Study trip 12–24 May 2025

1: Our route on a map of China. Here you can see that we actually only drove into a small part of the Aba and Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Regions of Westsichuan.
2: Our route with names in alphabetic letter transcription.
3: The satellite image shows our route across the Chengdu plain on the right, to left of it the Longmenfold and its (folded) mountains, and further left the Tibetan High plateau.

The main stations of our route:

Chengdu → Wenjiang → Pengzhou → Chengdu → Chongzhou → Wenjingjiang → Jieziguzhen → Qingchengshan → Dujiangyan → Wenchuan → Rilong → Xiaojin → Majiagou → Danba → Jiaju Zangzai → Bamei → Tagong → Jiagengba → Zheduoshan → Kangding → Moxizhen → Dayi → Baiyansi → Wenjiang → Chengdu

Prologue
12.05.25 checking in in Chengdu
13.05.25 Tuesday Chengdu-Wenjiang-Pengzhou-Chengdu
14.05.25 Wednesday Chengdu – Chongzhou, Liulicun- Jieziguzhen
15.05.25 Thursday Jieziguzhen – Berg Qingcheng – Dujiangyan
16.05.25 Friday Dujiangyan – Yingxiu – Wolong – Xiaojin – Dawei
17.05.25 Saturday: Dawei Town – Majiagou – Danba, Jiaju Zangzai
18.05.25 Sunday: Danba – Huiyuan Monastery-Bamei -Tagong Monastery-Xinduqiao-Jiagengba-Tiguo-village
19.05.25 Monday: Jiagengba,Tiguo-Dorf – Zheduo Pass – Kangding
20.05.25 Tuesday: Kangding – Yajiageng Pass – Moxi City
21.05.25 Wednesday: Moxi City -Dayi Chujiang, Baiyansi-Chengdu
22.05.25 Thursday: Chengdu
23.05.25 Friday: Chengdu
24.05.25 Saturday: Chengdu, Departure Day

Prologue

Chengdu in May can already be very warm. Not so, however, in its early morning air. Then the city is fresh. Birds call each other. The people and the machines that clean the streets with brooms and water jets give the morning a calm rhythm. It is not yet obvious then that this city, whose population has increased by 30% in the last 5 years, now counts around 20 million inhabitants.

In preparation for leading my first medicinal plant study trip since the pandemic, I spent four days in a quiet valley of the Emei Mountains identifying medicinal plants. Now I am back in Chengdu. I look forward to my group. Of the nineteen participants in total, two thirds are naturopaths who work with TCM medicines or are still in training for it, one third are pharmacists and pharmaceutical engineers who manufacture TCM medications, one is a young botanist. I have previously met some of them personally. All of them want to get to know the medicinal plants better – plants whose products they work with, but whose origin, China, appears to them foreign, partly exotic, perhaps even alienating. Through this journey, with my accompanying translation (as much as possible), I want to enable access to the plants themselves, the cultures that have developed around these plants, and the people who work with them.

More and more, I see medicinal plant culture as one of the particularly accessible areas for learning not only from each other across cultural and political boundaries, but also – by placing the plants at the center – about our being-human-with-in-an-environment. An opportunity that exists beyond those professionally involved with medical plants. 

I probably view the topic through rose-colored glasses with a green frame. A “déformation professionnelle.” Nevertheless…

Wake up! Here we go.

12.05.25 checking in in Chengdu

Six early arrivals made an excursion together and only return after dinner. Six who arrived late together won’t be at the airport until 11 PM. We others meet at the hotel in the afternoon and take our first walk on foot in the evening. Along the river behind the hotel through the cultural park, then across the six-lane ring road past the venerable Daoist temple Qing Yang Gong and the poet Dufu’s hut to Chen Mapo Doufu 陈麻婆, opposite. A beautiful route.

The Chen Mapo Doufu house is one of the old restaurants that managed to carry their name and good food through the pandemic and economic crisis. We sit seven, then eight around our round table, tasting and sharing Chengdu specialties and one of the many summer heat-cooling herbal teas, Laoyingcha (Litsea coreana var lanuginosa). When we gather on the roof terrace of our hotel in the evening, already fourteen of us for a first information round, things get serious. Besides discussing our route in detail, information about our travel environment is also included.

Excerpt from my brochure about the trip:

Sichuan, China

China is large (area approximately like the USA), populated by many people (approximately 20% of humanity), and very diverse in many respects.

Sichuan is one of the most diverse regions within it, regarding:

• Geography
• Climate
• Flora and fauna
• Nationalities in the sense of culturally and linguistically connected ethnic groups or “ethnicities” (the word “Volk” in German is negatively charged due to its excessive misuse; the corresponding word mínzú民族 in Chinese does not carry this burden) 
• Spoken languages
• and more

Program

We are traveling

• In the city of Chengdu and its surrounding area. It lies in a fertile lowland at approximately 300 to 400 meters above sea level.
• In the Communalities of Chongzhou and Dujiangyan, which lie west of the city of Chengdu covering the westernmost parts of Chengdu plain and part of the Qingchengmountainrange of Longmen fold, up to approximately 3000 meters above sea level. Administratively they are still part of Greater Chengdu
• In the Qiang and Tibetan or Tibetan autonomous regions of Aba and Ganzi, which border Greater Chengdu Region on their East. Both Regions begin at the transition to the high mountains which tower up to over 7000 meters above sea level west of the Longmen fold and extend over the eastern foothills of the Tibetan plateau, whose plain lies at approximately 3200-3800 meters above sea level.

The people we travel with and whom we visit are colleagues and friends of mine as well as their (former) students. We visit them at their workplaces or in projects they know or supervise. We also botanize on our own.

Medicinal Plants 

We get to know medicinal plants that are native to and/or cultivated in western and southern Sichuan. These include “famous” plants of the TCM materia medica but also mainly locally and regionally known plants of TCM, Tibetan medicine and/or other local traditions.

With this, we begin to mentally prepare ourselves for the next nearly two weeks of traveling together. Then I disappear to the airport to pick up the last six people. Around midnight, everyone is at the hotel.

13.05.25 Tuesday Chengdu-Wenjiang-Pengzhou-Chengdu

To avoid rush hour in the city, we want to leave early. He Shifu, our chauffeur, and Zhangdao, the experienced tour guide who has already accompanied and supported me on several of my trips, are ready before us. In the now complete group, German, French and English are spoken. Since everyone understands English, albeit to varying degrees, my translation from Chinese will be into English, with additions in German and French as needed.

Our destination today is the Wenjiang campus of the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Professor Yin Hongxiang receives us at the gate. He will accompany us all day. Yin Hongxiang teaches pharmacy and pharmacognosy at the Institute of Ethnomedicine and Ethnopharmacy of the TCM University Chengdu and has significantly supported me in planning and preparing this eleventh medicinal plant study trip (the first since the pandemic).

First, we visit the university’s botanical medicinal plant garden. Already here we can hardly tear ourselves away and stay much longer than planned. We cancel the originally planned library visit for reasons of time and common sense and go directly to the university museum, where a volunteer student shows us around and enthusiastically explains everything. We lose our sense of time in the historical section, so unfortunately there’s too little time left for the herbarium. Everywhere there’s much to see, ask about, and discuss.

It’s already past noon when we arrive at the Institute of Ethnomedicine and Ethnopharmacy at Chengdu University of TCM 成都中医药大学民族医药学院, where Dr. Du Leilei warmly receives us.

Ethnomedicine and ethnopharmacy refers to the study of locally and regionally transmitted medical systems, medical procedures, and medicines. In China, these are not only researched historically and ethnologically, but partly also offered as studies for learning their practical application in medicine. The latter currently applies to the regional traditional medical systems Tibetan Medicine, Mongolian Medicine, Uyghur Medicine, and Zhuang Medicine in their respective regions and includes the possibility of taking a national examination for these specialties to obtain a professional practice license. Basic knowledge of modern Biomedicine and basic knowledge of TCM are also examined.

Through collaboration with Yin Hongxiang and Du Leilei, the 2025 trip offers the special opportunity to gain insight into Traditional Tibetan Medicine in Sichuan in addition to access to TCM medicinal plant culture. Here at the Wenjiang campus, Traditional Tibetan Medicine and pharmacy of traditional Tibetan medicines have been offered as independent degree programs for several years. The institute also includes analytical laboratories for phytopharmacy with a focus on medicinal plants of Sichuan Province and research departments for ethnomedical and pharmaceutical history with a focus on the relationships between Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese traditional medicine. The Traditional Tibetan Medicine degree program is conducted in the main subjects in Tibetan and with Tibetan-language teaching materials, meaning students must master Tibetan in speech and writing. The vast majority of them are therefore native Tibetan speakers.

Medical Historical Background (Nina)

Differing from “folk medical” traditions with mainly orally or personally recorded knowledge, Traditional Tibetan Medicine in China, like Mongolian, Uyghur, and Zhuang Medicine, alongside TCM, is one of the medical systems whose knowledge has been written down, systematized, passed on and further developed in the form of medical literature and teaching by literate elites of their respective culture based on a specific understanding of humanity throughout history, to varying degrees.

The historical medical literature on which today’s TCM is based is the oldest and most extensive. It has its roots in the natural philosophy-oriented culture of health care from the time before and around the Qin (221-206 BCE) and Han periods (206 BCE-220 CE). It is also the basis of traditional Korean and Japanese medical systems. The philosophical core of TCM focuses on relationships and the pursuit of balance within them; internally in humans between body, mind, and emotions, externally between people and their environment, the world. Both also play a central role in Confucian and Daoist thinking. The roots of Traditional Tibetan medical literature lie in the Tibetan-Buddhist monastic culture that emerged between the mid-8th and 14th centuries in central Tibet. Its philosophical core is Buddhism in its Tibetan form with its focus on mental attachments as the origin of all suffering and its instructions for reducing them. In its theoretical foundations, Traditional Tibetan Medicine is strongly influenced by Indian Ayurveda. In practical applications, it has adopted procedures from Chinese medicine such as pulse diagnosis, the meridian system, and acupuncture. Its herbal therapy emerged from the combination of local Tibetan experiential knowledge and influences from Indian, Chinese, and ancient Persian medicine.

Dr. Ganghuan Chenlei shows us the institute and introduces us to historical Tibetan teaching methods using medical thankas from the 17th century as “speaking pictures” and their present day developments, for example a thangka with the traditional image of a large tree with different branches to learn diagnostics, pathologies, and their treatment possibilities.

About one-third of the medicinal plants native to Sichuan are used only in TCM, one-third only in Traditional Tibetan Medicine, and one-third in both Chinese and Tibetan medicine. Additionally, there are many plants used in more locally limited folk medical traditions. Legal regulation for regional medicines that have not (yet) been included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia occurs through “regional standards” described in a separate chapter of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia and refers to important regional medicines. These can thereby be legally marketed regionally. Sichuan is one of the regions with particularly high biodiversity and correspondingly high numbers of medicinal plants.

Yin Hongxiang and Du Leilei work on identifying and researching medicinal plants native to Sichuan. They show us their offices and their analytical laboratory in the pharmaceutical research department of their institute. One of Yin Hongxiang’s research focuses is chonglou重楼 Paris polyphylla. The cultivation of chonglou became somewhat more attractive in the last approximately 6-7 years through the shortening of germination time from 15 months to 6 months. Since cultivation is still associated with much effort, time, and financial risk, wild collection remained very popular despite prohibition. Only after chonglou stocks became rare due to excessive wild collection and its price therefore rose to extremes did very many people decide to cultivate it. Meanwhile, so much chonglou comes onto the market from cultivation that the price has dropped massively. To the annoyance of those who only entered when the price was at its highest level, bought very expensive seeds, and now after the price crash can only sell their roots for (relatively) little money. This example showcases difficulties in the development of medicinal plants seen with the cultivation of many other herbs.

In the department for ethnomedical and pharmaceutical history, Dr. Wang Zhang presents his research on the relationships between Indian Ayurveda and Tibetan medicine, as well as his translations from Sanskrit into Chinese.

We also meet some of the very committed graduate students at the institute. Their professors are proud of them but also worry about what the future of their students will look like. In both ethnopharmacy and Traditional Tibetan Medicine, there are more university graduates than job offers. Even at hospitals with Tibetan medical offerings in regional centers, vacant positions are rare, even more so in large cities. For pharmacy, it looks only slightly better. In remote regions, job chances for university graduates are good, but often not in their own field, but in administration or education. Most young university graduates also don’t want to live far from centers.

Quite late, we decide on a simple noodle lunch in front of the campus gate to make up some time. The joy of an afternoon nongsuo or kabu (espresso or cappuccino, the coffee scouts among us can almost always track one down), takes somewhat longer than expected this time because there’s only a coffee bar at the outer edge of our 1 km radius. By the end of our time together, we will have learned about our various needs and be a well-coordinated group ;-).

At the Xin Lüse 新绿色药业 New Green Pharmaceuticals (NGP) headquarters in Pengzhou, Mrs. Run and her team are flexible and happy to show us their company. Yin Hongxiang knows them because he has conducted analyses for the company to determine the identity of medicinal plants. Xin Lüse NGP produces granules themselves and is now the sixth-largest producer in China. They show us their fully automatic granule portioning and packaging machines as well as their semi-automatic decoction systems. With these, they produce decoctions for hospitals according to individualized magistral prescriptions for their inpatients. The prescriptions are sent digitally to the company once daily in the morning; the finished decoctions for the desired number of days are brought to the respective hospital the same afternoon. This procedure has been established since the Corona pandemic. It is more efficient than each hospital producing decoctions itself. The herbs themselves are controlled several times according to pharmacopoeia before being decocted. For the finished decoction, only the concentration of the liquid, the amount of sediment, and the identity of the labels are controlled. We are impressed by the size of the facilities and their technical capabilities.

Additionally, NGP produces  80% of Chinese chuanxiong 川芎on the fields they lease or have in contract cultivation. 22 years ago, I visited the GAP-certified chuanxiong fields of today’s Xin Lüse NGP company with my first herb trip. They had started with this project then. By now they also produce many other medicinal plants distributed throughout the country. Recently, they took over a crude drug manufacturer to be able to control their entire supply chain. Impressive dimensions.

Today we return to the company’s beginnings by visiting their first fields. Chuanxiong is still grown there in rotation with rice. The seedlings are raised from February in the mountains at over 1200 meters above sea level. This creates strong, resistant plants. Cuttings from these are planted in August in the fertile fields of the lowland, from which the chuanxiong tubers grow within 9 months. After their harvest in May, the fields are flooded and rice is grown which is ready for harvest after 100 days (!). The flooding washes away many pests. After the rice harvest, chuanxiong cuttings are planted directly again and mulched with rice straw to preserve moisture in the soil and suppress weeds. In the circular administrative building of the cultivation area, a small exhibition is installed that clearly shows the development cycle. There’s also an exhibition of various products that contain ingredients from the chuanxiong plant or medicine from the chuanxiong root. While almost all of us place an order for toothpaste with chuanxiong extract and some of us also for hair shampoo, Zhangdao picks chuanxiong herbs outside in the field for our dinner. He intends to conjure up a dish from it for us. Here it’s customary for guests to bring wild or otherwise special vegetables and be allowed to prepare them themselves in the restaurant kitchen as a supplement to what we order, provided they show the necessary self-confidence for it. Zhangdao doesn’t lack that.

For our dinner, we stop at a Nongjiale (farm garden restaurant) on the way home because it’s already so late. It’s late for the cook and owner as well, but he fires up the stoves for us and in no time magically conjures up food for everyone. Exhausted and filled with impressions, we fall into our beds after the drive home.

14.05.25 Wednesday Chengdu – Chongzhou, Liulicun- Jieziguzhen

The morning starts even earlier for us today. We leave Chengdu for our 8-day round trip to western Sichuan, with all our luggage. After breakfast, our first destination is the Chongzhou communality. There we are allowed to visit the tea, bamboo and medicinal plant fields managed cooperatively by the municipality of Wenjingjiang in the villages Dapingcun and Liulicun.

On site, we are received at the foot of the mountain by the current mayor, the president of the commission for technical and scientific development (the former party secretary), and the person responsible for marketing local agricultural specialties. They want to first show us the bamboo and tea trees in the mountain hamlet of Dapingcun. Our bus is too big for the narrow, unpaved mountain road. Instead of switching to cars and being driven up in several loads, we decide to do the half-hour climb on foot. We start our hike next to medicinal plant fields: chonglou 重楼 (Paris polyphylla) and the baiji 白芨orchid (Bletilla striata) both of which yield root medicines, stand in the shade of houpo 厚朴 (Magnolia officinalis) and huangbo 黄檗 (Phellodendron amurense) trees, of which the barks are the medicinally used part.

Along the steep footpath we pass by the local bamboo specialty Spike Bamboo ciheizhu 刺黑竹 (Chimonobambusa neopurpurea Yi, also called niuweizhu 牛尾竹 Ox-Tail Bamboo because of the appearance of its shoots) and the local tea variety pipacha 枇杷茶 Camellia sinensis var. Pipa. Of the bamboo, the dark purple shoots are used as a sought-after vegetable for fresh preparation or pickling. They multiply by themselves on these mountain slopes. The Pipa tea trees also grow and multiply wild here, not like the bamboo with root runners, but through seeds.

1: 300 year old Teetree Camellia sinensis var. Pipa
2: Oxtail bamboo Chimonobambusa neopurpurea Yi

Both specialties have recently received the Chinese DOC label and are sold at a very good price. The tea is only harvested from trees that are more than 30 years old; the oldest still cultivated trees are approximately 300 years old, and we also see such ones along the way. As in other regions where tea trees grow wild, the oldest, up to 1000-year-old trees stand only hidden deep in the forest. Thus they are protected from us humans. The tea leaves are hand-picked with the help of ladders and processed into black, green, and white tea. We are served with a black tea. It is still somewhat fresh, but already very tasty; in my opinion, a very good tea. Like all teas from old tea trees, it only develops its full aroma after several months of storage. We walk further up the slope on the educational hiking trails through the forest-semi-wild cultivation area and a bit into the uncultivated forest above. In cooperation with schools from surrounding cities, class trips are conducted here to bring children and youth closer to nature. We don’t see the pandas. They do live here. Usually they gladly do without our human company.

Between the trees, both vegetables and medicinal plants for the private use of the residents are grown on small areas; behind this grows the incredibly diverse flora of the western Sichuan mountain regions.

1: Tea time in Dapingcun
2: Chicken soup with morels and homegrown jujube dates. Behind it, coptis flowers and a vegetable dish made from sweet chestnut blossoms. (Photo©Christiaan Spangenberg)
3: at the Paris research station in Liulicun

After lunch by the river with wild vegetables, including shui qingcai 水芹菜 (Oenanthe javanica, wild water celery), portulac and edible chestnutblossoms huanglianblossoms (黄连 Coptis chinensis), chicken soup with morel and jujube dates and many other local specialties, we go to the forest medicinal plant cultivation area within a nature reserve. The municipality is currently also developing it touristically for city dwellers who seek the coolness of nature in the mountains in summer. The construction work for a small hotel and the hiking trails is almost completed. The cultivation area behind the tourist infrastructure is large and extensive, forested over its entire area and on gently to steeply sloping terrain. Here we see beds with huang lian (Coptis chinensis) standing in the shade of spruces, cedars and other trees, which we had on the table at lunch, plus beds with bai he (Lilium brownii), huang jing (Polygonatum kingianum), du juan lan (Cremastra appendiculata) from which the medicine shan ci gu is made, chong lou (Paris polyphylla), and bai ji (Bletilla striatae).

Such mixed cultures are particularly common in small-scale mountain regions like here in Sichuan, but also frequent on larger cultivation areas. To me they also seem to correspond to the basic thought strongly anchored in Chinese culture that a mixture of different things always works better because it’s more balanced than a large quantity of completely similar things. The mixed cultures enable optimal use of the different levels in space and the resources of the earth by, for example, smaller plants being shaded by the taller ones and the roots of the larger ones being protected from drying out by the ground cover of the smaller ones. The crop rotation between medicinal plant and rice as we saw with chuanxiong in the plain can effect a reduction of pest infestation for both and thus a reduced need for pest or disease control in the plants. The preventive effect is good. Treatment can nevertheless not always be avoided. Here in the nature reserve, the avoidance or at least very restrained use of agrochemicals is the program and part of the marketing. Elsewhere, chemical clubs are also wielded.

Yin Hongxiang’s germplasm research station for chonglou is also located on this mountain; the local government provides him with a building and surroundings for this purpose. We visit the hundreds of Paris species and variants he has already collected and pick up his two students Zhou Rongrong and Yang Lu, who spent the last week up here at the station. He will drive back to Chengdu with them this evening and rejoin us in a few days. To conclude, we climb up to the 1000-year-old, fertility-giving ginkgo. This tree stands in a high and relatively remote valley basin. It is a small pilgrimage site. On the way we pass large shade tents under which stands full of containers in the form of oversized PET bottles filled with earthy-woody material. It is mushroom substrate. Mushrooms are cultivated in it here that are consumed both as medicinal mushrooms and edible mushrooms.

Mushrooms cultivated under a tent (Photo©Christiaan Spangenberg)

As in many places in Sichuan, the people here have roots in ethnic nationalities who moved here in the last 1000 years fleeing from war and natural disasters. Here in Liulicun, many people descend from the Sato, a people from the northwest, which is why many have a slightly Central Asian appearance. We enjoy the walk back through the shady forest, again past all the medicinal plants that thrive there. Suddenly a young woman appears next to me who introduces herself as a reporter from Chongzhou television and asks me for a brief interview about our visit here in the Wenjingjiang municipality. The digital bush telegraph. I gladly tell her that I liked the nature-oriented concept here.

As a farewell, the tea lovers among us buy some Pipa black tea, then we set off for our destination for the night, Jieziguzhen. It is a more than thousand-year-old (former) market town on the Weijiang River whose core was rebuilt about 30 years ago in the architectural style of the Manchu Qing (1644-1911) dynasty, partly in the style of the Ming (1368-1644), and developed for tourism. In this very pretty, well-visited place we spend the night in a quiet boutique hotel by the river. In the evening after dinner in the garden of our restaurant, also by the river, we finally catch up on our introduction round. I also tell the story of the creation of tcmherbs.org. Now we know where each of us comes from and can perceive ourselves more as a group. That feels good.

15.05.25 Thursday Jieziguzhen – Berg Qingcheng – Dujiangyan 

We are already leaving the small town of Jieziguzhen again and driving to Sanwei at the foot of the nearby Qingcheng Mountains. From there we can reach on foot the public hiking trails of Dujiangyan city, which lie outside the large tourist-developed and heavily visited facilities.

The Qingcheng Massif is one of the birthplaces of religious and political Daoism. For two thousand years, the mountains have been described as a spiritual retreat. We walk remote, steep, sometimes winding paths up the mountain. Small tea groves in the middle of the forest indicate that we are already near the Daoist Jade Purity Temple. Pavilions with seating on the slope just before the last staircase before the temple entrance invite us to pause. To collect ourselves, perhaps, if a need arises. The temple is open, we are allowed to find our own way around. The “ones who have exited family life,” as the Daoist women who live here for a specific or indefinite time are called, greet us kindly as we spread out at the tables in their dining room in the inner courtyard, while they spread out their herbs collected in the forest on bamboo mats to dry and prepare the freshly picked tea leaves for further processing. Jiao gu lan, Gynostemma pentaphyllum, which is marketed to us as “longevity herb,” lies next to huoxiang Agastache rugosa, and dandelion (pu gong ying Taraxacum mongholicum), very useful home remedies against summer flu with diarrhea and vomiting. On another mat lie white cabbage leaves for pre-drying. They will later be processed with radish into pickled vegetables. A young apprentice operates the tea station and shows us where to find cups and glasses. We drink the Daoist women’s homemade green plum (Prunus Mume) syrup, we buy their tea. I enjoy their cheerful serenity in the face of our curiosity and our desire for consumption.
Remembering them, I am lighter inside. I smile, about myself, about us.

1: Tea bushes with pheromone traps
2: entrance stairs
3: quiet passageway
4: freshly picked tealeaves all in and around daoist Yu Qing Gong Tempel, Qing Cheng Shan

Back at the foot of the mountain, we stop at Ding Dajie’s for lunch. We are served by her and her son (because we are such a large group, he helps in the kitchen) with delicious beef noodle soup, many wild vegetables, spicily seasoned silken tofu, homemade pickled vegetables, her homemade bacon, and for dessert homemade Laozao (fermented sweet rice with small glutinous rice balls).

Coming from this retreat, we drive directly into the hustle and bustle of the -literally- magnificent (and always intensively visited) 2200+-year-old Dujiangyan dam system. It is a water distribution facility that to this day ensures that the Chengdu plain is spared from both floods and water shortages, and is one of the highest-rated historical attractions in all of China. Its history with the stories to be told about its creation and the people who were involved in it (including their relationships with each other) I always find exciting. They are, however, never ending. The humid-warm weather and the unaccustomed jostling in the sea of people make the whole experience quite exhausting as a group. Our hotel in Dujiangyan city, again directly by the river, cool and spacious, together with an evening outdoors helps us recover. It is so beautiful to find oneself back in the flow.

16.05.25 Friday Dujiangyan – Yingxiu – Wolong – Xiaojin – Dawei

Yin Hongxiang with Zhou Rongrong and Yang Lu are with us again as we drive to Yingxiu, Wenchuan County in the morning , to the Liu family’s botanical garden. Politically Wenchuan already belongs to the Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Region of Aba. Here in Wenchuan County, which borders Chengdu, however, the population is mainly characterized by the Qiang, who originally lived in these mountains, and the Han having settled in the valleys.

The Liu family’s garden in Yingxiu is not only a place of learning, research, and production but also a work of art. The entire garden complex is decorated with homemade mosaics made from shards of colorful liquor bottles that tell and depict the stories of the plants, their families, and the identifying characteristics of both.

1: The family of Ranunculaceae explained in mosaic pictures
2: Learning about the the Lily family inside the Lily calyx-mosaic house.
3: Experiencing the curiously wondrous world through the eyes of a beetle

The father and his two sons with their families jointly cultivate orchids and many other native ornamental and medicinal plants. They have acquired their plant knowledge through practice and self-study. Meanwhile, they collaborate with botanical gardens and research institutes from all over China on the research and cultivation of plants native to this area. They also receive school classes to introduce them to the plants themselves and to botanical systematics. The younger son and his wife cook for us: we are offered another wonderful lunch with local specialties, wild bamboo shoots and other wild vegetables, wild mushroom omelet, walnut blossoms, yam leaves, homemade bacon, and much more.

 Our departure is somewhat sudden, so that we can just slip through before the impending traffic jam in front of and behind two trucks that have produced a fender bender in a rear-end collision here on the narrow mountain road and are waiting for the police. This is not held against us. We are lucky enough to just make it through before the road is blocked and are soon on our way through the elongated, lushly green Wolong Valley, which finally winds up Balang mountain.

Balangshan is our first high pass. The pass height is 4,481 meters above sea level. We undercross it through a tunnel, whose highest point is also a proud 3,900 meters above sea level. The highest peak of the Balang Massif has a height of 5,040 meters above sea level. The thick rain clouds make a little space so that we can see the snow on the high slopes, but the beautiful peaks of the Four Girls Mountains remain hidden. We are all well prepared for the high altitude. Climbing slowly, allowing our bodies to adjust, and with clear information and behavioral recommendations (drink enough water, no alcohol, don’t overexert yourself) and the wonderful Rhodiola extract (hongjingtian 红景天 Rhodiola crenulata, Radix) that helps the body adapt to the oxygen-poor air.

On the other side of the pass, Rilong Valley stretches through the fog. We have arrived here in the part of the Aba region mainly characterized by the Jiarong people. The Jiarong are officially counted among the Tibetan peoples, but have their own language, now little spoken, which differs from the Tibetan languages. Their stone houses in characteristic traditional architecture, and painted with characteristic symbols as well as their high watchtowers remind us both of earlier forms of message transmission and of the many wars and other conflicts that took place in these steep mountains. Today they adorn the valleys.

We drive all the way down to Xiaojin where we meet Wang Xiaoyan, a former student of Yin Hongxiang who now works here in the pharmacy of the Tibetan medicine hospital, in a hidden and very well-frequented restaurant for yak-and-wild-mushroom hot pot with freshly baked flatbread. A hot pot is a soup that stands on a flame on the table and continues to simmer while we add further ingredients of our choice and then eat directly from it, like a fondue.

It is late when we drive back up the valley to our hotel in Dawei. Coming down we had passed by this strangely remarkable new building with lots of pink and huge rose sculptures on the facades appearing corny and out of place. At the moment however, I am only interested in my bed. It is good. Looking out from my window the next morning I see rose fields, small and large, as far up the slope as the fog allows me. After I have also brewed and drunk one of the offered rose blossom teas, my mind starts opening up. My initial skepticism gives way to respect when I learn in the foyer that the cultivation of Damask roses and their processing here creates desperately needed local jobs as a development project with inclusion of people without education and people with disabilities. The project convinces me. I have also once again learned to appreciate the rose as a beautiful and beneficial herb. This flower gifts us on so many different levels!

17.05.25 Saturday: Dawei Town – Majiagou – Danba, Jiaju Zangzai

Last night, while on the way home from yesterday’s dinner, we had received news of a landslide on the country road to Meiwu, our original destination for today. It will not be completely cleared by this morning. Since the rock here is very complex and therefore lies loosely on top of each other, it slides quickly when there is rain, even though it is not yet “rainy season,”. Late last night Wang Xiaoyan had searched in her network of colleagues for contacts to another herb cultivation project accessible to us and found one. After breakfast, we now drive to Majiagou in the valley toward Maerkang where recently another community cultivation project of four important high-mountain medicinal plants has started. It was only initiated the year before last. The community secretary greets us, then leaves us alone with one of the project’s initiators, Sun Jisi, a study colleague of Wang Xiaoyan, to visit the fields. Here up at just over 3,000 meters above sea level, we see qiang huo 羌活 (they cultivate both Notopterygium incisum and N. forbesii), ci wu jia 刺五加 (Eleutherococcus senticosus), chuan bei mu 川贝母 (Frittillaria cirrhosa) and bai he 百合 (Lillium brownii) in the field.

1: From the right: Sun Jisi, Majiagou Herb Cultivation Project support and supervision, Wang Guiming the experienced Herb cultivator and counselor of the project, Nina, Yin Hongxiang, standing by Wangs field, in front of the billboard advertising his herb cultivation site
2: Visiting Guiming’s chuan bei mu (Frittillaria cirrhosa) fields, above Majiagou. We are standing next to a large medical rhubarb plant, da huang, Rheum palmatum.

All four medicinal plants were, like chonglou Paris polyphylla, still mainly wild-collected until just a few (5-6) years ago, became rare, but are now being increasingly cultivated – slowly. Slowly because cultivation is both time-intensive (due to the slow growth of the plants) and risky (due to weather fluctuations) and therefore doesn’t yield much income in the end, although medicines from these species are among the high-priced ones on the market. Of the several hundred households in this village community, only five are participating in cultivation now in the third season. A few kilometers further up the valley, we visit the experienced cultivator Wang Guiming, who accompanies the new project and advises the university graduates. His qiang huo (Notopterygium incisum) have been in the ground for a year longer, the third year, next year he will harvest the roots. His chuan bei mu have just pushed their first tips out of the earth, they were already sown two years ago! He too can only make about half his income from medicinal plant cultivation; for the other half, he looks for jobs in the town of Xiaojin. Yin Hongxiang says the pressure on wild habitats has decreased significantly due to the increasing cultivation of medicinal plants in the last ten years, many wild populations are recovering. Meanwhile, he sees the often poor quality of cultivated plants as the bigger problem. Many cultivators still lack knowledge and awareness of the requirements for a high-quality medicinal plant.

Deeply impressed by the effort put into cultivating these plants, we drive back down the valley and continue west toward Danba. On the way, we stop at the restaurant of the family of another study colleague. It’s weekend, so he helps out at home, and we get to meet him too. He otherwise works in the regional capital in the environmental office. His task there is analyzing water, air, and soil quality. These three young people are so-called “returnees” – they have university education and were willing to accept a position in their remote home region afterward. This makes them part of a very sought-after and coveted minority.

After this day of intensive exchange, we continue toward the city of Danba at the confluence of three rivers. On the way there, we experience for the first time on this trip the intensity of the Tibetan Buddhist prayer tradition, around the temple at the foot of the sacred Muerdo Mountain. It is the most visible religious tradition in this region, although we are not yet on the plateau, which is the Tibetan heartland. Prayers for oneself, the family, and the whole world are continuously sent into the air by means of huge and tiny prayer wheels, set in motion by hand or by wind and water, on prayer flags, in words, quietly murmured or spoken out loud, in the sound of bells and drums. The smoke from cedar, mugwort, and juniper branches rises fragrantly from the incense burners, purifying the air from all evil. The ritual forms are as magical as they are superstitious. They can make the power of human devotion visible and tangible to us. They can also deceive us. If we let ourselves be fooled.

In a side valley behind Danba, the place at the confluence of three rivers, we leave our large bus and transfer to small shuttle buses that transport us up to the Tibetan village of Jiaju. There we will spend the night in one of the “homestay hotels.” This village has collectively decided to become a Minsu (homestay hotel, agritourism) village, which means the residents offer accommodations for tourists in their houses, with the number, development standard, and thus price determined by themselves. A local company takes over transportation infrastructure, road maintenance and shuttle buses. The entire village is beautiful and well-maintained, residents seem well off. Here this concept is working well and rewarding for the locals as well as us!

After a fine meal again with freshly baked flatbread, we botanize along the roadsides of the village and then fall into bed.

18.05.25 Sunday: Danba – Huiyuan Monastery-Bamei -Tagong Monastery-Xinduqiao-Jiagengba-Tiguo-village 

Today will be our longest bus travel day. We will move far away not only in kilometers, but also in cultural distance and altitude above sea level. We leave the heavily folded mountain valleys of the Jiarong and Qiang and drive onto the mainly Tibetan-inhabited plateau. After the departure with the small shuttle buses from our Minsu village, we begin, again in our large bus, the ascent through the narrow winding valley from Danba at 1,800 meters above sea level to Bamei on the Tibetan plateau at approximately 3,500 meters above sea level. Today we have no medicinal plant projects on our radar. In the grassland at this altitude, only a few plants have awakened from their winter rest. We look at what we pass by, what is already growing there. On the way we will also visit two of the numerous Tibetan Buddhist monastery complexes. The first is the Huiyuan Monastery (Tib: Garthar Gompa).

We buy entrance tickets and are then guided through the venerable complex by a friendly monk. From him we hear that it was founded in 1728/29 by the 7th Dalai Lama, who grew up nearby, with financial and material support from the then Qing Emperor Yongzheng. The 11th Dalai Lama also spent his youth years at this place after his recognition as Dalai Lama, before he moved to Lhasa to the Potala Palace as religious and political leader. The countless stories told by wild images on the walls, the recitations of the monks whose many voices soothingly fill the main hall, the half-quiet explanations of our monastery guide, my equally half-quiet translations (we don’t want to drown out the monks), our moved devotion before the Bodhisattva statues with their so beautifully carved smiles radiating compassion, unmoved and unceasing, the souvenir sales behind the main altars, which runs hot with our large group. Everything flows together. With the help of hand and foot gestures as well as all our Chinese-speaking group members, Tibetan Buddhist amulets and jewelry are bought, paid for digitally as well as in cash, by helping each other out to make it work (How foreign but simultaneously how similar the monastery cultures of different religions appear to me. And how related are our longings and desires).

Impressed, we leave the vibrant main hall at midday. The sky is still light gray and repeatedly damp with drizzle. A few kilometers further in Bamei, we stop at a grassland pavilion restaurant. There are no other buildings around. On the plateau, individual houses lie very far apart from each other. There is a lot of space up here and the distances are great. We urge ourselves on for the continued journey.

The Yala Snow Mountain can only be sensed behind the clouds, but our next destination, Tagong Monastery (Tib: Lhagang Gompa), from where we would have seen it so wonderfully, is entirely there. Tagong Monastery is famous for its particularly beautiful, life-sized statue of the young historical Buddha Shakyamuni. It is also a significant pilgrimage site for Tibetan believers. Does the aura of this place arise from the devotion of the people praying there, or was it already there before them? I have asked myself this before. I let myself be touched by it again, uplifted. To surrender to people, to perceive them truly while maintaining one’s own inner clarity and integrity, again and again, belongs to the tasks and challenges of our profession: to guide and accompany in healing. Buddhist teaching with its focus on self-observation, rational insight, and compassion encourages me in my practice.
From here we continue in a wide riverbed. Along the river, many large and small stones are decorated with chiseled prayers, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas. One of many “Mani stone” paths.

Prayers and a compassionate white Tara figure on rocks along Yulin river

Finally we reach Tiguo Village (3,200 m above sea level) in Jiagengba, west of the Gongga Massif. It consists of several widely distributed hamlets. In one of them we spend the night in very stately Tibetan guesthouses. Because our room requirements are greater than what a single guesthouse can offer, we have booked some additional rooms in the neighboring house. It is cold this evening, the rain turns to sleet, there is fresh snow on the mountain slopes and passes. While the landlords discuss the current prices of the coveted and expensive local specialty Cordyceps caterpillars with potential customers, a beggar is let in. I had previously seen him thickly bundled up, riding by on a motorcycle with his partner. He receives a few yuan. It’s hard to say which of the stories about sick family members are true and which are not, says the landlord. He just always gives a few yuan.

We are lucky. We are well. In the cold, I very much enjoy the hot yak meat hot pot, which we can supplement ourselves with all kinds of vegetables, noodles, potatoes, mushrooms and more. After dinner, I am allowed to sit upstairs next to the grandmother by the stove. With a cup of hot water, surrounded by warmth and old Tibetan scriptures, I tell stories of this trip and previous trips here. Thanks to the heating blanket turned on before dinner, I can later crawl into a cozily warm bed. What luxury! The next morning is still cold. I am pleased that our hosts have prepared “traditional” Tibetan highland breakfast for us alongside the breakfast usual in lower elevations with rice congee, eggs, pickled and fried vegetables, steamed dumplings and rolls. The warm, salty butter tea with the balls of roasted barley flour kneaded with butter into giant crumbs helps well against the cold. At least as warming and thus mood-lifting for our group is the very well-equipped pink coffee bus in front of the hotel. The two young, urban women who have been operating this bus together since their partnership (the second coffee bus now serves as a caravan) live from the coffee and ice cream enthusiast scene that has developed in China over the last 10 + years, especially among the young, wealthy part of the middle class. They can be found up here in the grassland in summer, in the south by the sea in winter, and, traveling along their routes, are the now quite numerous coffee buses.

In a light, half-frozen drizzle, the tireless members of our group trudge off with Yin Hongxiang and me to botanize. It is always impressive how small and also very large blossoms have opened, or are just about to open, in the few weeks since the snow melted at this altitude. They have little warm and bright time up here and therefore must be so fast. We discover at the roadside blooming or almost blooming large thistles (da ji 大蓟 Cirsium japonicus), barberries (xiao bo, 小檗 Berberis amurensis), gentians (long dan, 龙胆 unclear which species), Siberian ligularia (tuo wu 橐吾Ligularia sibirica) and more, which are either listed in the national Chinese Pharmacopoeia or in the Sichuan Pharmacopoeia, which has also integrated regionally used medicinal plants. Some plants have only stretched out their leaves, making them difficult to identify. Likewise, the blossoms of the Ese (bianye haitang,扁叶海棠 Malus bhutanica), a native wild apple variety newly appointed as the logo of the Ganzi region, are just about to open. In a week, when they are in full bloom (and the probability of rain is lower), our hotel and all surrounding ones would have been fully booked and we would have had to share this environment, which now appears so lonely, barren and cold, with significantly more tourists. 

19.05.25 Monday: Jiagengba,Tiguo-Dorf – Zheduo Pass – Kangding

We make our way back to Xinduqiao where we stock up on picnic snacks because there are no restaurants on this route, and from there to the ascent over the Zheduo Pass, behind which we again reach the lower-lying, warmer mountains and valleys of the Ganzi region with its main town Kangding. The pass lies at 4,300 meters above sea level and forms a boundary both geographically, climatically and culturally. It is also an experience. Since National Highway 318 leads over here, a wild mixture of short- and long-haul truck drivers, local Tibetan, Chinese and other street vendors (selling all kinds of things), catering service providers, road, rail and telecommunications construction workers and their suppliers, as well as tourists from home and abroad meet here. Last nights snow has already been cleared on this route, which is why we too, can drive through here. On the route we had originally planned, which is less traveled, this would not yet have been the case.

On the other side of the pass, in the valley lies the city of Kangding, formerly also Dajianlu, in Tibetan Dartsundo. It has had many names and has a long history, but its founding date is unknown. To the west it controls access to the Zheduo Pass into the Tibetan plateau and thus into the Tibetan cultural sphere, and to the east the entrance into the narrow valley and over the Dadu River, through areas settled by other, smaller peoples into the Sichuan plain and thus into the Han cultural sphere. At least since the Tang Dynasty (618-907) it was an important, often and fiercely contested trading city that lived from legal and probably also illegal trade.

In the plain, besides furs and wool, salt and medicinal plants from the highlands were also in demand. Already in early records, rhubarb roots dahuang and Angelica species such as danggui are listed among particularly valuable trade products from these areas. Conversely, among the historically most sought after trade goods in demand on the plateau were tea and silk fabrics. Tea was pressed into bricks for transport at least since the 8th century and carried on foot or with mules over the passes. Tobacco, opium, weapons and much more were also traded here.

Our hotel, directly next to the long-distance bus station, is (except during breakfast times) an oasis of calm in the midst of the bustle of the market town.

After our arrival, we walk on foot (the city is largely traffic-calmed) through the old town to the health center with outpatient clinic that was opened by the Hospital for Tibetan Medicine in Kangding a few years ago as an outpost in the old town to bring traditional Tibetan medicine closer to the population. Dr. Gesang Dhoden, the head physician, receives us and shows us what they offer in the clinic. He also teaches as a guest lecturer at the Institute for Ethnomedicine in Chengdu, instructing students of Tibetan medicine. Their greatest success here in the practice is with the herbal baths produced in their hospital pharmacy for the treatment or relief of rheumatic diseases, other autoimmune and/or metabolic diseases, Dr. Gesang Dhoden tells us. The income that the Kangding Hospital for Traditional Tibetan Medicine was able to achieve over the last 5 years through the countrywide sale of their medicinal herbal bath mixture has enabled them to expand their production and open this outpatient clinic in the old town. Here, foot or full-body baths are offered on site. The herbal mixture can also be purchased to use at home. In addition, the outpatient clinic offers acupuncture, acupoint heat treatment (moxa) as well as the prescription of medicinal plant mixtures according to traditional diagnosis, which includes conversation, pulse, tongue and urine diagnosis. Always part of it, as in TCM, is individual counseling with advice on lifestyle. In Tibetan medicine, this aspect is strongly influenced by the philosophy and religion of Tibetan Buddhism. Medical emergencies are not treated here.

After this intensive day, we spread out in the old town, looking for ways to clear our heads. A stroll through the fresh market with countless curious snacks, through the night market where a yak head is being torched, a foot and shoulder massage, the discovery of special herbs (such as the last bag full of uncertified, wild-collected Rhodiola crenulata hongjingtian, before its sales ban in a small shop), tea in the old town, a walk by the river, conversations about what we experienced over fresh pineapple in the hotel lobby, or through retreat and night’s rest, or a little bit of everything – so many strategies!

20.05.25 Tuesday: Kangding – Yajiageng Pass – Moxi City

Both skipping today’s breakfast served in a room crowded with groups of tourists in a hurry (we had been spared of such situations before) and instead shopping for our picnic is a pleasure for me. After that we leave the city of Kangding toward Yulin Village and Yajia Pass. We practically have this road to ourselves the entire way. Most tourists prefer to travel faster than the narrow curves on this route allow. Only during our first stop for a photo at the huge boulder that marks the beginning of the nature reserve, a few switchbacks up from the city outskirts, our bus is passed by a few other travellers.

Late-blooming rhododendrons shine white and pink toward us, the unique algae species Trentepohlia jolithus var. yajiagengensis colors many of the stones along the streams anintense red.

We remain practically alone further up as well. Nevertheless, botanizing has become somewhat more difficult because the parking bays have increasingly been separated from the slopes with wire fences in recent years. Nature is thus protected from us. We accept this progress somewhat reluctantly. And we scramble up along the generously spared edge of a broadly branching flowing stream where we are finally richly rewarded with the flora we find here. The special lichen that musk deer preferentially feed on, turquoise-blue glowing small gentians (lin ye long dan鳞叶龙胆 Gentiana squarrosa), various-colored blooming, fragrant high-alpine daphnes, Artemisia and sage species, several medicinal plants of local and Tibetan medicine, including Pedicularis oxycarpa (although not yet flowering) and Epilobium angustifolium (the fireweed, also not yet flowering), as well as the rare Rhodiola yunnanensis dian hongjingtian 滇红景天, one of the officinal Rhodiola species.

1: The first sunny day with clear blue sky in the mountains!
2: We look for herbs in the riverbed close to Muduo Pass.
3: Rhodiola yunnanensis hong jing tian sprouting.

On the Muduo Pass summit, 3,948 m above sea level, among the gravel the Oxygraphis glacialis ya zhi hua, 鸦跖花, a bright yellow little flower. It is a buttercup family plant, thus a glacier anemone.

1: Silence on the Muduo pass. 
2: The little glacier anemone Oxigraphis glacialis

On the south side we now drive down Moxi Valley, continuing along the Gongga Massif, whose highest peak (7,500 m above sea level) we cannot see despite the now blue sky, because we are already too close. Our picnic under trees by the stream tastes good despite the – relative – sparseness of our menu. I have flatbreads, a large pot of fresh yak yogurt, fresh loquats, salted and fermented duck eggs, vegetable chips, and sweet chestnut rolls on offer. Further down the path at the parking lot, besides young and old herb vendors offering fresh alongside years-old stored goods, we even meet a young man with a coffee bus, single origin!

On this side of the mountain one of the settlement areas of the Yi ethnicity/nationality begins. In the afternoon we stop in the small town of Moxi. The region was destroyed three years ago by a strong earthquake. In the towns center, reconstruction is almost complete, but in the side valleys it is still in full swing. We see this during our visit to the hot spring of Hailuogou after a festive dinner. Of three baths, only a single one is in operation. It is a wooden construction and perhaps for this reason it withstood the earthquake. From my perspective, it is also still the most beautiful of all.

Tonight is the last of our round trip through western Sichuan. Tomorrow, after visiting a ume plum cultivation project in the mountains of Dayi, we will return to Chengdu. As if in anticipation, but also as farewell, we receive two bottles of ume wine from our host in Moxizhen.

1: The mediation office with 24h self-service online claim filing service
2: French missionary church.
3. Documentation of the earth quake (magnitude 6.8) on 5th September 2022 in the local history museum.

21.05.25 Wednesday: Moxi City -Dayi Chujiang, Baiyansi-Chengdu

Today’s drive takes us over the great Dadu River and through the last mountains back onto the highway into the plain. Past huge infrastructure construction sites like one of the suspension bridges for the railway from Chengdu to Lhasa or one of the tunnels for the West-East highway. For lunch we stop at a chef famous nationwide for his television cooking series. We eat his signature dish of fish soup cooked in a clay pot and other delicious things. Incidentally, he is a major dealer in ebony. The mighty, ancient, excavated logs lie dark and mysterious on the fenced but visible from above property next to the restaurant terrace.

Despite the highway, we are once again much later on the road than planned. The way to Dayi is far. Mr. Ren, the manager of the local mume plum (Prunus mume, qing mei 青梅) growing cooperative, has meanwhile gone into the woods, so he has no stress about our delay and we don’t need to rush on the way either.

On foot we walk to the fields with him. He shows us the different stages of ume plum cultivation. Only after about 6 years do they allow the tree to carry fruits and do they harvest for the first time. Fruits growing earlier are cut off so that the tree focuses its energy on its own growth. After that, the tree can produce large harvests for several decades. During its lifetime, they graft fresh branches from other varieties onto it several times. We are there one to two weeks before the beginning of harvest time and see how full the trees are. The fruits of this plum variety develop a characteristic floral fragrance, but never become soft and sweet. Here they are picked green, cooked with sugar or salt water, preserved in wine, prepared with spices, or, for medicinal use, slowly roasted black. This is the medicine we know as wu mei 乌梅. In Japan, the plums of this variety are pickled with salt and purple zisu (jap: shiso) leaves (Perilla frutescens) in a complicated process to make umeboshi.

While walking through the village fields, we encounter numerous TCM pharmacopoeia plants that have been planted by people for personal use, then naturalized on their own, or grow wild. Such as the aromatic sweet flag shi chang pu石菖蒲 (Acorus calamus), the medicinal gardenia zhi zi栀子, Gardenia jasminoides, the famous qing hao青蒿 Artemisia annua, the Drynaria fern gu sui bu骨碎补 protected due to excessive wild collection, and the berberine-containing huang bo黄檗 Phellodendron amurense…

1: Drynaria fortunei gu sui bu
2: The characteristicly unfilled Gardenie G. jasminoides zhi zi hua
3: A Pinellia ternata, ban xia as a weed in a cornfield.

It is already late when we reach the Chengdu suburbs. We stop near the TCM University, where Yin Hongxiang and the two students live, at a large garden pavilion restaurant called “The Poor People’s Chicken.” Yin Hongxiang pretends he only recommended it because the parking lot here is big enough for our bus. It turns out that very interesting and refined cuisine is served here. Unfortunately, much is already sold out because we don’t arrive until about 8 PM. We are back in the metropolis of Chengdu, which eats dinner early.

22.05.25 Thursday: Chengdu

Today is herb-free. After sleeping in, driver He picks up the registered half of us to visit the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan. The others explore Chengdu on their own.

Some of the fascination masks, statues and gold objects made by people from Sanxingdui culture (aprox. 1300-1000 BCE) found around and in Chengdu. This unique culture probably vanished or was extinguished early.

For our shared dinner we meet at one of the well known Qin Shan Zhai restaurants to eat their exquisit ‘Qi and Blood Strengthening’ herbal hot pot with black-boned chicken (which bears white feathers on its black skin), and many other tasty dishes and to toast to our journey, with green ume plum wine.

23.05.25 Friday: Chengdu 

Our last day with a full program and the last day our driver He drives us. The morning is dedicated to the panda breeding station and the now hugely expanded, nevertheless overcrowded panda zoo with the nonetheless wonderful pandas.

Then we eat in one of the many techno-industrial parks in the suburbs of Chengdu at a small stall, good but spicy suan la hongshufen (sour-spicy sweet potato noodles) in order to make our scheduled visit appointment at Neautus Xinhehua Yaoye in the adjacent block on time. The company is one of the three largest in China that produces yinpian “dried and prepared medicinal plant slices ready for decoction preparation” from medicinal plants, often called ‘crude drugs’ in our context. Yinpian are the raw material from which all traditional and practically all phytotherapeutic medicines are manufactured. Besides acquiring the dried medicines from growers throughout the country from all climate zones, the production process includes the entire quality control, encompassing identity testing, purity testing (that is, testing for contamination by heavy metals, fungi, agricultural chemicals or other substances) as well as testing of the key constituents in the amounts specified by the pharmacopoeia. Despite their companies size and market share, they are also struggling in the harsh intra-Chinese competition called the nei juan, ‘ involution’. It extends across all sectors of the economy and began already before the pandemic. It is mainly conducted through undercutting prices and will most probably end with the bankruptcy of a large part of the companies and the consolidation to a few companies per sector. The reason for this is on one hand the supply far exceeding demand in many industries and on the other hand the steady increase in both social expectations and legal requirements for product quality.

Since the pandemic, Neautus also offers decoction services for hospitals in the greater Chengdu area and has made large investments in decoction facilities for this purpose. During the pandemic, decoctions were produced for hospitals 24 hours a day, the workforce had to remain in the facility around the clock. The administration slept under their office desks, the warehouse workers in the garages, the producers in the corridors of their facilities. This unimaginably stress-laden phase is now over, the potentially devastating competitive battle is still there. While it is still the case that the best quality medicinal plant products are sold abroad because higher prices are achieved there, the dimensions of the domestic Chinese TCM pharmaceutical market are so incomparably much larger than everything abroad that the price and survival battle will probably still be decided internally. We are allowed to visit the incoming and also the outgoing warehouses of their products, as well as the production facilities for medicines with toxic constituents. There we experience the entire processing chain from ban xia Pinellia ternata to the various non-toxic medicinal forms like jiang ban xia (processed with fresh ginger juice), fa ban xia (processed with licorice juice and lime) and qing banxia (processed with alum). Each of these forms is processed in huge rotating drums that hold several tons of material. Then it continues to quality control. Their analytical laboratories are currently under renovation and are being equipped with the latest equipment. From next year they will be state-of-the-art showcase laboratories. After initial hesitation, we are allowed to also take a look at the existing, approximately 15-year-old laboratories. The detailed tour and the subsequent discussion round where we can ask all our questions enable a much more comprehensive understanding and classification of the TCM pharmaceutical industry than is possible from the European distance.

After this impressive visit, our last visit to the botanical medicinal plant garden of the TCM University is simultaneously our last herbal program point of this trip. Yin Hongxiang and his two students, who have already accompanied us on our round trip, are already waiting for us when we arrive at twilight. The scant hour of light we now have is enough to still admire some highlights of the garden. These include the blooming Curcuma phaeocaulis from which the medicines e zhu 莪术 and yu jin 郁金 are made, the blooming Stemona japonica bai bu 百部, and several more. Falling darkness and the more sensible participants who press for dinner help us let go.

1: The blooming Curcuma phaeocaulis, from which the medicines e zhu 莪术 and yu jin 郁金 are made
2: The blooming Stemona japonica, bai bu 百部 in the botanical medicinal plant garden of the TCM University
3: Ibid under the shade, looking at Sichuan-Yunnan Asarum chuan dian xi xin  川滇细心(Asarum delavayi)

We want to eat together one last time on this trip with Yin Hongxiang, Zhou Rongrong and Yang Lu. We are in the university district, so there is no shortage of pubs and restaurants. However, finding space spontaneously on Friday evening in the middle of dinner time for our now 25-person group is not so easy after all. With the help of Zhou Rongrong and Yang Lu’s network, we finally end up in a restaurant that has space for us in an extra room on the upper floor at three round tables. Until the food comes, we sit unsettled at the empty tables in this room. It conveys so little of a restaurant atmosphere and rather resembles a large, empty storage room. Priorities can be so different! We pass the time, for example, by cleaning the slightly greasy tables. Then, as food is gradually placed on these tables and we have the first bites inside us, it’s right again. At least much better. The university joint produces good quality, carefully cooked Chengdu dishes after all and accommodates our wishes.

24.05.25 Saturday: Chengdu, Departure Day

Like our arrival, our departure also takes place in various stages. We say the first goodbyes even before breakfast. Internal processing begins. While we make our last purchases, browse in the bookstore once more, sort luggage, forward photos, talk about experiences, we are placing things, building memories from our piles of impressions.

At lunch we are still a larger group, at dinner a somewhat smaller one, until in the evening only the four people staying longer and I each go our own way in Chengdu. I am pleased that, as far as I can perceive, despite our different needs and perhaps also expectations, everyone was able to familiarize themselves with the healing herbs we got in touch with in their own way and take that inspiration home with them for their future work in the field.

We have set off again in our various directions, continuing on our way or having almost arrived at home, carrying bags and baggage on the outside and the many impressions and memories within. While I gather those in my head into stories of this journey, I find ideas for the routes of the next ones sprouting in between.

I am looking forward to them.

 What is left to say:

• © for all text, photographies and screenshots, unless indicated otherwise, are with Nina Zhao-Seiler and tcmherbs.org team (ninazhao@tcmherbs.org)
• In these travel stories, small glimpses appear of many topics and places (There are so many more stories and so much more history in every place). Anyone who would like to know more about any of them can gladly contact me for more information or literature references.
• Christaan and I are working on a detailed documentation about the medicinal plants we saw and learned about. We will inform all interested parties as soon as it is finished. You can express your interest to us here.