By Eric Brand

Chinese herbal medicine features an amazing array of different products, all of which are customarily sliced and processed in ways that highlight their unique identifying characteristics. This is an unusual and distinctive approach that evolved gradually to help hundreds of items to be easily differentiated in trade. If we visit a Western herbal pharmacy, we find that most products are cut and sifted, which makes many bulk herbs hard to differentiate visually. By contrast, the unique methods of cutting and preparing products in Chinese medicine allow the pharmacist to easily discern the identity and grade of the product that they are looking at.

However, despite the clarity that the traditional cutting methods often reveal, the marketplace preference for different cutting styles varies from region to region in China. Many TCM-trained herbalists in the West are used to seeing a particular cut of an herb, and when they see the same herb cut differently they have a hard time identifying it. Thus, the variety of cuts on the market sometimes create clarity and sometimes they create confusion, depending on whether the viewer is used to seeing a variety of different cuts for the same herb or if they have only been exposed to a single regional cut.

...

In the USA, we are generally used to seeing the cuts of herbs that are typical in the Hong Kong marketplace, which often differs from the cut seen in mainland China. For example, we are often used to the “tongue depressor” shape of astragalus (Huang Qi), which is a long flat slice achieved by pressing the original circular root and slicing it horizontally (the long way). In Taiwan, they often press the root and use a transverse cut, which makes the root look somewhat similar to a large slice of Gan Cao. In mainland China, Huang Qi is often sliced in thin, round, un-pressed slices that look totally different than the cut typically seen in the USA.

Consider the following photographs of Da Fu Pi, for example. This first photo came from a specimen in Taiwan.

The areca husk is split into thin slices to facilitate the decoction process.

However, it looks quite different from the whole areca husk, which is pictured below (specimen obtained in the USA).

The third picture shows Da Fu Pi in one of the mainland presentation styles- the husks have been pounded to facilitate decoction. This item looks fluffy and totally different than the other decoction pieces pictured here, but in fact all three photos are the exact same medicinal.

(Click here to read a blog on the use of Da Fu Pi and Bing Lang as a recreational drug. Processed Da Fu Pi is commonly chewed in Hunan province as a mild stimulant.)

Herbalists in the USA often need to double as pharmacists. Many of the experienced Chinese teachers that we learn from in school worked in large hospitals writing scripts for patients, and they had the luxury of having pharmacists downstairs who were the experts in the crude herbal drugs themselves. As practitioners in the West, we are expected to be experts in the products themselves as well as their clinical use (a daunting task, to say the least). Consequently, it behooves us herbalists to become as familiar with as many different cuts of the same herb as possible. You never know when you might come across a company that has an awesome product that is cut slightly differently, and you don’t want to pass it up just because you’re used to seeing it sliced another way!