🌿 Folk Prescriptions

China’s culinary culture is vast and profound. Ordinary plants and animals, when properly combined, can prevent and treat diseases—these are known as medicinal cuisine in traditional medicine. These dishes not only harness medicinal properties but also avoid drug side effects. Some foods, beyond treating illness, also enhance beauty.
Same medicinal dish affects different people differently. To use medicinal cuisine effectively, one must understand personal constitution and apply appropriately to achieve health, disease prevention, and beauty enhancement.
Consuming medicinal cuisine is a unique TCM beauty method.
Even in Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhongjing was skilled in using animal and plant-based medicines for beauty treatments. His "Essential Prescriptions from the Golden Chamber" records numerous formulas that treat illness and enhance beauty, such as Gancao Xiaomai Dazao Tang, Danggui Shengjiang Yangrou Tang, and Zhusi Tang. These reflect Zhang’s principle of “food and medicine sharing origin.”
Zhusi Tang (Pork Skin Decoction) is a crucial formula in "Treatise on Cold Damage"
This formula was used by Zhang Zhongjing to treat diarrhea, sore throat, and restlessness. He combined pork skin, raw honey, and rice flour in decoction to clear deficient heat, strengthen the spleen-stomach, stop diarrhea, relieve irritability, and clear heat—a vital formula among the 112 prescriptions in "Treatise on Cold Damage."
Pork Is a Treasure from Head to Tail
Using pork organs and herbs together for treatment and beauty is common in traditional Chinese medical prescriptions.
Experts note that pork skin and pig trotters are rich in protein, primarily collagen and elastin. Consuming them is an excellent choice for women seeking beauty—affordable, easy to prepare, and visibly effective, hence very popular.
In beauty contexts, TCM often uses “sentient substances” rich in essence and blood—not mere roots and bark—but animal skins and fats to achieve beauty. Examples include donkey-hide gelatin (E Jiao), pig trotters, and pork skin—all possessing beauty benefits via nourishing yin and blood, moisturizing skin, improving skin environment, thus achieving beauty. These principles are preserved in ancient imperial recipes and remain widely used in modern TCM.
Beauty through pork skin and trotters has a thousand-year history in China.
Zhang Zhongjing recorded in "Treatise on Cold Damage" that pork skin and trotters “harmonize qi-blood, moisturize skin, and enhance beauty.” Some beauty experts recommend women eat more pork skin and trotters—thus, pork truly is a superb beauty ingredient.