Traditional Chinese Medicine Guide

GRANDMOTHER LI (1) The art of convalescence
March 26, 2010
The
that everyone in the neighborhood, called Grandma Li (李 奶奶 Naina Li) was 96 when she gave me a little of his kitchen.
Born in Beijing in 1906 Grandma Li arrived with his family in Manchuria in 1912. She spent all her life, a life fraught with vicissitudes of turmoil and tragedy. Girl and wife of a craftsman, a husband she had not actually selected, mother of four children that the war had killed, she said she had gone through the years joyless and painless: simply doing what she had to do as he must do.
When she took stock of his life (Grandma Li was all the time all kinds of reports), there was one thing that particularly satisfied and filled with pride (自爱 zì’ai self-esteem, respect for oneself): whatever the circumstances, she always managed to feed his family. But watch for her eating, it was not just food. “With anything, you can make good food and good cooking only keep you healthy. Anything that is not good, destroys health, “said Grandma Li
Grandma Li attached importance to the kitchen of convalescence. According to it, with the kitchen that we could get in line after an illness, any illness, even the smallest, most benign (benign if the “patient” did not notice sometimes nothing and it was the sharp eye of Grandma Li to identify).
A force to advise him and offer its revenue recovery, Grandma Li had become, over time, a sort of “cook healthy” to its neighbors and even his neighborhood, always ready to prepare a kitchen designed for the proper recovery of Doe or Doe. She loved this “profession”. And it brought him a few yuan, which supplemented retirement so thin it was almost nonexistent.
When I suggested to Li Naina to give me some of his recipes daily, she was excited for this job and stirring up some of his best friends his age to attend, she began to unroll his culinary memory.
course, Grandma Li did not weigh the ingredients and did not quantify its time cooking. Moi si! With my watch and a small balance purchased for the occasion, I laugh politely. When I lost myself in my calculations, I asked him to help me and she always told me “old boy, you’re too specific, here is useless. Here prevents the senses, feelings, fun and pleasurable sensations. And then, when you’re too specific, if you want to always do the same thing as it should, the disease comes on quickly.
Old boy (老蔫 儿 laonian’er). Li dwarf has always been called that. I made her smile with my curiosity, it was my job anthropologist was not very serious for a man my age.
Grandma Li died in his sleep early in the year 2007. She never accepted that I take a picture. She said that at his age a photograph was an insult to the memories. I still have it, the image of a tiny woman, very tiny, wizened face. I still have it the melody of a voice stress slightly dragging. I still remember a calm alertness at all times. There are also those brief moments when, at work, his face pitted with sadness. As I frown at such moments, Grandma Li, swept his face with his left hand and mumbled “lousy life”.
Grandma Li was recovering in the highest esteem. Actually, if I understand it was not far from thinking that life was a recovery or a series of closely spaced phases of convalescence. This was his conception of the disease concept that I often found among elderly Chinese with whom I worked, and with many doctors, too old, but expressed in another way.
Grand Li-mother thought that the illness was anything other than a normal form of life, and she told everyone who would listen he disagreed with the doctors who saw the disease, what I would call an “event” . If I try to bring the best thought, I’d say to her, life was a river that never majestic river rather small, never straight, full of meandering, always oscillating between the current course of disease and current health. A kind of discrete wave flow, it also said that the constant oscillation between illness and health as the harmony of life. “To live is to be carried by a small river with lots of current. So here we go and we go there. It goes without wanting here is to be patient here is be healthy. But there is a bit sick and there is a bit Healthy
For her, any disease is “final” and marks the time of life permanently. Even after a little affection, it is “after.” To speak of me in life, Grandma Li also frequently made use of the image of track railway and its switches. At each switch, the train changes direction. And good for her, life was a train running on a track where there would be switches. A disease is a switch which not only gives in existence a new direction, but changes the internal body in full. In other words, each disease forever transform your body and every disease built last legacy which makes stacking life. The recovery is so important for Grandma Li, this was anything other than addiction to a new harmony of the body. As if being in a new landscape was transformed from within. In fact, from his point of view, the disease is not well-defined entity, but rather a way of life that takes the body to adapt. It has nothing to do with hypochondria, but rather soon with the idea ingrained in her that the difficulties of life weave much more than facilities.
Before the disease, no panic and no fatalism . Good convalescence, without putting everything in place, deal with a legacy before a new disease-stage. An evening Grandma Li said that from birth, the baby is recovering and, in fact, the whole life unfolds in convalescence (that is to say fresh adaptation taking into account the effects disease as sequelae of Health). The end of the recovery is the end of the harmony is when you’re dead.
康复 Kangfu means recovery from illness. The character is composed of 康 kang health and 复 fu means answering, repeat, repeat, turn again. As a verb, means 康复 Kangfu recover, recover, recover, recover, or to feather. Grandma Li, so she often uses the term Kangfu does not give exactly the same meaning. The side “recover, recovery, seems to interfere because she can not ever be recovered, it never returns to a previous state, recovery is a process of adapting to a new state body. (适应 Shiying). In fact, I gradually realized that for Li Naini, recovery was much more than this intermediate state passenger between two diseases or between health and disease and is the root of life. The root, practically in the strict sense, the place of preparation and synthesis of life rising from the earth and can survive only by adapting.
When you are recovering, it is fluctuating or fuzzy, while itself varies from day to day, hour by hour. It has often nausea, great fatigue, one feels particularly fragile and ephemeral (短暂 duan zan). Then, when cooked, it must adapt to what one feels. With the same ingredients, you have to let go. Similarly, do not cut food with precision and normalized, but rather crudely, as incomplete. It is in the body that must be sizing. Grossly, that is to say, unfinished, as if thinking of something else, as if there was not time. In fact, letting go, letting go, the cook will be directed by his physical condition.
As I said then Grandma Li that, after it said it was necessary for the Cook is the convalescent and I wondered how it was to cook for the recovery of others, she replied that it would be best that each one makes her kitchen in these moments. But what the chef could also be putting himself up with his client just as a doctor could make a diagnosis and prescribe drugs. This required to position themselves to watch. To watch, Grandma Li used sometimes 窥视 kui shi, watching, but more often 窥测 kui this, which means make assumptions from what we observe. Sometimes she used – with an ironic tone – of 窥伺 kui if watching in the sense of spying, watching, looking furtive manner.
For convalescence, for these passages to a new harmony of body, as ephemeral all others, nothing beats the broth and soup.
Soups and Broths: magistral preparations
If I try to identify more closely the various definitions that Grandma Li gave broths and soups, I would say that for her, broths and soups are compounded products, that is to say a kind of medicinal preparations made by order by the pharmacist for a specific patient suffering a particular condition. Here is the cook who is a pharmacist and, in most cases, the fixed-order recipe.
An example of recovery broth
In half a liter of water, cook low heat for thirty minutes (after the first stirrings of boiling) five grams of fresh ginger chopped, half a clove of garlic, one hundred grams of leaves of Chinese cabbage, fifty grams of black mushrooms, cucumber fifty grams, five grams chopped red pepper, two ounces of fresh coriander, twenty grams of soy sauce, half a lemon, a pinch of Sichuan pepper. Once cooked, infuse for an hour. Filter to keep only the broth to warm slowly to obtain a broth of lukewarm water. Drink slowly, focusing on the flavors.
Reviews of Grandma Li
“Cooking broth (烹 peng boil, bake or cook 烹饪 peng ren) is to remove the vitality of Food (Grandma Li uses the term jing 精, which gives it a sense of vitality, vigor, and not the meaning, classical, petrol, subtle principle, unique to Chinese medicine), which just feeds into food (shu cai 熟菜 cooked food, cooked preparation). Once the vitality is gone she is in the broth. ” “With what I put in this soup is a hot stock and you must drink it warm because it should not there be two heats in addition. When food in the broth is hot in themselves, then he must drink warm.
“I put ginger cons cold after internal fever, especially fever winter. Ginger is a new harmony in the stomach and hunting poisons that remain of all medications taken during the illness (毒药 of yao, poison, toxin. 毒, means of poison, toxin, toxic and yao 药 refers to both the drug-drug medicine and the act of poisoning). And then it warms.
“After an illness, any illness, you’re tired of the inside and digestion (消化 xiao hua) is difficult and painful. The food stays in a ball in the stomach and intestine. It’s as nodes (疙瘩 da ge, ball, knot clusters, Mass) with garlic, I fight against the balls of undigested food coming after illness, Garlic re circulate life (返工 fan gong , redo work, redo a job poorly done). When one was sick at the beginning of new life, fat is the enemy. And garlic dissipates fat you eat (消除 xiao chu, remove, remove, hunt).
“The cabbage is cabbage. It’s great medicine for the stomach, the stomach and stomach sick and tired weak stomach and stomach again after illness and old stomach. With cabbage, swelling, bloating dissipated. When inflated, when it is swollen, then it quickly becomes angry as a wave (波 bo), irritable, anxious (怄气 or qi, angry, but sulk; 苦恼 ku nao tormented, anguished, anxious). With cabbage, everything here is over. “
” The black fungus cools the blood, gives strength to the stomach, especially the reconstructed stomach still a bit destroyed by the disease. He is assisted by the cucumber is refreshing and deflate the hands and feet by circulating vitality and urinate. The fight against cucumber organs working too for no reason and start to burn.
“Two foods that give fresh. A food warming. The pepper is a wonder: it opens the stomach, restores appetite (胃口 wei kou, appetite, but also taste) and improves good mood with some illness and convalescence (情绪 qing xu, moral, mood), it helps digestion tired, hunting cold, reheat, is sweating, calm the pain of the stomach and intestines. It decreases the swelling of the abdomen. The chili is helped by the fact that cilantro move, sweat, what is good for digestion, eliminates bloating. And coriander enhances the memory of old, when they are using more memory in expediting the flow of blood. “
” Soy sauce, but not too much, is harmony in the stomach and kidneys and it restores appetite.
“Lemon is excellent when the” couple “(两口子 liang kou zi, both spouses) stomach and liver not hear, the Lemon then calls for harmony and well re-circulate the vitality. Often, when the liver and stomach may not understand is that fatigue from the disease, fatigue makes you sad, a little anxious. During convalescence, there is often a little sad, too, but a little, and lemon in a good stock takes a little sadness. Because this is not a real sadness, but the desire not to complete recovery, want to stay still recovering. This is normal convalescence, it’s like to be again a child “
” Pepper Sichuan opens the stomach, gives strength to the kidneys and warms the feet, helps in back pain. “My experience

When I tasted for the first time this stock recovery, Grandma Li has strongly advised me to concentrate on the flavors, she said only way to” guide ” food species to organs in need. Given the ingredients, I expected a very strong flavor, brutal. But, although the broth is far from being bland, I have not felt the power I expected, rather something rough. I tried to concentrate on the flavors, to decompose the overall flavor by flavor. I did not come I did not feel one taste and I told Grandma Li, who was very upset. “Drinking like that, my stock, you could be sure that it is useless.” Then Grandma Li made with each ingredient is a very concentrated broth. I was put in the mouth and keep me focusing on the felt, then spit out. I have a recollection of this broth chili! And the broth Sichuan pepper too! We rebuilt this learning, every day for a week, ten broths increasingly concentrated; broth of ginger, garlic, cabbage, black mushrooms, cucumber, pepper, coriander, soy sauce ( it approached, more spicy, miso soup that I knew), lemon pepper and Sichuan. And then I have finally been entitled to a full stock, rather warm but not hot, a beautiful amber color. As soon as an appetizer, I was dumbfounded at the outset, the various flavors needed. I felt much the taste of each ingredient and I watched the draft in the mouth, the more flavors asserted themselves before literally melt in one flavor, the broth. In my mouth was like the music: first presentation of the theme, then the return of the theme by each instrument and with a final return of the theme. It’s really how I lived it: the taste is decomposed into several concurrent tastes and clearly identified that were soon to be recomposed into a single flavor. What surprised me and that always surprises me is being able to feel so clearly several flavors simultaneously
Grandma Li kept telling me that this sensory experience so special that I managed to get was the key to effective “therapeutic” soup, all soups and more soups. But as all meals. Whether it was through this isolation and reconstitution of flavors that eating cooked harbored life.
Eat to nourish the life transformation of the act of eating into a lifestyle that makes everyday dining ceases to be banal or worse, automatic, and opens a field that sensitive, simple snap asked, continually enriched by the knowledge that I learned one day from a very old lady.
The pot: the other stomach
Grandma Li’s cooked broths, soups and all those other dishes by cooking them very long to very low heat in a pot. It was almost exclusively a follower of simmering (炖 dun), cooking stew, pot of cast iron or clay. For Grandma Li canner is the first stomach of humans. It works exactly the same way as the stomach fire is the digestive fire, the intimate mixture is made vitalities food and water broth is similar to digest that makes the soup concentrate Vitality (more or less similar to what Westerners call nutrient or nutrients) that the stomach is convalescing. This is why it should not make soup or broth to large fire, as it “burns” the food Vitality “which date back as gastric reflux and cause heartburn. So you must cook over low heat (by starting the heat just before boiling). Cook time: in fact the time of digestion.
A panacea: soup noodles into strips (面 片 汤, mian pian tang)
soup with strips of dough is the soup of convalescence to be taken after a bout with fever, a lung disease, flu, fatigue or simply a bit of a weakness … It is also, according to Grandma Li “the” soup of all the beginnings of recovery , one that can begin adapting to the new harmony, the new body from disease. “That’s what nourishes the fetus in the womb of its mother”
Whatever kind of recovery, we must rotate the soup noodles into strips with the rice soup for two rice soup (稀饭 xifan), a noodle soup. For maximum efficiency, as Grandma Li, it is better to eat soup noodles in strips at lunch and keep the rice soup for morning and evening.
Grandma Li also said that to make a good soup convalescence, he should not have a preparation calibrated in the head, it should adapt its inspiration / intent. She spoke in a combination of inspiration (inspiration 灵感 ling gan) and intention as desire (意 yi intent, meaning, desire). Once, she went to compare the inspiration after the perception of body state to 文思 wen if the breath of an inspired writer. But the soup noodles into strips exception and has only two versions based on different broths.
For soup high efficiency of early recovery, the broth is that described above need to concentrate maximum.
For soup accompanying the recovery once it is installed and well tolerated by the patient, the broth is easier to make: a few leaves of Chinese cabbage (大白菜 叶 da bai cai ye) cut filaments (丝状 if Zhuang), some spinach leaves, very thinly sliced cucumber, some green leek cut into very thin strips. In the final phase of convalescence, it is necessary to add a few slices of tomatoes to give the sour tract.
As always, Grandma Li did not choose his ingredients at random or for reasons of taste, but for their qualities of both convergent and complementary. Chinese cabbage (大白菜 da bai cai), Li Grandmother always said, is an “emperor”. It facilitates sweating and diuresis, two phenomena that need to monitor and assist in convalescence and he “lines” lubricates “rebuilt” the mucosa digestive still damaged by the disease (it is one of the main effects) and it again to suit the new life after recovery. Chinese cabbage is also, according to Li Naina, an excellent calming anxiety and irritability for specific diseases. Finally it is a destroyer of the “poisons” left in the body by drugs. The spinach leaves are a powerful aid to the motility of the small intestine and colonic motility while nourishing the blood spinach also soothes the liver and often bursting hyperactivity after illness and drug and importantly, it feeds the substance of all bodies that combat fatigue and anemia. The cucumber is both sweet and bitter so refreshing and detoxifying; bitterness quiet one who is worried the swelling dissipates and anxiety (Grandma Li thought that anxiety, pessimism of some old, the sadness for all young moms cause edema, especially the legs). If fever still, cucumber helps diuresis. Leeks give strength kidneys, strengthen the functions, circulating vitality, removes toxins from the intestines and causes sweating. As for tomatoes, fresh, sweet, sour, acidic, it gives tone to the stomach, helps digestion, fight headaches due to the passage of the new disease to health (Li Naini, headaches are almost always caused by “passages” to difficult or unexpected changes or refused). Tomatoes can also find the appetite.
Noodles, for they strengthen the vitality of the heart, soothe the nerves, calm or suppress the throbbing pain if it is not too important and improves blood circulation . Noodle soup Grandma Li are based dough 馄饨 huntun (ravioli prepared to be cooked in broth) which is rolled like to make a cake of spring (春饼 chun bing) and l ‘flatten once. Then, we must cut the dough into thin strips that are cut into small rectangles. When the broth is ready, plunge the pasta in the broth and left to shiver a few minutes watching. If we give this soup a woman who has just given birth, add beaten egg into the soup.
Grandma Li restaurant
One day I asked Grand Mother Li if he would be happy that we went to the restaurant. She looked at me as if she did not understand
“Both?
– Both
– as a son who goes to a restaurant with his old mother?
–
yes – when?
– anytime, maybe tomorrow
– (after a long pause) I agree
retained a small room in a restaurant neighborhood, not too far from Grandma Li I never experienced this restaurant, but I knew he had a great reputation.
The next morning, around 10am, I came to seek Grandmother Li She was waiting for me. Seeing her, I remained silent. Grandma Li, hair pulled into a bun was a former 旗袍, Qipao black silk, adorned with a discreet silver embroidery and a little too black cape embroidered with silver. She also had shoes in black silk embroidered. Fortunately I was able to control, silence and play the one who was not surprised that this was normal, banal. And then we left the apartment. All the neighbors were in the hallway, all the thirty-one, and we went in procession. There were about thirty people, women, men, all old and older. People leaned from the windows to watch us. The procession stopped at a few tens of meters from the restaurant entrance. During the twenty minute walk slowly, I feel like in a novel by Lin Yutang, a Chinese memory. We entered the restaurant, of course, was packed. The butler came to welcome us to lead us to the parlor. In passing, people at the table stood to applaud. Grandma Li greeted them at the former, modestly. Once in the parlor, I installed Ms Li at the place of honor at the small round table. The chef came to bow before my guest. The butler did not show us the menu. Soon the table was covered with a multitude of dishes loaded with very little food. As a dinette. There was really everything, a true taste specialties of the house. Grandma Li pecking with pleasure also evident that discretion. During the first two courses, there was silence. And then the third course, Grandma Li began to speak. A little. Piecemeal. For bubbles. Between wand.
‘s Father Grandma Li manufactured furniture. At the end of the Qing dynasty, he came to settle in Harbin then expanding. The husband of Grandma Li also produced furniture, but also leather. He also ended up giving up the furniture to be dedicated only to leather work. In his family life, Li Naina said there was nothing to say that it happened like that overnight. She had four children, four boys. The war had killed one after another. And her husband too. After liberation of Harbin by the Liberation Army in spring 1946, Li became Naina working in the textile industry. The Cultural Revolution had bullied because it was the daughter and wife of “capitalist”, but she did not speak. Today, she does not understand the evolution of China and especially the fact that the former came at full gallop, the former for her based on injustice and misery. As she said “all this misery, all these misfortunes, all this violence to return to the big rich and poor, large, small concubines, with a fat little emperors”, it left her wondering.
The meal last long. In the end we were, she and I, in a sweet slumber. The chef has returned us to ask Grandma to read him the great honor of writing a sentence on the menu and sign. Grandma Li was troubled a few seconds and I said, very softly, she had not taken his glasses and if I could write for him. She dictated a sentence honoring the cook and the quality of the meal we had just done. She also asked me to sign for him.
Grandma Li does not wear glasses and I realized at that moment that she could neither read nor write.
We returned slowly at Grandma Li where I left him asleep, watched over by a neighbor, because “she was still eating a lot.”

Posted in ARTICLES & , text by François Lupu