Enchanting medicine

I am sick *again.* We did back-to-back colds this month. E was down with crazy aches, pains, shivers, flushes, and stomach hoo-ha for two weeks, then I picked it up for about a week, and then about five days later we both looked at each other and said, "Oh no, do you feel something in the back of your throat?"

And so, I've spent some time perusing the shelves of the local pharmacy and unexpectedly finding myself captivated by Chinese medicines. The packaging is charming and irresistible to me. Take, for instance this box of Po Chai Pills...

Po Chai Pills, incidentally, are "good for" fever, diarrhoea, intoxication, over-eating, vomiting and gastrointestinal diseases. According to Wikipedia, Po Chai Pills were developed in 1896.

The box they come in was clearly not designed in 2010. Looking at the picture above, can you see the HK skyline on the front from 20+ years ago? No 118-floor ICC building! Also, if you look at all of those intricate scrolls around the solemn doctor's portrait, they're actually embossed in the cardboard. And there are reflective dots with iridescent Chinese characters you can see if you hold the box at an angle with the light.

Then, when you open the box, there are floral patterns on the box flaps that are so enchanting. I feel like they are the curtains of a theater, drawing me into the interior. What will I find next?



Tiny little Russian dolls (or Chinese dolls)! The big box is stuffed with a dozen or more little boxes with an even smaller rendition of the solemn doctor's face on them. Meanwhile a faint, spicy aroma drifts up from the box's interior...



And then...a plastic vial of brick-red balls with both Chinese and English writing: "Made in Hong Kong." On the top of the teeny plastic vial, four teeny-tiny Chinese characters.



The balls are dry and crunchy, with a mild, bitter, herbal flavor -- not unpleasant if you just chew a few. Am I supposed to chew them? I don't know. The box just says to take 2 bottles every two hours, four times daily. When E tried taking them, he emptied an entire vial into his mouth and chewed! Ack! Now he refuses to take them anymore. Whoops ;-)

The main ingredients are totally mysterious to me:

• Poria
• Radix Aucklandiae
• Herba Pogostemonis
• Semen Coicis (eh?)
• Rhizoma Atractylodis
• Radix Puerariae Lobatae

Apparently there was recently controversy about Po Chai Pill ingredients. In March of this year, the HK government recalled the product because the capsule form in Singapore was found to contain phenolphthalein and sibutramine, which can cause very serious side effects. In May, the HK gov gave Po Chai Pills the green light as tests of the bottle form samples showed no evidence of "the two western medicines."