Yipi Bing (Spleen-Benefiting Cake): Zhang Xichun’s Herbal Snack for Indigestion
Zhang Xichun was a great master of the integrated Chinese-Western medicine school during the Republican era. In his Yixue Zhongzhong Canxi Lu (Record of Mediating Chinese and Western Medicine) there is a formula called Yipi Bing (Spleen-Benefiting Cake) that looks less like a Chinese-medicine prescription and more like a snack recipe. It treats spleen-stomach damp-cold, reduced food intake, chronic diarrhea, and passage of undigested food—symptoms commonly seen in patients with indigestion from various causes, poor appetite, and accompanying chronic diarrhea.The Yipi Bing recipe is as follows: Baizhu (Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma), 4 liang; Ganjiang (Zingiberis Rhizoma), 2 liang; Jineijin (Galli Gigerii Endothelium Corneum), 2 liang; cooked jujube flesh, half a jin. Of these four herbs, use raw Baizhu and raw Jineijin; grind each separately into a fine powder and dry-roast until cooked. Then grind the Ganjiang finely, combine everything with the jujube flesh, pound together into a paste, form into small cakes, and dry them over a charcoal fire. On an empty stomach, take them as a snack, chewing thoroughly before swallowing.This formula is simple in composition and simple to take: treat it as a snack, pick up a piece on an empty stomach, and chew and swallow it slowly. In it, Baizhu strengthens the spleen and seeps dampness; Ganjiang warms the middle and dispels cold; Jineijin strengthens the stomach and promotes digestion; jujube flesh (the flesh of red dates sold in supermarkets) both tonifies qi and blood and harmonizes the stomach to stop diarrhea, while also having anti-allergic effects. Together these four ingredients improve the patient’s digestive function, warm the middle, and stop diarrhea.Yipi Bing has very few side effects. Apart from Baizhu, everything in it is an ordinary human food, and Baizhu itself is an herb with almost no side effects. Jineijin is the dried inner lining of a chicken’s gizzard, part of the chicken’s digestive organ; it not only strengthens the stomach and promotes digestion but also can dissolve stones and astringe essence to stop seminal emission.Zhang Xichun’s Yipi Bing, after baking, is crisp, fragrant, and palatable, without the usual bitterness of Chinese medicine, and is easy to take. Patients with weak spleens often recoil at the very smell of ordinary herbal medicine; by using this method to improve the patient’s experience of taking medicine, Zhang Xichun truly deserves to be called a master physician.Yipi Bing cannot be bought anywhere and must be homemade. However, we need not be bound by the method in the original text; modern people can readily make it using common home baking tools such as an oven or microwave. When preparing it, one may also use an appropriate amount of flour or starch as a binder, proceeding just as when making ordinary cakes, so long as the above proportions are followed.