The Development of the Yaoshan 藥膳 (Refined Medical Cuisine) and Its Restaurants

Uhe Engelhardt

《中國飲食文化學術研討會論文集》 第5屆 (1998/06) Pp. 71-87

https://doi.org/10.6641/PICCFC.1-8.1998.05.05

並列摘要

Yaoshan 藥膳, ＂refined medical cuisine＂, is a recently developed special form of ＂Chinese dietary treatment＂( shiliao 食療) which combines Chinese medical herbs and foodstuffs according to the theory and methods of traditional Chinese medicine. In contrast to the rather simple preparation methods of the medical dietary treatment, the ＂refined medical cuisine＂ applies the refined methods of the Chinese art of cooking. Though it was first intended to be a cuisine for everybody, today it has become a flourishing industry with many Yaoshan -Restaurants, mostly frequented by the rich. This paper will introduce the development of Yaoshan, ＂refined medical cuisine＂ from its beginings in 1980 and evaluate two main aspects: (1) its therapeutical value and its relation to Chinese medicine, (2) its correlation to China's economic growth and its political and social changes. It has often been pointed out that there is no really radical distinction between food and medicine in China, this fact is reflected in the famous proverb ＂medicine and food have the same origin＂(醫食同源). Books on Chinese cooking often emphasize the medical value of foods, and many of the vegetable and animal products deoocted in medical herbal prescriptions are used routinely in cooking. At the beginning of the 1980s Chinese people showed an increasing interest in eating well and healthily in both the rural as well as the urban areas. After more than a decade of economic stagnation and social and political chaos during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the new government under Deng Xiaoping had propagated far reaching economic reforms. The most important consequences of these reforms for the health of the Chinese people can be summarized as follows: 1. a relatively rapid increase in wealth which influenced general health in a number of ways 2. a significant degree of improvement in medicine and health care, both in the cities and in the rural areas. 3. a dramatic change in the diets and nutritional habits, providing the Chinese people with more and better food than ever before in their history. While in the centuries-old dietary tradition in China food intake has been dominated by cereals and vegetables, during the 1980s there was a dramatic increase in the consumption of meat, diary products, poultry, fish and other items that were generally considered to be ＂luxuries＂, particularly in the countryside. While the range of foodstuffs available to the Chinese people was considerably enlarged, there was a greater emphasis on the question of which foodstuffs were particularly suitable for the health. Moreover, the increasing interest in dietary culture at that time was reflected in the following items: 1. Many examples of contemporary Chinese fiction dwell at length on food, like Lu Wenfu's famous 1982 novella ＂The Gourmet＂. 2. Major national magazines were published devoted to the subject of food and drink, such as Zhongguo pengren 中國烹飪(1980), or Shipin kexue 食品科學 (1980), which featured special sections or columns about dietetics. 3. The number of publications on dietetics increased considerably. Some of these were reprints of old classical texts, others were exclusively practical modern publications (for example Zhongguo pengren guji congkan , 中國烹飪古籍叢刊 in publication since 1984, or Yangsheng congshu 養生叢書 Since 1988, Ye 1978). 4. And last but not least the Yaoshanxue 藥膳學 as it is known, and its restaurants were established representing a special form of dietary treatment. In .this paper, I explore the development of Yaoshan, ＂refined medical cuisine＂, as one aspect of the newly discovered interest in dietetics, from its beginnings in 1980 and evaluate its therapeutical value and its relation to Chinese medicine. Moreover, I would like to compare the development of Yaoshan with the more academic forms of dietary treatment and their establishment in universities and TCM(traditional Chinese medicine) clinics. Finally, I would like to examine the question of how far and in which ways dietary knowledge extends throughout the population and what future dietary trends can be identified for the 21st century.