Mountain Medicines: The Cultural Context of Chinese Wild Animal and Herbal Healing Materia Medica

Chinese herbal medicines have a long and venerated history since their first invention by the mythological ‘Divine Farmer’ Shennong about five thousand years ago. Chinese people have continued this ancient tradition, compiling, publishing and practically applying numerous pharmacologies of plants and animals of reputed medicinal value. But it is widely believed that this popular homeopathic system of healing has given the whole world over to the present Covid virus epidemic, spreading pandemically from its origins in a ‘wet market’ located in the Chinese city of Wuhan where a wide variety of captive wild and domestic animals are killed and butchered in the presence of customers who consume them as ‘protective’ medicines. Legions of ‘barefoot doctors’ are available as freelancers everywhere in China for customized personal provision of these same plants and animals as healing potions. The present film documents the varied activities of one of these barefoot doctors, revealing complex, interactive relations with a spiritual otherworld. In this otherworld, the afflicted invoke the Gods in exorcising ghosts and other malevolent spirits who cause physical disease and/or psychic disharmony. This film begins with a trip to the mountains to collect herbals; the barefoot doctor captures and processes a living animal, provides the finished pharmaceuticals to his customers, and finally helps them invoke the assistance of spiritual powers to restore their lives to peaceful prosperity. We constructed this film from super 8 film footage shot by the producer Prof. Gary Seaman on Taiwan in the 1970s to show that the efficacy of Chinese herbal medicine depends not just on the ingestion of substances listed in the materia medica, but immersion in a wider intangible religious and ritual culture. This film is one of a series of 20 ethnographic films produced by Gary Seaman at the Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California from the 1970s to the present. The film’s director Juanyao Zheng, has been working with Seaman to complete a number of additional films from materials collected in China over five decades.