Chinese Medicine: Starting with Daily Intelligence-Chapter 59: Purchasing
The mountain path was damp with morning mist. Li Xu walked along the gravel trail for about half an hour before finally reaching a three-meter-wide asphalt mountain road.
The occasional passing vehicle brought a touch of human life to the silent mountain forest.
He stood by the roadside, stuck out his thumb, and tried to hitch a ride.
After half an hour of waiting, an old, beat-up Wuling Hongguang minivan slowly pulled to a stop in front of him.
The window rolled down, revealing a dark, honest-looking face.
"Where you headed, young man?" the driver asked in a thick, local accent.
"Jiushui Town. Would it be convenient to get a ride?" Li Xu quickly replied.
"Hop in!" The driver grinned, revealing a set of neat teeth. "It’s on my way."
Li Xu thanked him and got in, noticing several bamboo baskets piled in the back. They were filled with fresh mushrooms, exuding the clean fragrance of earth and plants.
"Foraged from the mountains?" Li Xu asked casually.
"Yep, went foraging in the woods first thing this morning. Taking them to a restaurant in town now." The driver patted the steering wheel. "This car is older than my boy, but it’s built to last. Never fails me on these mountain roads."
The mountain road had many curves, but the driver navigated them steadily.
Half an hour later, they arrived in Jiushui Town.
Li Xu offered to pay for the ride, but the driver waved it off with a smile. "It was on the way, I couldn’t take your money. See you."
...
He had been in the mountains for a day.
Now he was in town again.
It felt incredibly lively.
It was a feeling of returning to the world of men.
Of course, the town wasn’t large.
There was only one main street.
Shops lined both sides—stores selling farm tools, restaurants, and wholesalers, all clustered together.
It didn’t take him long to find the seed shop.
Inside, he bought cucumber and green bean seeds.
Then he went to the butcher shop and bought five jin of spare ribs. When the butcher heard Li Xu say they were for a dog, he even threw in two large marrow bones for free.
"Big bones are good for dogs. They can gnaw on them, and it fills them up." The butcher deftly chopped the large bones. "All the dog owners around here like to buy them."
Carrying the heavy bones, Li Xu went to the town’s traditional medicine pharmacy.
"Qianghuo, Qin Jiao, Du Huo..." Li Xu rattled off a string of medicinal herb names.
As the Pharmacist measured out the herbs, he glanced at Li Xu. "Are you a doctor, too?"
"Yes. How could you tell?"
"Heh, most people who come here to buy herbs bring a prescription, and some of them can’t even read it right. Someone like you, who can recite the names from memory? You’re most likely a colleague."
After gathering the herbs, the Pharmacist asked, "Why not use Gastrodia and Clematis root?"
"I have Gastrodia."
"What about Clematis root? It moves well through all twelve meridians and is especially potent for expelling wind and dampness. Adding it would make the formula twice as effective," the Pharmacist suggested.
Li Xu shook his head. "No, the channeling power of Clematis root is too strong. If I add it, the patient will suffer."
The Pharmacist frowned. "Treating an illness requires enduring some hardship. Without Clematis root, your formula might relieve the pain temporarily, but it won’t cure the disease. Isn’t it better to endure a few days of pain to eradicate the root cause in one fell swoop?"
Li Xu hadn’t expected to run into an expert in this unassuming little town.
After a brief silence, Li Xu told him the truth. "I met an old man in the mountains with severe rheumatism. But when I took his pulse, it was a pulse of four deficiencies. The medicine I’m prescribing isn’t to cure him, but just to make his last few days less painful."
"Ah..."
The Pharmacist froze for a moment, then silently took out the Qianghuo and Qin Jiao he had just prepared.
From under the counter, he took out two new pieces of the same herbs.
But these were older and of better quality.
After wrapping them, he handed them to Li Xu. "These are top-grade. They’ll relieve the leg pain faster."
"Thanks."
Not another word was said. After paying, Li Xu left the pharmacy.
Standing on the street, he thought for a moment, then went and bought a pair of reading glasses and two packs of cigarettes.
No matter how miraculous foxtail grass was, it couldn’t cure presbyopia.
It could only relieve fatigue.
The reading glasses would allow the old man to see the mountain scenery more clearly in his final days.
After finishing his shopping, Li Xu still didn’t leave.
He had one last thing to do.
He found the town government building and asked for the department in charge of civil affairs.
The old guard at the gate told him he could handle it at the Party-Masses Service Center next door.
Li Xu pushed the door open, went inside, and found the correct window.
"What business do you need to take care of?"
"I’m a traditional Chinese medicine doctor. Yesterday, while gathering herbs in the mountains, I met an elderly man in Bailingyu Village named Zhou Shugen. After taking his pulse, I realized he doesn’t have much time left. I came to give you a heads-up, so that when he passes away, you can send someone over in a timely manner."
The clerk was taken aback. He looked at Li Xu intently, as if trying to determine whether he was telling the truth.
CLACK CLACK CLACK~
The clerk pulled up a file on his computer.
[Zhou Shugen, resident of Bailingyu Natural Village, 79 years old, recipient of the Five Guarantees program...]
"Thank you for the heads-up. Bailingyu Village is under the jurisdiction of Shangwang Administrative Village. I’ll contact the village chief of Shangwang Village and have him look into it. This is his phone number; you can also contact him if there’s an emergency."
The clerk wrote down a phone number for Li Xu. "I’ll also need your contact information."
...
After taking care of his business, Li Xu hailed a taxi in town and returned to Bailingyu Village with his things.
On the way, he received a call. "Hello, is this Doctor Li Xu?"
"Speaking. Who is this?"
"Oh, this is Wang Baimu, the chief of Shangwang Village. The town office just called me. They said you reported that Uncle Zhou from Bailing Valley isn’t doing well?"
"That’s right. I took his pulse. It should be within the next day or two."
"Sigh... He’s from my father’s generation. When they were young, they worked on the projects to level mountains and dig canals, really worked themselves to the bone. Times were poor back then, and he never managed to get married, so he’s been alone all this time. A few years ago, the town wanted to move him to a nursing home, but he couldn’t get used to the idea and insisted on staying in the mountains. I go to check on him every so often. The last time I visited, he seemed to be in pretty good shape."
After a moment of reflection, Wang Baimu said, "I’m tied up with things away from the village today, but I’ll go see him tomorrow. If you have other things to do, don’t feel you have to wait."
"I came to the mountains to gather herbs anyway. Staying an extra day is no trouble."
Just as they were finishing their conversation, the taxi stopped at the entrance to the village path.
After paying, Li Xu carried his things back to the village.
The old man wasn’t home.
Da Huang wasn’t there either.
Li Xu put his things down in the house, then took the glasses and cigarettes and went to the mountainside just outside the village.
The old man was hunched over, breaking up clumps of earth with a hoe.
He was forming them into planting ridges.
Da Huang was lying at the edge of the plot.
"Grandpa Zhou, I bought you a pair of glasses. Try them on."
"Oh."
The old man put on the glasses.
You could clearly see his cloudy eyes brighten a little.
He gazed at the familiar mountains in the distance,
looking for a long time, as if he could never get his fill.
Then he looked at Da Huang. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶
He beckoned with his hand.
Da Huang immediately ran to him, tail wagging.
The old man patted the dog’s head and chuckled. "I really can see clearly now."
Li Xu then took out the cigarettes he’d bought in town. "You can smoke these when you have a moment. They aren’t as strong as your dry pipe tobacco, but they have their own kind of flavor."
Afterward,
Li Xu helped prepare the plot of land.
As noon approached, the two men and the dog headed home.
The old man took out the green bean and cucumber seeds, wrapped them in a damp cloth, put the cloth in a plastic bag, and then placed the whole thing under the covers of his bed.
"They’ll sprout in a couple of days," the old man said cheerfully.
