🌿 Folk Prescriptions

Yearly planning begins in spring. Health preservation is no different.
How to preserve health in spring? What to eat, what to avoid, and how much to consume—these are all matters of wisdom. To explore this, I consulted experienced TCM practitioners about spring and summer health preservation.
From major hospitals, I learned that recent cases of colds, fevers, coughs, gastrointestinal issues, and liver diseases are unusually high. Dr. Zhong Yongtao, a health consultant at Dusheng Hall, pointed out that spring commonly triggers gastrointestinal and liver problems. Diet should reduce sour and spicy foods, increase sweet-tasting foods to tonify the spleen. Items like tangerine peel for regulating liver qi, chrysanthemum for calming liver wind, mung bean sprouts and barley sprouts for soothing liver and spleen are timely and suitable for dietary therapy. Keep at home items that clear internal heat, remove damp toxins, and strengthen the spleen and promote diuresis—such as coix seed, hyacinth bean, poria, white atractylodes, banlangen, guanzhong, and honeysuckle—suitable for soups or tea. Avoid lamb, dog meat, quail, buckwheat, fried peanuts, fried sunflower seeds, sea fish, shrimp, and spicy foods.
Three Steps of Health-Preserving Dietary Therapy
1. Tea
There's an unwritten rule with pharmacological diets: avoid tea. According to Master Xu of the Food Therapy Pavilion, tea can diminish medicinal effects, so only plain water is recommended. Yet, at Guangzhou Qifu Food Therapy Pavilion and Dusheng Hall International Wellness Club, servers enthusiastically serve "tea." Oddly, it looks like tea but has no tea flavor.
Master Wang Yansong, the chief TCM physician at Qifu Food Therapy Pavilion, explains this is a "throat-clearing tea." With fluctuating spring temperatures, catching a cold is easy. This tea contains honeysuckle, dendrobium, licorice, and scrophularia, offering benefits like soothing the throat and alleviating cold symptoms. Another similar concoction, "Flower Dew Jade Liquid," is made from honeysuckle, rose, chrysanthemum, bamboo leaf, and hawthorn, though slightly tart. At Dusheng Hall International Wellness Club, servers always offer a warm welcome tea—ordinary in appearance but packed with benefits. It contains tangerine peel, helping regulate qi and relieve cough.
2. Soup
Guangdong people love soup and tailor their choices to seasonal changes and individual needs. Stewing maximizes original flavors, producing clear, non-cloudy broths—highly praised by diners.
In spring, Qifu Food Therapy Pavilion offers Longevity Turtle Age Soup and Stone Orchid American Ginseng Crocodile Soup. The former contains turtle, lingzhi, fresh poria, yam, and ginger—tonifying liver yin. The latter, made with stone orchid, American ginseng, ophiopogon, and crocodile meat, helps with gastrointestinal issues, indigestion, and coughs.
Food Therapy Pavilion is famous for its soups, whose bases are made with a proprietary secret recipe, slowly simmered for half a day using distilled water. Though containing herbs, the soups lack bitterness, instead tasting fresh, sweet, and fragrant. Over fifty soup varieties exist, each with different benefits. The chef notes Guangzhou’s polluted air often causes respiratory issues. Red silk thread stewed with lean meat clears lung heat and stops coughing. In spring’s damp weather, drink soups with diuretic, anti-swelling, and detoxifying effects—half-side lotus root stewed fish tail fits this category. Spring digestive issues are common, so lion’s mane mushroom stewed with lean meat aids digestion and tonifies spleen and qi.
But note: avoid mixing different soups. If mixing is necessary, stick to same-nature types—e.g., cool with cool.
3. Dishes
While enjoying soups for tonification, pairing with medicinal side dishes enhances therapeutic effects.
Spring focuses on liver and spleen tonification. Dusheng Hall International Wellness Club recommends Polygonum Liver Slices—tonifying liver and kidneys, enriching blood, and dispelling wind. The name hints at ingredients: pork liver, polygonum, plus wood ear fungus, jujubes, and goji berries for flavor. The taste is particularly fresh and sweet.
Spring’s unpredictable weather calls for enhanced immunity against viruses. Wild mushroom pigeon casserole is an excellent choice, suitable for those with weak spleen and stomach, qi and blood deficiency, or liver discomfort. Dr. Yu Yonghong, health consultant at Dusheng Hall, points out that leeks are warm and pungent, tonifying yang qi, dispersing wind-cold, and killing pathogens thriving in spring’s damp environment—ideal for spring consumption. Thus, they introduced Leek-Fried Century Egg. However, leeks are relatively warm; those with eye conditions should use cautiously or sparingly.
At Guangzhou Qifu Food Therapy Pavilion’s new spring menu, I noticed unusual dish names. "Clear and White Heritage" gets its name from green baby bok choy and white tofu, paired with kelp and braised meat—light in flavor, using tofu ground on-site, extremely smooth. "Fangfeng Yiping" sounds mysterious. Actually, it’s made with fangfeng, astragalus slices, white atractylodes, and quail—tastes subtly medicinal. Master Wang Yansong, the chief TCM physician at Qifu Food Therapy Pavilion, notes this dish tonifies qi and consolidates the exterior, suitable for qi-deficient colds—but those with weak constitution, low resistance, or prone to colds should avoid it.
Spring-Friendly Foods
Grains: Yam, glutinous rice, black rice, sorghum, millet, oats.
Fruits and Vegetables: Spinach, leeks, garlic, scallions, spring bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, yardlong beans, pumpkin, hyacinth beans, jujubes, longan, walnuts, chestnuts.
Meats and Fish: Beef, ox tripe, chicken liver, crucian carp, yellow perch, sea bass, grass carp, eel.