I got in the car with my son, who was refusing to wear his hat and wanted me to turn the heater up full blast. I drove past swarms of children and teenagers on their way to school in the 33 degree weather this morning. My son and I looked at their shorts, skirts and thin sweatshirts, saw their bare necks and heads, legs, shivering from the cold as they stood with their arms wrapped around themselves, trying to stay warm.

My son is only six, but we’ve talked a lot about Zheng Qi and Wei Qi…which we refer to in simplistic terms as “The Soldiers.” Today we talked about The Soldiers at The Doorways and gates that go into our bodies. We talked about our bathroom door and how we almost have to slam it closed in the winter because it swells from the cold, but in the summer, it opens and closes so easily.

He asked me why sweating isn’t so good for us in the winter and we thought together about how hard it must be for The Soldiers to close The Doors in the wintertime after they are opened from sweating. If these doors are left open, cold and wind can get inside and make us sick. We played with these concepts and with his help, I began to see even more fully how simple and amazing these ideas around seasonal living are. He must have seen it too, because he quickly put his hat on and turned the heat down a little. He wants to be healthy and he wants to thrive – it’s just a matter of communicating how to do that and empowering him to start figuring these things out on his own.

This is what is so beautiful about Chinese medicine and ancient medicine in general. Really, it’s what is so beautiful about ancient thinking. This type of thinking honors both the artistic and the scientific points of view. It allows a type of intelligence that includes the imagination, somatic sensation and emotional input. It’s a world view based on beauty and observation, both inside ourselves and out and requires that we pay attention to what’s going on around us at any given time – rather than putting value only on the abstract.

Instead of trying to quote facts or studies that would be meaningless to this child, we were able to talk about something we both experience daily – the inability of our bathroom door to close. We used our imagination, our intuition and our logic to come to conclusions together….and that’s the other big thing. Instead of some pedantic exercise in lecturing another human being about the facts of life, of this body, of this world – we discussed these things as equals, as two beings coming together with our equally valid and wonderful experience and in this way we both learned something. What an amazing gift to start seeing the world in this way, to start seeing our health in this way – to be in partnership for the discovery  of health in the relationship between patient and practitioner, parent and child, etc.

So much of  Chinese medical diagnosis, whether “Classical,” or  ”Traditional,” focuses on organ pathology when dealing with erectile dysfunction and other problems related to the male genital area. It is definitely possible for this to be a channel problem, especially when dealing with younger men, but I rarely hear it talked about as such. If we pay attention to our surroundings, our culture and our current lifestyle practices, perhaps we will start to see that something that may be hiding under the Chinese medicine radar for us.

Portland, OR is a town focused on cycling. We’ve got over 324 miles of bike lanes as well as the highest share of bicycle commuters (6-8%) in any US city. Bicycling here is considered not only exercise or a means of transportation, but a complete lifestyle that reduces petroleum usage and keeps the environment clean. It’s no wonder that many cyclists, women included, do not often associate, nor talk about, the genital numbness and sexual dysfunction that is now being linked to riding on saddles with long “noses”. It can be embarrassing, not to mention, frustrating when one is trying so hard to do the right thing by working at a petroleum-free commute.

In a typical seated position, no pressure at all is applied to the perineum. The ischial tuberosity (“sitz bones”) typically take on the body weight. It should be fairly obvious to a CM practitioner that if so many channels (Jing, Mai, Luo, etc) are running through the genital area that putting a significant amount of pressure on those channels will cause a problem. Any report of genital numbness when cycling supports this. We know that numbness is a sign that those tissues are not being nourished properly.

In June, a New York Times article discussed a series of studies by Steven M. Schrader have shown that a traditional bicycle saddle allows for a very unnatural condition in which your perineal area, including all it’s surface nerves and blood vessels, takes on 25-40% of your body weight. Within only a few minutes, normal oxygen circulation levels in that important area go down by 80%. With the prostate being buried in this area, it’s a real problem for the health of that highly important tissue.

It’s no wonder that in 1997, urologist Irwin Goldstein declared:

There are only two kinds of male cyclists — those who are impotent and those who will be impotent.

Currently, the only saddles that have been shown to significantly reduce pressure on the perineum are noseless saddles. In Shrader’s studies with male police officers, he found that noseless saddles reduced genital numbness, improved genital sensitivity and officers reported improved erectile function.

Another study at Yale that focused on women showed that the “partial cutout” saddles, currently being sold as items to reduce perineal pressure actually INCREASE pressure on a woman’s genital area.

Regardless of study after study (which I will refrain from repeating here), the cycling community fails to be supportive of the switch. As the NYT article reported, the editor in chief of Bicycling Magazine said that cyclists would be “too embarrassed” to show up to a race with a noseless saddle. Many online cycling bloggers complain that speed and maneuverability will be destroyed by switching to a noseless saddle, all the while admitting that they haven’t tried one yet.

Schrader’s study, entitled, “Cutting off the Nose to Save the Penis,” worked consistently with 90 officers. After the study, the benefits were so noticeable to officers that only three switched back to traditional saddles.

I post this today in the hopes that when working with cyclists, especially young cyclists, that we think about the recommendation of switching to a noseless saddle instead of focusing completely upon which Classical formula might be best. Our treatment strategy might also be aimed at getting circulation moving in the perineal and groin area as well. Certainly, increasing the circulation to that area will help with sexual function – but it will also help to prevent many of the other illnesses that can come about when tissues (including that important prostate) are not supplied with the oxygen and nutrients that they need (and deserve!).

Within the first section, on Spring, we are told that this is the time that things are manifesting. In particular, the character Chen 陳 is used. Part of the Shuowen Jiezi says of this character: 陳, that “曰陳者大昊之虛畫八卦之所木德之始故從木”.  I am most certainly no Bagua expert at all and so I asked Brian Pine about it. Please see the comments below for his opinion on this. According to him, Zhen/Thunder (震) is one of the two gua related to 木 (the other being Xun/Wind (巽)). 震 has two empty lines above. This gua goes with the direction of the Northeast, and could possibly represent the idea of winter turning into spring. Brian notes the similarity of the characters 陳 and 昊 with the character for “east,”: 東.

Zhi 志 is mentioned in each of the four seasonal sections that begin the chapter. I have translated Zhi (志) as “nature.” This is the same Zhi (志) ‘spirit’ that is associated with the Kidney and often translated as “will” in modern TCM textbooks. The concept of “will” implies a desire, wish or intention, none of which seem to fit well here. Zhi (志) can also mean “ambition,” “course,” “purpose,” “resolve” and “conviction”. As “nature” implies a sort of character, temperament or disposition, I believe it encompasses all of these ideas and more. At the opening of each seasonal cycle, if we follow the Qi of the phase we are in, we have the option of generating in ourselves the nature that truly defines us as a human being and dictates our thoughts and actions throughout the season.

At the end of each seasonal section, you will see a similar passage that illustrates the connectedness of each season to the next. For example, in Spring, “Very little can be offered towards the process of growth.” (奉 長 者 少). The Summer is the season associated with the Dao of Nourishing Growth. If one does not take care during the springtime, they will have little to utilize in the process of growth that will be coming in the summer.

In the Autumn seasonal section, we are told to “harvest and gather the Qi of vitality” (收 斂 神 氣). Here, the idea is to harvest and collect the Shen Qi (神 氣). 神  has various meanings depending on context. It is often translated as “spirit” or “heart spirit” in modern TCM textbooks. Etymology includes an altar礻on the left, with two hands stretching something 申 on the right. It can be translated as “mind,” “thought,” “spirit,” “god,” “essence,” “vitality,” “energy,” “immortality,” “wonder,” “mystery,” and so on. I have chosen “vitality” here due to aspects of harvesting the most important pieces of the self, the parts that keep us going strong throughout the winter so that the cycle will be able to start anew in the spring.

Now, for the really difficult passages. There has been much controversy with these passages over the years. In every translation that I have read, this portion of the chapter seems to be completely unrelated to the rest. I do not believe that to be correct. There is an intrinsically deep process that occurs between the Winter and the Spring in order to restart the cycle and bring about regeneration. I believe this passage comes after the Winter section because it describes this process for us and is fully related to that aspect of seasonal change.

天 氣 清 淨 ， 光 明 者 也 ， 藏 德 不 止 ， 故 不 下 也 。

The Qi of Heaven is clean and clear, light and illuminated.

It stores these virtues without limit, 

And therefore, they do not descend.

Here, Heaven is storing the virtues of Yang without limit: clean, clear, light and illuminated. They do not descend because it is the time of winter . We are told that in the winter time, we practice the Dao of Storage, we should not disrupt the yang, we should stay where it is warm and do not sweat (bring the yang to the surface). This idea of Heaven may be modeling the idea of the winter for us, and how we should behave in order to nurture the yang, continue with the storage so that once the Qi of Heaven and Earth begins to generate again, life can come forth in the Springtime.

天 明 則 日 月 不 明.  

When Heaven holds the illuminating brightness, 

Then the sun and moon are without illumination.

This is the situation during the winter time. All the warmth/illumination has gone into Heaven where it is being stored. We are told earlier that during spring, Heaven and Earth are just being generated/born. Their Qi joins in the summer and the Heavenly Qi is exhausting in the autumn. Once we arrive at winter, the Earth is cracking from ice and we are warned that the Yang cannot be disturbed. This can lead us to the conclusion that Heaven is now in complete storage (in alignment with the winter Qi, the Dao of Storage). When all the illuminating brightness is stored in Heaven, it is no longer present upon the sun and moon.

Mozi taught that Heaven ordered the sun, moon and stars to enlighten and guide the people. When we see that the sun and moon are without the illuminating brightness of Heaven, we know that it is proper to store our Yang as well. It is by Heaven’s light that the sun and moon have their light.

It is also important to note that in the previous section on winter, we are told to rise when we have waited for the sunlight (必 待 日 光). This tells us that there is still light 光 present and that this is a different quality than the 明 that is not present upon the sun and moon in the winter.

邪 害 空 竅, 陽 氣 者 閉 塞, 地 氣者 冒 明, 雲 霧 不 精  則 上 應 白 露 不 下 。

If Xie injures through the empty cracks,

The Yang Qi is locked and obstructed,

The Earth Qi is recklessly illuminated,

And the clouds and mist are not refined, 

Then the response from above is that the White Dew (白 露) does not descend.

Again, this is why it is important to follow the Dao of Storage, keeping the yang hidden and protected, filling what is valuable and making sure not to disturb the surface. If there is a disturbance on the exterior, cracks will open, allowing the Xie to harm what should be protected in this time of storage. The Yang Qi is then obstructed and locked out of it’s protective place where it should be in resting at this season. Due to the disruption of the Yang Qi, the Earth Qi becomes recklessly illuminated and this is highly inappropriate for the winter time, the time of storage. Due to this inappropriate action, the clouds and mist cannot be properly refined between Heaven and Earth and they do not descend to nourish as they should.

惡氣 不 發 ， 風 雨 不 節 ， 白 露 不 下 ， 則 菀 槁 不 榮 。

If the corrupt Qi is not expelled,

The winds and rain are not restrained,

And the White Dew fails to descend,

Then what is bountiful will wither and nothing will thrive.

These things all go back to the previous passage in which storage was not properly taken care of, Xie invaded through the cracks, the Yang was disturbed and due to all of this, the proper relationship between Heaven and Earth that would create the White Dew never took place. If that corrupt Qi is not expelled, and the recklessness of the Earth Qi results in unrestrained wind and rain, along with a failure of the White Dew to nourish the life upon the Earth, there will be nothing that can thrive. Early on in the chapter, it is part of the Qi of Spring that the living things should be thriving 榮.

賊 風 數 至， 暴 雨 數 起 ， 天 地 四 時 不 相 保 ， 與 道 相 失 ， 則 未 央 絕 滅。

If thieving winds (賊 風) arrive frequently,

Violent rains regularly rise up, 

The four seasons of Heaven and Earth do not sustain each other,

And the Dao that supports them is lost,

Then there is nothing to unite the seasons,

And they are severed and extinguished.

In the previous portion of the chapter, each seasonal section ended with a warning that illustrated to the reader that if the advice for that season was not followed, there would be some type of calamity in the following season. In this way, we should be aware that following the proper recommendations for the particular season will support what must occur in the following season. All of the seasons are united in a cycle, everything is dependent on what occurred in the cycle before.

Josh makes his amazing chai by boiling a fresh cup of soy milk with the bouquet garni (herbs and black tea) inside, pressing the ginger as it simmers. It’s got an amazing citrus flavor to it and I was convinced he had added lemon zest the first time I tasted it. I believe now that the lemony flavor is achieved because each cup is made fresh, the ginger is cooked for a shorter period and possibly because of the alchemy that occurs with the soy milk.

I prefer to use raw cow’s milk/cream or coconut milk as I have been a little wary of soy milk and am still working on researching that bit. (Kathleen DeMaisons has a nicely written little piece that covers some of my concerns but doesn’t highlight soy as a huge criminal either.) I also have a 6-year old son who LOVES chai almost as much as I do – so I make a chai mix that we keep in the fridge to save time on a daily basis. I cook the herbs for a much longer time and the tea for a much shorter time (only steeping it) than Josh does. My tea has a much earthier flavor, including lower notes, for this reason. If you prefer a more citrus style tea with higher notes, I would suggest trying to make your tea a cup at a time.

You can use whatever milk you wish in this recipe. If  you choose to use coconut milk, I urge you to make it yourself rather than using canned milk (which may contain BPAs in the coating). It’s quite easy to make, though I don’t have time to write up another entry about that right now, so I will refer you to Elana Amsterdam’s blog for that recipe. For my coconut milk, I only use coconut and water, I find no need to add the stevia as she does. If you choose to use a soy, hemp or nut milk, it is best to avoid milks with added flavorings and preservatives and look for a product with simple ingredients that retains it’s purity. I can’t say that I’ve found a great product there and again, for nut milks, I prefer to make them from scratch, which is delicious, retains a fat content not found in boxed nut milks and is much better for you and your family.

To sweeten this mixture, I often use honey or maple syrup but lately, I’ve come to love the Chinese crystal rock candy. I purchase this for for about $2/pound from Benson Huang at Healing Food is Medicine. Benson is a Chinese medicine practitioner who excels at Chinese dietetics. He taught me that the crystal rock candy, because of it’s special structure, is able to bring water into the body, thus hydrating it – rather than building phlegm as so many of our modern day sweeteners do. As with all other foods though, everything in moderation.

Chai-like Tea Recipe:

The Mix:

(Makes about 3/4 gallon of mix)

• 10-12 cups of filtered water
• 14 cinnamon sticks
• 2 level TBSP green cardamom pods
• 1 level TBSP cloves
• 1 level TBSP peppercorns
• 12-20 nickel-sized pieces of fresh ginger root
• 1 TBSP organic vanilla extract or 1-3 vanilla pods
• 1-2 cups of honey or maple syrup or 1/4-1/2 pound crystal rock candy

Add the first 7 ingredients to a pot and bring to a boil. Allow to boil for about 5 minutes and then cover and turn down to a simmer for 45-60 minutes. Strain the herbs out by using a french press or cheesecloth and a colander. Dissolve the sweetener into the hot, filtered mix (making sure that it is sweet to your liking) and then put into a glass container. After it cools off, cover and store in the fridge.

To Prepare:

Fill your tea cup about 3/4 full of the mix and top it off with the milk of your choice. Pour what you have measured into a small cooking pot and bring to a boil. While it’s getting hot, prepare your tea, either as loose leaf or a tea bag and then use the hot liquid to steep the tea as you normally would.

You can use black, green or rooibos tea (keeping it caffeine free) with this mix. This allows me to easily prepare a cup for both myself and my son in the mornings!

You can find the Computer Reconstruction of the Wu Family Shrines by clicking here. 

Richard Gunde has a nice article written about the shrines, as well as the controversy around their actual dating and what may or may not have been part of the original shrines. He says:

The nearly one thousand years of scholarship behind the monument known as the Wu family shrines,” Liu continued, “is itself a kind of monument.” The problem is, Liu declared, that we actually do not know the date of the Wu family shrines and cannot be sure that the stone carvings that are called “the Wu family shrines” were ever assembled in one place. In short, did the Wu family shrines per se ever actually exist?

That is a mystery I will leave you with for today….

Hermeneutics

It’s an odd word and it’s meaning is one that has been argued again and again by overly-intellectual philosophers since at least the time of Plato. I suppose the next question is: What exactly does this weird old word have to do with Chinese medicine? This is something we might ask Jason Lay, who is the first person I heard to use it in relation to said subject. David White, more recently for my ears, has been heard throwing this curious lingual gem around when talking about our historical medical texts. There is good reason for this, but it’s easy to get lost in trying to interpret the hermeneutic mess and how we might help ourselves to care, in the slightest, when reading the deluge of ancient Chinese medical and philosophical material. Or, again, maybe that’s just me and my meager abilities to understand this type of thing. Regardless, I do believe that it may be easy enough to identify at least a smidgen of the reasoning for why this is important to a translator of these texts.

Lets just imagine sitting down with a chapter of the Neijing. We’ve got some hot tea, a little silence, a little yearning to feel connected to those dudes of old and a big hope that we might find some pearl to help us on our path in this medicine. We start looking characters up, stringing concepts together, checking out our grammar book and getting some idea in our head of what this first sentence means.

But wait! Here it comes…the whole hermeneutics thing. That sentence cannot be taken alone. It has to be taken in context of the whole. A guy named Heidegger called this the “Hermeneutic Circle.” Using the circle means you focus in and out, in on the smaller part and out on the bigger whole. As a knitter, I think about this in terms of making a purl stitch on my needles, which is not really that interesting at all. If you pull back a little bit, you can see that the purl stitch is part of a series of stitches, maybe two knit stitches followed by two purl stitches, creating a really stretchy fabric (called ribbing).

Now, that sentence, in context of the series of sentences that form the chapter is one thing. Take yourself a little further away and see that sentence and chapter in the context of the Suwen or even of the entire Neijing. That’s similar to pulling so far from the knitting that you see that the ribbing is actually only a part of the fabric near the wrist of a sweater. This could go on and on. We could look at the size of the sweater, who the wearer will be and what type of season it will be used in. Enough of the knitting analogy for now.

This is why hermeneutics is important to us. It is the study of how we interpret the text, where we ascribe meaning, etc. We need to emphasize the context as well as the form if we want to get to the truth of the matter. This means that not only do we need to look at the Chinese character in the context of the sentence, the sentence in the context of the chapter and the chapter in the context of the book (or really, scroll). We also need to look at the book in the context of it’s historical paradigm.

According to another old intellectual, Schleiermacher, we cannot take our cultural perspective for granted when trying to understand this context. We don’t want to filter the meaning through our personal cultural, religious or philosophical prejudices. Ouch! How does a Westerner like me do that?

Well…I guess this is the conundrum and reason why Jason and David like to talk about it. Not only do we need to work on the basics of using a dictionary and understanding the grammar, we also need to work on an understanding of Han Dynasty culture and history (in the example of the Neijing).

In addition to this, we need to look at our own cultural biases as well as what our experience, our intellect, and our SELF are bringing to the text. Giambattista Vico (OMG, is that a serious name, or what?) said that understanding and self-understanding cannot be separated. Whoa….lemme just have a second with that one. This is making it sound like I am affecting the meaning of the text as much as it is affecting me. It’s totally bringing me back to my physics days. Anybody heard of the Observer Effect?

And what about that 20th Century truth-seeker Gadamer? He added to all of this by pointing out that we will never be able to master the texts of the past because we can never fully reach self-realization. So, Gadamer, am I to understand that I have to work on my own self-realization in order to get at the truth in these texts? That sure sounds like a whole lotta work. Wait, that sure sounds a whole lot like what Suwen Chapter 1 is instructing me to do…

Alright, now I’m just confused and feeling abused by all these words, even the smaller ones. Perhaps there is something that can save my brain here!!!

Ahhh…Hermes. Yup, as a Gemini, Mercury is my ruling planet. The Romans associated that troublemaker Hermes with Mercury….and so I am feeling a pretty personal connection now (as well as a powerful partner in crime.) But what does Hermes have to do with all of this? Hermeneutics of course! (Jeez, does that sound like “Hermes Neutered” to anybody else?)

How did such a big ‘ole meaningful word get associated with a troublemaker like Hermes? Well that should be easy for us. Hermes is the stereotypical trickster (to whom I continue to aspire). He’s got lots of counterparts in the world…Iktomi, Odin, the Raven…all symbols of the parts of life that defy the rules and often come out on top for it. Ahhhh, hermeneutics is associated with the trickster. L.O.V.E. That alone should tell us what a dangerous and absolutely exciting adventure we can be embarking on when we read these old, dusty words.

Now that I’m near the bottom, I guess it’s time for the moral of this story: The point of caring about hermeneutics seems to be that translating can be pretty badass, help you enter into a crazy world where the rules don’t apply and all in all, is something that all the cool trickster kids should be doing. Now, get to reading up on some Chinese history and realizing what’s going on with that self! I know I need to.

Obviously, such a brilliant medicine could not have been created without the contributions of both the yin and yang aspects of our species (read: both men AND women).  As the prehistory of China closes with patriarchy conquering matriarchy and this situation still exists today (unfortunately in most of the world), I’ve had bad luck dredging up details about the female contribution to this medicine. If you’ve got more, please share! As this research takes quite a while, expect this blogging train to come in bits.

鮑姑: Bao Gu, or “the Immortal Lady Bao”: Jin Dynasty

From what I can gather from this article on her: Bao Gu was probably born in the Shangdang Prefecture or possibly Henan Province. Today, this is Changzhi city in SE Shanxi province. It appears that her father was both a government official and Daoist priest named Bao Jing (鲍靓). He was the prefecture chief in Nanhai county in Guangdong. Bao Gu later married her husband, Ge Hong, and they were both famous doctors in the Eastern Jin Dynasty as well as Daoist practitioners themselves. From a young age, Bao Gu was well read, receiving a wealth of information from her father and later, her husband. She especially liked the herbal component of Chinese medicine, became proficient in acupuncture and was the first woman in China to pursue research on the techniques of moxibustion. Bao Gu and her husband travelled around Luofu Mountain, in Guangdong together, concocting pills of immortality as well as making Chinese medicines and their mark extends the range of Guangzhou. Among the Chinese people, legend has it that Bao Gu was the earliest person to use mugwort for moxibustion. It is unclear which materials were used for moxibustion before her time and it may well be that various grasses or pieces of wood were used before she discovered the benefits of mugwort, specifically using the threads of the red-rooted mugwort. Her Daoist training may have led her to the discovery of how to appropriately process mugwort to get something that burned at a consistent rate and offered a warming radiation that could deliver an energy like the winter sunlight precisely into the acupuncture points. She used mugwort to tonify the Yang Qi as opposed to acupuncture which caused a transformation in the Qi.

The author of the above article goes on to say that, in addition, the ancient peoples of her time renamed the plant “ài” (艾), intentionally giving it the same pronunciation as “ài” (爱), which means “love” in Mandarin. When receiving acupuncture, it is warm and comfortable, the perception becomes clear and there is certainly a similarity between well-done moxibustion and motherly love.

(Lingshu Chapter 11, 12 and 73 discusses the character 艾 in reference to moxabustion. It may be that Bao Gu used a different form, used the threads only for a better heat or this is a completely mythological article. I need to do more research here.)

During the reign of Emperor Yuan Di in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Bao Jing built his daughter a temple in which to cultivate the Dao and practice medicine, located at the foot of the Yuexiu mountain in Guangzhou. In the Ming Dynasty, the astrological seers recommended that the temple name be changed to San Yuan Gong and today, it is still known in this way.

Yuxia Qiu says that Bao Gu was a skin/dermatological expert and was known as an excellent doctor in her time. She travelled through the mountains, collecting all of her medicinals and there are records of her practice in the following books: Nan Hai, Fan Yu, Guangzhou, Hui Zhou, Hui Yang and Bo Luo.

Her husband, Ge Hong (317~420 AD), wrote the book Zhou Hou Fang (肘后方), or “Emergency Formulas to Keep up One’s Sleeve.” There are 109 formulas covered in this book, 99 of which relate to treatment by moxibustion, (for which his wife was considered an adept). One must wonder at her contribution to this book in a time when women were not allowed to publish their own works.

(An interesting note is that Bao Gu is known well-enough to have had an orphanage named after her in the Disney movie Kung Fu Panda, yet I had never heard of her before this day.)

Enough for today…more later on Tan Yunxian (谈允贤).

I am, by no means, adept at translating Classical Chinese literature – much less classical Chinese poetry. However, I can’t help but try anyway. I was thinking about Li Bo the other day, and a poem that I read in my undergrad Mandarin classes with Jonathan Pease. I couldn’t remember the exact name of the poem, only that it was four lines long and he talked about the moon in every one of them. I saw the poem as simplistic after reading it, but Professor Pease talked for over an hour about the use of the moon to represent the woman that Li Bo was admiring in the poem. While 靜夜思 is not the poem that we read back then, it is still beautiful, and I had some fun trying to translate it this week.

In Chinese medicine, we talk often about Yin and Yang, the moon and the earth, etc… and I think that one of the best ways we can understand what these concepts mean is through reading classical Chinese poetry.

靜夜思

床前明月光。
疑是地上霜。
舉頭望明月。
低頭思故鄉。

Jìng yè sī
Chuáng qián míng yuè guāng.
Yí shì dì shang shuāng.
Jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè.
Dī tóu sī gù xiāng.

Still Night Considerations
Before the bed shine the beams of the moon.
Doubtfully is there frost atop the earth.
Raising my head to gaze longingly upon the moon.
Lowering my head in consideration of my homeland.

The way I have translated this poem makes it seem so completely simplistic that I don’t know what to do. Even so, I went to bed thinking about this, and in the only way that I know how – I started to think about the moon as a woman. This character, 前, shows the foot radical over the character for ‘boat,’ and can be thought of as someone standing at the prow of a boat. It does mean “in front,” “ahead,” “formerly,” “preceeding,” etc. And I can see so many meanings in this, one of which could actually point towards something like, “before I took the moon to bed,” or, from a vantage point of the bed, he is looking at the moon.

明月 means not only the moon, but a beautiful type of pearl. I don’t doubt that it could also serve as a name, or pet name. 光 has the meaning of “brightness,” but can also denote nakedness or smoothness. It was originally made from the fire radical 火 over the person radical 人. Given this, another way to translate the line might be: “Before bed Luna with fiery nakedness,” or something like that…

In the second line, 疑 tells us something about “suspect,” or “doubt.” This could be taken as a verb or noun (or maybe even something else). 是 is the simple “to be,” followed by 地上: on top of the earth. Or, perhaps, we can read it as simply “earth,” and then “atop,” as separate entities. The last character, 霜, shuāng, can be frost, or “white,” or even something “hoary,” “old,” “grey,” “silver.” The simple translation is stated above, but to take this to some deeper levels, perhaps what is suspect is the frost upon the earth… the old man upon the young, fertile girl?? It makes sense that he admires her either from the bed, or before the bed, but doubts that he would ever be able to be with her. I’m not sure how old Li Bo was at the time of this poem, or perhaps I could consider that idea further.

Moving on to the third line: 舉 is raising, made of the character for give, 與, over the radical for hand, 手. So, this is the idea of raising, but it’s a raising with generosity. 頭 is “head,” “the first,” the top end of something, the “chief.” Here it is raising the head in generosity – which, can be interpreted in some more erotic ways or perhaps it is just the idea of raising his head. I would be willing to bet that he meant both. 望 is a pretty brilliant character to use here, because not only does it mean “look,” but it means “full moon.” It’s the idea of gazing into the distance, there is hope, expectation. And once again, there is 明月. Raising his head to gaze into the distance at 明月 – almost as if he wants to give his love to her, but he cannot because he is the frost, the cold, the old, and as he said above, he doubts as if he could give that to her. All he can do is see her from afar, as all a human being can do is gaze up longingly at the full moon.

And in the fourth line: 低 is “low,” made of the person radical next to the foundation radical, 氐. Interestingly though 氐 is also an ancient constellation.  低 has the meaning of “lowering,” “submitting,” “drooping,” “hanging down,” or “reducing.” Again we have the head: 頭, and so we can see that in the previous line the head was raised towards the distance and now it has been lowered. 思 is “think,” “deliberate,” “consider.” It is a field 田 over the heart 心. The earth was referenced in line 2, and perhaps this is a reference to it again. Some sources say that the field radical was originally a representation of the brain… who knows. 故 is often translated as “therefore,” “reason,” “cause.” It is made of the radicals for ancient 古 and beat 攴. And then there is 鄉, a picture of two people, 乡 and 阝, sitting down at a table. It has the meaning of a countryside or a village. 故鄉 together can mean “birthplace.” This has some meaning about the humbling, submissive lowering of the head to the considerations about his home. All I can think is that the character for village is two people sitting by a table and so perhaps he is considering his loneliness in the world… which can reflect back on all of this and the constant references to the moon – something that is not unlike the poet in it’s ability to profoundly reflect the light on one side and hold the darkness on the other.

It consists of Wu Mei, Asarum, Dried Ginger, Coptis, Dang Gui, Aconite, Szechwan Peppers, Cinnamon twig, Ginseng and Phellodendron. We know Mume as the Ume Plum, Japanese Apricot or Plum, and the Umeboshi Plum, and the blossoms of the plum tree are what we know as plum blossom. The unripened plums are dried in a fire oven until about they are about 60% dehydrated. They remain quite sour with a bit of a smoky flavor.

I am making only 1/3 of the recipe listed in the SHL. That amounts to 100 plums. I soaked the plums in vinegar over night as directed.

Most of the herbs had already been ground at the clinic, so while the plums were soaking, all I had to do was blast-fry the Fuzi (aconite) and try to remove the peel. The Fuzi I used had already been prepared, so I’m not sure that blast-frying it was very necessary. I was slightly successful at scraping the peel off with a steak knife, but must admit that I didn’t get it all. I then roasted the Szechwan pepper with my electric heating coils (not a flame, as it says to do in the recipe) until the skin was brown and crispy and it started to leak it’s juices.

The next day I strained the plums and saved the vinegar:

All of the kernels then had to be removed from the plums. I thought this would take about 15 minutes, but ended up taking close to an hour. A few of the plums had obviously been burnt in their preparation process and so I tossed those to the sides. Some of the plums didn’t reconstitute in the vinegar either, and so I had to cut as much of the flesh off as I could. If I ever do this again, I would prefer to get the fresh plums and roast them myself before starting. I feel like the quality would be much better.

My little helper and I then measured out 1100 mL of rice. I assumed that I should use polished rice (as opposed to brown), and we picked an organic basmati. We used a measurement of 700 ml = 1 dou. The original recipe called for 5 dou = 3500 mL. We made the rice with the normal 2:1 ratio and steamed it with the plums:

Once this was done, we were supposed to grind it to a paste. Here’s where the Kitchenaid came in VERY handy:

I threw the roasted pepper into this mixture to be blended (and had already ground the fuzi in our coffee grinder). I got a pretty gelatinous mixture that we added the other herbs to:

At this point, I boiled about 2 cups of honey and stirred this into the medicinal mixture.

The amount of honey in the mixture was not stated in the SHL, so I just went with what was left in the jar. After all of this, I used some rice flour to knead the medicinal dough. I ended up with 5 “loaves” of dough.

I made the pills by sitting on my couch and taping a large piece of parchment paper to my coffee table. I pinched off a small piece of dough and rolled it into a long ‘snake.’ Using a butter knife, I cut the snake up into very small pieces. Each pill is supposed to be the size of a firmiana (Chinese palm) seed – which measures approximately 7mm:

 After I had cut about 50 pieces off, I used a little rice flour in my palm to roll each one into a ball and then dropped it onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. After about 6 episodes of House, and running through the new Chrisette Michele CD 2 times, I had filled one cookie sheet. (These sessions were over a 2-day period). This was about one loaf (and remember, I made 5).

I’m sure that I don’t need to mention that I will be making these for days and days and days. I haven’t gotten much knitting done, because I have been rolling pills like a maniac. At one point, I decided to give up and buy some, but nobody sells Wu Mei Wan made the classical way, so I had to freeze some of the dough until I could get to it.

These pills are to be taken 10 before each meal (3x’s a day) and then gradually increased to 20 pills before each meal. That’s a lot of pills to be taking in one day, and it’s not so easy to swallow them down. I had originally wondered why Zhang Zhong-Jing didn’t just use less rice and have the patient take 1 pill, building up to two pills before each meal. I came to the conclusion that this amount was ridiculous. Then I went to wash the dishes, and realized that not only did the dough clog up my dishwasher (and coat everything in it so that it all had to be washed by hand), but it was impossible to wash off the utensils. It becomes a gelatinous coating of medicine. And then I realized that ZZJ is a time-release genius.

This pill is originally taken for roundworms, and it seems to be prescribed in modern times for diseases that could be linked with faulty ratios of gut flora. It’s genius to use a small amount of toxic medicine (there was less than 1/2 cup of dried herb to 12 cups of rice) and then put that in the stickiest medium ever. If this stuff coats the intestines and hangs out there with the small amount of medicine for a quite a while, it will be less detrimental to the person, while being more detrimental to the bad bugs. Maybe that’s not quite the way to think about this, but I think I am even more in love with ZZJ and the Shang Han Lun after this whole process.