts for both practical and aesthetic purposes. 

Cheng He recently completed her PhD in History at the University of Warwick. Her doctoral research focuses on the evolving concept of “lacquer” in early modern Britain, examining its materiality and varied applications in art and medicine. She is interested in early modern material culture, history of science and medicine, and global art history. 

  1. Gao Lian 高濂 (active 16th century), Zunsheng bajian遵生八牋 Eight Discourses on the Nurturing of Life (1591), Vol. 15, 20b. All translations are the author’s own. ↩︎
  2. Gao, Zunsheng bajian, Vol. 15, 30b. ↩︎
Herbal Medicine, Medical Practitioners, Posts, Remedies, Series: Early Modern Chinese Studies

A Tale of Chiles, a Servant, and a Travelling Medical Scholar in Early Modern China

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By Brian Dott

Fig. 1. A few of the many varieties of chiles available at a market in Kunming, Yunnan, China. (Image Credit: Dott, 2017)

 

Fascinated by early modern Chinese cultural history, I research popular religion, especially pilgrimage, and the culinary and medical uses of chile peppers.  Eating Sichuan food, I wondered “how did the Chinese begin to consume such a spicy, introduced plant?”  All the myriad varieties of the chile pepper originated in the Americas.  They probably reached China in the 1570s.  The earliest known Chinese source dates to 1591 (Gao Lian, Zunsheng bajian [Eight discourses on nurturing life]).  While past and present Chinese use chiles most for culinary flavoring, Chinese adoption and adaption of this American pod did not take off until the chile was classified medically and some of its empirical effects within the human body observed. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there is no clear distinction between things taken into the body as sustenance and as medicine – everything taken in affects health.  Indeed, one medical text talking about chiles informs the reader: “To make medicine, chop finely, mix with pork fat and fry to make a dish” (Xu Wenbi, Xinbian shoushi chuanzhen [New compilation of the transmitted truths on longevity], 1771).  Furthermore, the earliest text to explicitly mention using chiles to flavor food is best described as a medical text (Shiwu bencao [Pharmacopeia of edible items], 1621).

As Carla Nappi has explored in her series of posts, Translating Recipes, some recipes read as stories or conversations.  Sharing medical recipes allows modern readers to listen in on narratives from the past.  A key author for my exploration is Zhao Xuemin (1719-1805).  Zhao was a medical practitioner and author who worked to update Chinese medical knowledge by including newly introduced ingredients (such as the chile pepper) and knowledge from less well-known practitioners.  He traveled extensively to consult with local experts, and incorporated materials from their manuscripts into his own work.  Indeed, less than a hundred years after his most famous work was completed, more than half of the works he cited were no longer extant (Bencao gangmu shiyi [Correction of omissions in the Systematic pharmacopeia]).

Chiles as Treatment for Malaria

Chiles were used as both a treatment for people who had contracted malaria and as a prophylactic to prevent infection.  A local history from Guangdong stated that “All [varieties of chiles] can remove water-borne malaria and disperse rheumatism.  . . .  In Guangxi malaria is even more prevalent.  One cannot go a single day without [them]” (Enping county gazetteer, 1766).  Zhao Xuemin recounts the following story about chiles and malaria:

Because [the chile’s] property is hot [it can act as a] dispersant by entering the heart and spleen meridians.  It can also disperse water damp.  In guihai (1743), I was in Lin’an [near Hangzhou], in the 6th month a young servant drank cold water and slept on the cold, damp ground, by autumn they had developed malaria.  [They took] myriad medicines without result.  In early winter, by chance [they] ate some chile paste.  They found this very palatable, and needed it with every meal.  In addition they also used [chiles] in a medicinal broth with meals.  Before long the malaria was cured. (Zhao Xuemin, Bencao gangmu shiyi, j. 8, 73b)

Zhao gives a scene setting – place and time.  He introduces the patient, including an emphasis on class, which indirectly provides an explanation for the poor choice of sleeping place.  Zhao also provides us with his explanation for how the infection occurred – conditions involving cold and water.  The heating and damp expelling characteristics of the chile are the traits Zhao sees as important for effecting this cure.  That the servant ate chile paste by chance means that it was probably commonly used, even in a region where the elite culinary traditions rejected strong flavors.  Here, we may be seeing class differences, as the lower classes in China tended to adopt the chile long before the elites.  Chiles could be homegrown, did not have to be purchased in a market, and helped make a starch-based diet tastier. 

The fact that the servant found the chile paste to be “palatable” reflects an understanding in TCM that an individual’s body can instill a craving for things it needs.  Furthermore, while that need and craving exist, strong or even unpleasant tastes and smells become bland or “palatable.”  Zhao is refreshingly candid that older cures (presumably including some of his own) had no effect.  We can also see the importance he placed on empirical knowledge – not just relying on systems and traditional classifications.  It appears that once he noticed an improvement in the patient’s condition, after the chance introduction of chile paste into their diet, Zhao introduced another form of chiles—medicinal broth – into the treatment regimen.  To modern readers, Zhao is frustratingly vague about the recipes for these treatments.  At one level, such details were probably not necessary for his intended audience – exact ingredients in the paste probably did not matter, as long as chiles were present, and everyone knew how to brew a medicinal broth.  More importantly, the anecdotal aspect of the description created an informal tone that may have made this treatment more believable to past readers than any mere list of ingredients.

 

For further reading (and recipes), see  Brian Dott, The Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography, Columbia University Press, 2020.

American Studies, Animals, Global Exchange, Medical Practitioners, Medicine, Modern, Plants and Herbs, Posts, Trade

Chinese American Herbal Medicine: A History of Importation and Improvisation

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By Tamara Venit Shelton

“Chinese herbalists imported everything from China.” This is what I consistently heard from herbalists I interviewed when writing Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace. As far as anyone knew, when the first generation of Chinese herbalists began to immigrate to the United States in the 1850s, they imported all their medicinal ingredients from China through the port of San Francisco. By 1878, there were eighteen wholesale companies in San Francisco that serviced Chinese herb shops across the United States. In later years, herbalists could find what they needed through wholesalers in Portland, Seattle, St. Louis, and Chicago.[i]

Fig 1: Frontispiece of The Science of Oriental Medicine, 1902. Los Angeles Herbalists Tom Leung and Li Wing advertised their remedies to English-speaking patients through long and short-form print advertisements. Public Domain.

Historians of China are aware of the importance of improvisation and substitution in traditional Chinese medicine, and yet the prevalent assumption that all Chinese medicines were imported to the United States made some sense. After all, according to thousands of years of Chinese herbal lore, therapeutic efficacy relied on a highly specific process of procuring medicinal plants, animals, and minerals. The collection or cultivation of traditional medicinal ingredients in China happened only in well-defined areas, under certain seasonal, climatic, and astrological conditions.

Yet as I dug into archives, historical newspapers, memoirs, and oral histories, it became apparent that historically, practitioners of traditional Chinese herbalism in America sourced most, but not all of their supplies in China. There is ample evidence – both anecdotal and archaeological – that the Chinese in America grew and foraged for local sources of medicinal ingredients. These findings speak to the ways in which diasporic Chinese medicine responded to new conditions as well as to the resourcefulness and adaptability of its practitioners.

Fig 2: A.P. Russell, a West Virginia merchant, shows off a 1700 pound shipment of ginseng destined for China in 1928. Wild ginseng, foraged in Appalachia, was a major American export to China from the late eighteenth century until its overharvesting led to near extinction in the mid-twentieth century. Public Domain.

Looking back to the end of the nineteenth century, we see examples of Chinese and non-Chinese farmers growing medicinal herbs and roots for Chinese herb businesses. In 1898, a newspaper in Washington D.C. reported that Lee Poit, recently transplanted from California, had given up trying to compete in the crowded field of laundry and retail and was instead growing “many queer vegetables and herbs” on four acres of land that he rented near Terra Cotta Station, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Line.[ii] Across the country, J. B. McCloskey, an American farmer who studied commercial ginseng production in Korea, opened his own farm on two acres in Oxnard and became the major supplier for Los Angeles-area Chinese physicians in 1904.[iii]

Zoological-based medicines also seem to have been locally sourced. The Chinese collected all manner of reptiles and amphibians – snakes, lizards, frogs, and toads – to supplement dried, imported varieties in America. Sometimes, doctors substituted local species that seemed similar to what would have been available in China. In Boise, Idaho, C.K. Ah Fong famously used rattlesnake (a North American reptile) in traditional Chinese tinctures to treat arthritis, and amidst other Chinese health-related artifacts from Lovelock, Nevada, archaeologist Sarah Heffner has found bobcat bones that may have been used in place of expensive, imported tiger bones.[iv]

Fig 3: Canton Harbor and Factories with Foreign Flags, 1805. European and American traders exchanged medicinal goods through this port city. Public Domain.

Substitution was just one form of improvisational thinking among Chinese herbalists in the United States. Studies of hand-written prescriptions from Chinese American apothecaries reflect a tendency to include an unusually long list of ingredients. This divergence may have been an artifact of herbalists’ swift business in mail-orders for patients unable to meet face-to-face. Patients wrote letters describing their ailment or filled out a pre-printed “symptom sheet,” and the doctor sent back a package of medicine along with a detailed instruction sheet. With an extra-long list of ingredients, Chinese American herbalists could cover a lot of bases when confronted with ambiguous descriptions of symptoms.[v]

Fig 4: Cover image of Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace. Yale University Press.

 

Chinese doctors in the United States were not so bound by tradition that they resisted adapting their formularies to their new environment. We should remember them as the innovative immigrant entrepreneurs that they were. As herbalist Li Wing Fawn explained to the Los Angeles Times in 1897: “We shall not confine ourselves exclusively to the importations from the Orient, but shall seek out also the very many valuable medicinal herbs growing in our own country [the United States].”[vi]

 

 

 

[i] Haiming Liu, “Chinese Herbalists in the United States,” in Sucheng Chan, ed. Chinese American Transnationalism: the Flow of People, Resources, and Ideas between China and America during the Exclusion Era (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005), 138.

[ii] “Lee Has a Chinese Farm,” New York Times, 31 October 1898, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times.

[iii] “Local Ginseng Culture Promises Rich Returns,” Oxnard Courier, 27 May 1904; “Queer Chinese Medicines, Los Angeles Times, 11 August 1907, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times.

[iv] Sarah Heffner, “Exploring Health-Care Practices of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America,” Historical Archaeology 49 (2015): 141.

[v] Susie Lan Cassel et al, The Chinese in America: a History from Gold Mountain to the New Millennium (Lanham MD: AltaMira Press, 2002), 178.

[vi] Li Wing Fawn and B.C. Platt, “A Step in Advance,” Los Angeles Times, 26 May 1896, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times.

 

About

Tamara Venit Shelton is a professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and author of the award-winning book, Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace. 

Early Modern, Food and Drink, Global Exchange, Knowledge Transmission, Posts, Printed Books, Women and Gender

One of Many Ways for Macanese Aluar

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By Mukta Das

Aluar de Anita Lei Tao

1 cate de farinha

½ cates de assucar pedra

6 taels de farinha pulu

3 cates de amendoas

5 cates de pinhao

½ cates de manteiga

3 cocos (metade para santem)[i]

– Albertina Borges, M d C., Receitas culinárias macaenses, 10 March 1936 – 6 October 1937, MO/AH/CCS/05, p. 44. Macau Historical Archives, 44.

Aluar is a Macanese Christmas candy which bears a striking resemblance to South Indian coconut sweet aluva, itself linked to middle eastern halva and to Portuguese alfelos. Aluar’s imprecise origins reveals something of the circulation of culinary knowledge within the Portuguese colonial empire, which claimed this southern Chinese coastal city from 1557.

The recipe above is complete, and there are no accompanying cooking instructions. It is one of many handwritten recipes contained in a notebook in the Receitas culinárias macaenses collection in the Macao Historical Archives. The collection comprises 13 recipe notebooks written between 1932 and 1943 by two women, Candida Carvalho and her daughter Albertina Borges, who wrote in Portuguese, Macanese, English and transliterated Cantonese. The only source of its kind in the archives, these faded, age-browned texts reflect the linguistic diversity demanded from those living in colonial Macau. The original notebooks were deposited by Candida’s granddaughter and Albertina’s niece, Cíntia Conceição Serrano.

Written sources for Macanese food history are rare; recipes were passed on orally among women, but “were never really detailed … and measurements were often incomplete”[ii] – with observers suggesting that recipes were jealously guarded and reluctantly shared.

Judging a recipe as incomplete is problematic. Janet Floyd and Laura Forster argue that handwritten sources had an ambiguous role in the transmission of knowledge. Recipe writing for women was a community enterprise on to which was “inscribe[d] individual lives and situations.”[iii]

Candida’s and Albertina’s notebooks mirror these ideas. Anita Lei Tao’s recipe for aluar (above), transcribed by Albertina, is one of several attributed to other women, including Marinquinha Lung whose recipe uses cooked potato and comes with cooking instructions. Recipes for ‘cake de Felicia Marquez’ and ‘pudim de ovos e laranja (Sara Remedios),’ for bebincas, soportels,diabos, curries, wedding cakes, Christmas cakes, Easter candies, fish and pork pastries, sambals, marmalades and fig syrups are repeated several times, attributed to a dozen women and with similar creative variations.

Macanese senhora in her traditional attire, the dó, early twentieth century. From Ana Maria Amaro, “Sons and Daughters of the Soil: The First Decade of Luso Chinese Diplomacy,” Review of Culture, No. 20 (2nd series), 1994, Cultural Institute of Macao; and Lisbon Geographic Society. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

This culinary corpus was and remains powerful and agentive because it was generously shared and added to, but also restricted to those who embodied a certain set of somatic skills. The Portuguese maintained their presence in their port colonies by the cheapest and most sparsely populated means possible. Subjects—sailors, soldiers, priests, traders, producers and processors—drawn from local populations, with little or no help from the state, made their own way by trading on their level of Portuguese-ness, through blood, Catholicism, custom, by adopting Portuguese names but also by demonstrating knowledge of how to cook. Racially diverse women who could cook creatively from a flexible oeuvre gave this corpus its power, where Portuguese cooking techniques and tastes originating from Lisbon met an array of local ingredients and flavourings such as coconut and rice flour. Those who could cook well drew power from it, becoming powerful female compradors and food entrepreneurs.[iv] Prescriptive ingredient lists or cooking instructions were neither useful nor necessary.

 

A diorama of a Macanese dining room and Catholic family feast in the Macao Museum. Photo credit: M. Das

 

Given the 11-year context of Candida and Albertina’s recipe writing, during which Macau was implicated in China’s civil war from 1927, the Sino-Japanese war from 1937 and the Asia-Pacific War from 1941, the imperative of compiling this corpus is clear. Still, Candida and Albertina’s 13 notebooks were written for such women who knew how to cook well, and whose creativity in the kitchen signalled their Portuguese-ness.

Cintia’s own cookbook based on these notebooks, Traditional Macanese Recipes From My Auntie Albertina (2013), is one of only a handful of published Macanese cookbooks. Modern cookbook publishing standards demand that Cíntia accompany lists of ingredients with cooking instructions. “The way we learn how to cook has changed” Cíntia concedes before dismissing her own instructional text by adding “food is more appetizing when it is cooked with… creativity. Believe this!… [Y]ou need some creativity.”[v]

 

 

[i] 1 catty (500g or 600g) of flour, ½ catty of rock sugar, 227g of glutinous rice flour, 3 catties (1.5kg or 1.8kg) of almonds, 5 catties (2.5kg or 3kg) of pine nuts, ½ catty (250g or 300g) of butter and 3 coconuts.

[ii] Alexander Mamak, ‘In Search of a Macanese Cookbook,’ in Sidney C. H. Cheung and C. B. Tan (eds), Food and Foodways in Asia: Resource, Tradition and Cooking (New York: Routledge, 2009),  159–70, 161.

[iii] Janet Floyd and L. Forster, The Recipe Reader: Narratives, Contexts, Traditions (Hants, and VT: Ashgate, 2003), 7.

[iv] Janet P. Boileau, A Culinary History of the Portuguese Eurasians: The Origins of Luso-Asian Cuisine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries(University of Adelaide, 2010).

[v] Cíntia Conceição Serrano, Traditional Macanese Recipes from My Auntie Albertina (Macau: International Institute of Macau, 2013), 13.

 

About

Dr. Mukta Das received her doctorate in 2018 researching the social and historical dynamics of South Asian food and belonging in the Pearl River Delta region of China. She is interested in cooking and identify and co-presents a biweekly audio newsletter, XO Soused, with two Michelin-starred chef Andrew Wong on Chinese culinary cultures.