The Greatly Changed Anguo Medicinal-Materials Market

On August 6, 2019, I took my three students to wander through the Anguo medicinal-materials market. They have been studying medicine with me since the fifth grade of primary school, three years now, and it was time they came along to this largest medicinal-materials trading market to see it for themselves.

Our party of six (plus two parents) drove to the Anguo market. The old trading hall has been closed, and the newly built trading hall is far better than the old market.

Friends who visited the Anguo market in years past may still remember the old hall, which could be described as "dirty, chaotic, and run-down." There was not even a decent public restroom near the old hall; every time I went I lamented the worrying hygiene at the Anguo market.

The hygiene in this new medicinal-materials market is on a completely different level from the old one; both the cleanliness of the shops and the cleanliness of the herbs themselves have improved greatly.

It is plain to see that the Anguo local government has put great effort into promoting the healthy development of the Chinese-medicine industry, which is why today's progress exists. The Anguo Chinese Medicine Industrial Park has also been built with a good deal of modern character.

But the waters of the medicinal market are still very deep. The same herb can differ wildly in price depending on its place of origin and variety. For example, among fritillarias, the most expensive costs over ten times the cheapest.

Only those who have long dealt with medicinal materials can tell the difference between the varieties of the same herb. If a TCM doctor's formulas are to have good efficacy, they truly need good herbs to support them. Some cheap herbs will delay the patient's condition when treating major diseases.

In TCM, medicine and pharmacy have always been inseparable; a TCM doctor must also be well versed in Chinese materia medica. And this mastery cannot remain at the level of theory alone.

To learn Chinese materia medica, one should study not only from books but also from the medicinal market. If a TCM doctor can regularly frequent the market, they will at least not easily be fooled on the quality and price of "the medicine."