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CHINA: WINTER COLD REMEDIES
Mandarin/Nat
According to Chinese medical theory, winter is the season for every living thing to absorb nutrition.
There is a saying in China: `Take tonics in winter and be strong in spring to fight a tiger'.
Apart from traditional physical exercise, old Chinese people reinforce their `Qi' (vital energy) in winter by taking herbal tonic paste or infusion.
The Tong Han Chen Tang pharmacy in Shanghai is renowned as the best place to go for winter remedies.
No, this old man in Shanghai is not trying to imitate Michael Jackson's dance style in one of his last stage shows.
He is practising his morning exercise of Tai Chi Quan.
But as winter hits Chinese cities, Tai Qi is not the only way used by the elderly to keep their body warm and fit during the cold season.
For many of China's aged population, 70 per cent in a city of 13 million like Shanghai, winter is the time to take winter tonics.
With a history of 215 years, the Tong Han Chun Tang Chinese Medicine Store in Shanghai is among the oldest in the city.
Its speciality : winter tonics.
On the first floor, pharmacists specially trained in Chinese herbs prepare daily the equivalent of 30 kilos of medical herb teas.
Chinese medicine is rich with several centuries of experience and knowledge of herbs and animal extracts used to treat body malfunctions.
The Chinese believe Western medicine is good only for emergency cases when a virus needs to be killed, while Chinese traditional medicine is better to adjust the circulating system into its best working condition.
Afraid of many side-effects with Western medicine, a lot of Chinese would rather take Chinese tonics to strengthen the body.
Each potion is made out of thousand of plants and animal extracts carefully stocked and repertoried.
Some of them are as strange as this dried lizard, supposedly excellent to cure bone problems.
Cooked in huge copper marmite, some winter tonic syrups include up to 20 different kinds of ingredients.
As in the past, they are given to the customer in a small ceramic jar, containing usually the dose for one to two months.
With the figure of the god of longevity on it they are supposed to help you to live longer.
Every cold season, some 10 000 people, most of them aged over 40, come here to buy traditional potions that will help them to fight the cold inside their body.
After an on the site examination by a doctor specialised in traditional medicine, each of them is prescribed a remedy.
Made out of various kinds of medicinal herbs and animal extracts, winter tonics are aimed at facilitating blood circulation, giving a feeling of warmth.
SOUNDBITE: (Mandarin)
After three years of taking winter tonics, I feel much better due to their effects, I am not afraid of cold anymore while in the past I used to feel frozen all the time, now I do not need to wear so many clothes.
SUPER CAPTION: Yang Yimin, customer.
But winter tonics are also good to cure certain diseases or organ malfunctions, especially in the cold season.
SOUNDBITE: (Mandarin)
By taking winter tonics, a lot of chronic diseases can be cured such as chronic kidney or liver malfunction as well as heart disease. There are a lot of chemical elements in Chinese traditional medicine, whether organic ones or mineral ones.
SUPER CAPTION: Kong Xianling, Chinese traditional medicine doctor.
Prices from winter tonics are not cheap and vary from 300 to 1200 yuan per dose (35 to 150 US dollars).
But customers says that their benefits are higher than if they have to take Western medicine, where prices are often higher.
Winter tonics have become a good business in China and it is apparently not about to stop.
SOUNDBITE: (Mandarin)
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