Hi everyone!
When you’re sick, does your family give you something special? Maybe tea with honey for a sore throat or a bowl of chicken soup? Lots of families have a favorite remedy. In Singapore, many families have them too, and some come from something called Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM.
TCM is a way of caring for the body that started in China thousands of years ago. One big idea in TCM is balance. People who practice it believe the body has a kind of energy called Qi (say “chee”). They believe you feel sick or tired when your body gets out of balance. Western medicine, the kind most doctors in New Jersey use, explains the body differently, with cells, hormones and nerves. In my class here, I get to learn about both!
For my TCM class, I designed my own herbal tea based on a famous recipe called Gui Pi Tang (say “gway-bee-tong”), which has been written about in Chinese medicine books for more than 700 years. In TCM, it’s used for people who feel worn out, don’t feel hungry, and have trouble sleeping because their minds won’t stop racing.
I bought my ingredients at Fung Onn Medical Store, a traditional Chinese medicine shop in Singapore that has been open since 1964.
