You're listening to Roundtable, I'm Yuhong Lin, joined by Lai Ming and Fei Fei.
For this episode, imagine this.
You're out with friends at a cafe and instead of the usual latte, you're sipping on a cup of Yang Ming Beauty Tea.
Your friends raise an eyebrow, explain it's for your internal heat.
And they're suddenly asking where they can get some too.
Welcome to the world of TCM food trends, where ancient remedies meet Instagramable snacks.
Is it just a fashion phase?
Or is there more to this horrible craze?
After that, we also present Roundtable's special segment that grants you a bad motivation every week.
But now, in recent years, traditional Chinese medicine has leaped out of its ancient type or let's say form and into the buzzing world of modern gastronomy, captivating young people everywhere from herbal -infused deserts and tonic teas to bread baked with medicinal twists.
These innovations are blending well with wellness.
And when we talk about these trends are being welcomed among young people, are we being exaggerating a little bit or is it really popular now?
Well, I remember taking a stroll down the downtown of Nanqiang, the capital city of Jiangxi and I couldn't help but notice the number of stores selling medicinal teas.
So I know that this is a place where young people tend to hang out and I know that I saw people lying up for these tea.
And then I think this is just one city in the center of the country and I have read reports about how people are lining up elsewhere.
So I believe this is something that really is gaining momentum over the internet.
And I can't say this is not like something extraordinary because 2 c .m., Chinese people have been having them for thousands of years.
Even in my home when we cooked chicken broth where my mom would use gastrodin, I think that's some traditional medicine.
It's supposed to alleviate the internal heat.
Although I personally don't enjoy it, but she made a point of adding them every time she cooks them.
And I also know that in Southern China, in Guangdong province, there's the habit of cooking soup.
The soup with different ingredients and herbs is very important.
And also here in Beijing, I think back in a couple of months ago, a very famous TCM brand opened their cafe slash bakery nearby here in Wukosong, Tobi -se Pacific.
I do want to get a grab of certain bread they sell, but I was never able to buy them because they were sold out every morning.
Just so popular. Yeah, it was so popular.
You have to get there.
If you really want to buy their bread, you have to get there early in the morning to be able to get a taste of their most popular items.
Actually, according to the 2024 to 2029 analysis report on the trends of the medicinal cuisine industry here in China, the market size has been expanding year by year.
In 2023, the market size of traditional medicine cuisine in China exceeded over $23 billion showing a year on year growth of 10, actually almost 11%.
And the strong growth momentum indicates that the medicinal cuisine industry has definitely maintained a high growth rate in recent years.
We are seeing the numbers.
We are seeing the really long lines and we are seeing the sold out plate or sold out sign of the Tongrenjang bread every day.
So I guess the trend is real.
Yeah, when you know that people are willing to pay good money for a coffee coming from cat or duck droppings, then you would expect them to be welcome to something that's even more healthier.
Yes. And not only the consumers, actually approximately 78 ,600 companies are involved in the medicinal cuisine sector.
I mean, there definitely would be different reasons when they're getting popularity among consumers, when they get more and more Instagrammable and be a must in your gathering together with your friends, something you not only while something you put in the very carefully selected knife photos that you
share on your WeChat moment, then it's a trend.
So what are some examples of these things?
What besides medicinal bread, what else are we looking at?
Well, the product types range from popular wellness drinks such as Rose Puer, Puer we know, which is a kind of tea coming from Southwest China, and it's supposed to help you stay fit and try and reduce body weight.
And then there's also dried tangerine peel.
These things can go exceptionally expensive if you are willing to go for the high end products, and hibiscus tea, and then the sour plum soup, which is more like a beverage when you go to a traditional Chinese restaurant like hot pot and late night drink, which contains ginseng, goji berries and other
herbs claiming to nourish and boost health aimed at those who stay up late.
And there's the yangming beauty tea, which is recommended for people suffering from internal heat, meaning you get acne and you get angry very easily, means you may have some internal heat going on within your body.
And it's the Li -Li Yuan Shan, which is meant for people with the soul for us.
I think we should try that.
We should. And for those of you who are not that familiar with the concept of traditional Chinese medicine, traditional Chinese medicine view the entire human system as a whole.
It's not about curing your symptoms.
It's more about achieving the balance within your body.
That is why we have the yin and yang, we have the internal heat and internal cold.
That is why we believe by twiddling a little bit of one element in your body would help you reach a better state that would remove some of your symptoms.
So that's why Lai Ming has mentioned all those.
But I feel like Lai Ming's list of medicine or medicinal cuisine are quite traditional to my view.
So for those of you who are quite familiar with the traditional Chinese medicine system, these like Gogi berry or, for example, rose impuarti or ginseng, these are quite, in my opinion, traditional and popular for several years already.
You hear people having Gogi berries if they're like pulling late knives and working very Well, they used to be associated with middle aged men who care a lot about health.
But now we know there's a trend going on.
It's been going on for several years when we mock the people born in the 1990s for having started caring about their health, even as early as in their early 20s.
So this has been a trend for quite a few years.
So I imagine the businesses must have ceased on the opportunity to come up with products that these young people are seeking.
Yes. So there's something new here.
Actually, there are at least two somethings new here.
One is that young people are embracing these ingredients and are embracing this new taking care of themselves through the ways of changing their lifestyle, kind of minding their hairline.
Yeah. Yes, that too.
So that's the first one, first new things we're looking at here.
And the second new thing is that on top of, for example, putting the Gogi berry in your thermos cup and drink from it all day long, we are looking at some very innovative products, bread, tea and even the kind of soap bag that you can use to put into, for example, your pork soap and also coffee.
And also I think one thing really struck with me with the technology applied during this process, they have using a time diagnosed devices to you know, you can snap a photo of your ton and then sending them to the system to have artificial intelligence to diagnose for you to recommend what would be
the best herb or ingredients you can use, because, you know, in the view of traditional Chinese medicine, ginseng cannot be used by everybody.
It's not the best herb because for certain people, for example, if you have a lot of internal heat, ginseng is not just too much.
Yeah, it's too much for you.
You should go the other way around, for example, using the or other ingredients that's not as popular as ginseng.
There will be lots of seeds and cucumbers.
Yeah, or some iced tea that the province of Guangdong really likes.
So some technologies would diagnose for you and then recommend this drinks and also there have been I think incorporating Western cuisine with the traditional Chinese medicine like coffee.
We now have goji berry coffee or osmendous coffee or even croissants made with goji berry as well.
And these have been embraced by young people here in China.
And also, I think it's getting momentum overseas as well.
We've heard people talking about drinking goji berry drinks or using traditional Chinese medicine methods like washa for their well -being, wellness and also health benefits from that.
Yes. And one of my favorite among all these different products is goji berry as well as Chinese date ice cream.
I can never understand the mix.
And when you're going for something that sort of is supposed to boost up your internal heat, you're not supposed to enjoy it with ice cream.
You balance it out.
OK, so here's my next question.
How effective or how efficient are these kind of medicinal cuisine?
Are we looking at having goji berry bread for one day and the next day I'm all like energetic and I can cope with anything in my life?
Nothing like that existing.
Thank you. I think they do have the effect of adding the flavors that people can enjoy.
I mean, I personally am kind of tired of the flavors I get in my company cafeteria and I would welcome something that they can do to experiment with in the form of tangerine peel cinnamon apple pastry and no hang goo blueberry bread, which is something that's really good for our throat.
Yeah, it's also good for the mental health as well.
You know, as someone who believes that I'm very I don't know how to say that in English.
It's also one of the challenging part when prepping for this topic is the names of different ingredients and herbs and different symptoms you have as a person who believe I am very humid inside has a lot of tricksy, you know, drinking per body is a very effective way in the eyes of traditional Chinese
medicine. And I'm glad a lot a lot of brands are launching pearl belly drinks now in the market.
I'm not sure of how effective those drinks are, but it's definitely helping me mentally thinking if I drink it on a daily basis, it will help to reduce the humidity inside my system.
I think the key word here is on a daily basis.
That's the thing about traditional Chinese medicine.
One of the things that is it's not meant for you to be cured overnight, at least if you're not showing certain acute symptoms, if it's only a problem of your system being not balanced enough, there are ways to make that balance come back to the perfect state.
Yet you cannot really find or let's say find the cure in merely changing your eating habit and your diet habit.
But I think one of the perks here is that or at least one takeaway here is that we see more and more young people starting to care about their their health and they want to find a way find actually, I think it's a really good way that is changing their life habit, changing their daily routine, changing
their lifestyle to achieve that healthier states.
Yeah, when we said we didn't believe in the immediate effect of consuming medicinal cuisine and what we really meant was that we don't believe a single goji berry croissant is going to solve your problem once and for all.
What we are seeing is that yes, like New Will Horning said earlier, you need to continuously and consistently pay attention to the stuff you eat, you put in your mouth and your stomach because really in China like we mentioned earlier, we believe in yao shi tongyuan meaning whatever is good for your
health in the form of medicine, it might also come in the form of the food that you eat.
So the jingses that we my mother used to put into the soup that's that was added out of the belief that this is good for our health and we treat it as as ordinary food.
And the same goes for other products that young people are going after but it's important to know that we need to be consistent and we need to be more informed in going after particular products.
So for instance, like Feifei as an example earlier, my body, if we believe in the theories is more like internal cold internally cold as compared to my father who like to crank up his AC in his office to like 22 degrees celsius, I couldn't stand that.
I have more internal cold than internal heat and such.
I couldn't go after something like Lianfeng, something that alleviates the internal heat.
In fact, I need something that boosts up the internal heat to build a balance.
So one would advise for people who see the trend and would like to write on the trend and that is to be mindful of your own body type.
And if you really care about it, do some research and maybe comes out a professional doctor or something.
I personally have seen I knew Hongling was there too, a very, very skilled traditional Chinese medicine doctor and she was able to tell from the color of my tongue that I was going through certain issues and I followed her advice and things really improved.
So that's one thing to look out for.
The other thing is while we believe in Yao Shi Tong Yuan, while we believe that food and medicine they're supposed to be equally efficient, we also are mindful that anything can be poisonous.
So medicine that you're taking can have some side effects.
So I personally seen an example of people deciding on their own without expert guidance to use medicinal herbs in their life and their symptoms have only gotten worse.
So while I'm sure that some of the very influential businesses like Torontang know what they're doing and they are probably coming up with the safe options, I'm not sure about the less well -known and less supervised businesses out there that they are responsible enough to give something that's innocuous
to everybody, people with different kinds of body types.
Yes and definitely for this trend at least we can count on more and more people being curious about the trend and learning more knowledge about traditional medicine and knowing a bit more about how to take care of yourself.
In the meantime the 2024 World Conference on Traditional Medicine will take place in Beijing from the 3rd to 4th December 2024 and it will this two -day event will include a series of panel discussions and sessions covering diverse topics such as evidence -based traditional medicine, advanced technologies,
AI applications in traditional medicine research and the standardization and safety of herbal medicines as well.
So if you're interested you can take a look at this new conference and in the meantime for the following two days Roundtable would cover more topics on traditional Chinese medicine.
You're listening to Roundtable coming up next Motivational Monday.
It's Roundtable with myself, Niu Honglin, Lai Ming and Fei Fei, Motivational Mondays.
What are some quotes that will give us a little bit motivation for the week?
Well how about I begin with my quote and that is something from the British science fiction writer and futurist Arthur C.
Clarke who wrote the famous space Odyssey series I'm in the process of finishing the last one of the series and one of his quotes said the creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised but in the long run the only human activity is really worthwhile are the search for knowledge and the creation of beauty
this is beyond argument the only point of debate is which comes first so his point is that over the long history of humanity what really matters when we are living on this planet is that we we continue searching for knowledge we continue creating beauty so we are artists we are scientists we look for ways
to improve our lives we look for ways to prove that we have our own perspectives we have our own sense of what is beautiful and what touches the innermost part of our hearts of our emotions and this is much more important than let's say I'm wealthy and I accrued a significant amount of money that I
couldn't possibly spend throughout my lifetime so this is something to think about and about the last sentence there's no argument about the importance of that search for knowledge the search the creation of beauty and the accrue creation of wealth but the point of debate is which comes first some people
might believe that they have to have a means to survive before they can engage in more creative or more long -term planning more entertaining activities in our lives but I believe we can all multitask I think for human beings as a species we can multitask we know some very famous artist who was poor throughout
his lifetime only to be famous and well -known posthumously and so as a species we can multitask and as a society we can allocate resources differently to pursue development in different aspects but as individuals we can also multitask I mean even as we try to make ends meet try to pay our rent we can also spare a moment
in our lives maybe in the afternoon after you consuming after consuming some Gorgiberi croissants you can sit back and learn some art painting music and the enjoyment of and even the creation of art that's something that we might look back upon when we are older and say that we achieved more than just
made some money I think that is a very good point and previously on roundtable we talked about doing things that are considered useless in life occasionally that is one way to make yourself feel better about yourselves and the useless things we identified and listed include learning to paint learning
a certain kind of music instrument and try to collect some falling leaves and make it into some artworks and especially doing that enjoying that process with your kids these are not that quote -unquote useful as in they're not that productive or that these kind of hobbies would not make you a lot of money
and make you wealthy but they are definitely useful for your mental health yeah leave the productive part to AIs we humans are supposed to be more spectacular and magnificent in our own creation yeah and and I think it also comes down to how you would envision our world to be do you want a more beautiful
and intelligent society or do you want just people looking for perpetual economic growth and money is the only thing matters in society and every part of the society counts and that comes down really to my quote for today is from American political theorist John Schar and he says the future is not someplace
we are going but one we are creating the paths are not to be found but made and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination so um it shows us you know the importance of actions sometimes we are trapped in a mindset that we need to be prepared we need to have plans we need
to have a clear picture of the future sometimes do yes we sometimes do we want to know what we are getting in the future but the thing is um most of the time the plan is never 100 percent ready and we will definitely meet something in the plan and we most of the time don't know what the future holds
that's because as Schar points out the future is created by us by every action we take so i think for some some period of time we should never spend too much time thinking about the future or planning for the future but essentially we need to take actions and that as Schar puts it actions change the destination the destination we're
hoping to reach is determined really by us yeah just to know that there's plenty of actors at play here and everybody's making their decisions and every decision has an impact on the on the plan that you have and on the world that we're living at such uh it's also important to be able to adapt to the changing
situations whereas just as it's important to have a plan to begin with yes and being not being able to um let's say work in accordance with the plan every single step should not be a source for your anxiety which leads to my motivational Monday today that is worrying about something bad before it happens
means you've experienced the bad thing twice and if if you keep thinking about it afterwards it's like going through it three times so i think it's saying stop worrying i mean just deal with the problems you meet jump over the hurdles you see and try to tackle the challenges you face it will be okay
i mean all the parties changing and interfering with your plans are most occasionally helping you to get there with your goal and that is the most important so hopefully our motivational Mondays have helped you getting a little more strength to have a better state for your coming week that brings us
to the end of today's round table until next time keep the conversations going and the ideas flowing i'm yong hong lin with lai ming and fei fei thank you for listening bye bye
