On ginger
- Rachelle
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
予昔監郡錢塘，遊淨慈寺，眾中有僧號聰藥王，年八十餘，顏如渥丹，目光炯然。問其所能，蓋診脈知吉凶如智緣者。自言服生薑四十年，故不老云。薑能健脾溫腎，活血益氣。其法：取生薑之無筋滓者，然不用子薑，錯之，并皮裂，取汁貯器中。久之，澄去其上黃而清者，取其下白而濃者，陰乾刮取，如麪，謂之薑乳。以蒸餅或飯搜和丸如桐子，以酒或鹽米湯吞數十粒，或取末置酒食茶飲中食之，皆可。聰曰：“山僧孤貧，無力治此。正爾和皮嚼爛，以溫水嚥之耳。初固辣，稍久則否。今但覺甘美而已。”
While serving as magistrate of Qiantang, I visited Jingci Temple. Among the monks was a man known as the “King of Wise Medicine”. He was over eighty years old, with a complexion like glossy cinnabar and a piercing look in his eyes. When asked about his abilities, he said he could tell one’s fortune by pulse diagnosis, just like Zhiyuan.[1] He claimed to have been consuming raw ginger for forty years, which was why he did not age. Ginger can strengthen the spleen, warm the kidneys, invigorate the blood, and replenish one’s vital force. The [standard] method is as follows: Take raw ginger without any fibres or impurities, but do not use young ginger. Grate it so that the skin breaks apart. Extract the juice and store it in a container. After a while, once it is settled, remove the yellow and clear part on top; keep the white and thick part at the bottom. Air dry the juice in the shade and scrape [the residue] off like flour to make so-called “ginger milk”. Mix the residue with steamed bread or rice to make pills the size of wutong seeds.[2] You can swallow several dozen pills with liquor or salted rice water. Alternatively, you can take some of the powdery [residue] and add it to your liquor, food, or tea. The King of Wise Medicine said, “A lone, poor mountain monk [like myself] has no resources to prepare this. I simply chew [the ginger] with the skin and swallow it with warm water. Of course, it tasted pungent at first, but not so after a while. Now I taste nothing but its sweetness.”
* From Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037-1101), Su Shi wenji 蘇軾文集 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 73.2346.
[1] Zhiyuan was a renowned Buddhist physician during the Northern Song dynasty; see his biography in Toqto’a (1314-1356) ed., Songshi, 462.11b-12a.
[2] This is the seed of the Chinese parasol tree (Firmiana simplex), which is valued for its medicinal use in traditional Chinese medicine.
Illustration of ginger in the 19th-century Japanese agricultural encyclopedia Seikei Zusetsu 成形図説
Image credit: Leiden University Libraries
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