One of my favorite areas in Hong Kong is the herbal medicine shop streets around Sheung Wan. For reasons I won't get into here, these shops carry an amazing variety of real deal Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), that you almost cannot find in mainland China anymore. In Shanghai pharmacies, for example, they look at you like you're nuts if you ask for herbals instead of pills. They think they're being "modern", we guess. In Hong Kong they still have the good stuff, or as the proverbial tourist might say, the weird stuff. Dried sea creatures, mystery animal parts, deer antlers, tiger penis, wine with whole king cobras, and stacks and heaps of herbs and twigs and tree bark. This is where I always stock up on
Kam Wo Cha, the boxed herbal tea -- the best cold cure I've ever found.
It's not just the large selection that makes this TCM shopping district special -- it's the quality, the sights, the scent, the classic atmosphere, and the openly friendly service.
We'll have to devote several upcoming posts to Traditional Chinese Medicine weirdness, but we decided to start with these cute Ta!wan tree lizards we found...
The lady at the TCM shop explained that the lizards are best in a soup, and set out collecting all the bits and pieces to make the soup with. The soup ingredients (herbs) are yam, chinese dates, ginseng, medlar, and something called tragacanth. About 10 grams of each. I'm American, so I don't know what grams are. You cook these herbs with some pork bones and the lizards. The TCM shopkeeper told me I could eat the lizards (snap off the head and limbs and toss them out) and that the tails are the best, as in beneficial, parts to eat. They're reported to be good for asthma, colds, lungs and heart.
The lizards at the market were dried and tied to wooden sticks, two a piece. One is a male, the other female. The pharmacist told us they were all lizard couples, and that we're supposed to consume both genders together in the soup. We felt better knowing these married lizards perished together -- is this practised anywhere else, with other animals-for-consumption?
Anyway, the lizards sort of dissolved into the soup -- maybe we cooked it too long? -- but we did get a few little bites of bona fide lizard meat, and they were kinda tartly fishy tasting, and very bony.
Yes, that's a lizard coming out of my mouth.Labels: Hong Kong, lizard, soup, TCM, traditional chinese medicine
