The Drawer — From a Chinese Father's Drawer

When I was a child, I spent a lot of time standing in front of my father's medicine cabinet. It was a whole wall of wooden drawers, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. From a distance, the wall looked uneven and worn, like the surface of an old tree. Up close, each drawer had a small white label, handwritten with the name of what was inside.

In a traditional Chinese pharmacy, the number of drawers can reach into the hundreds. Each one hides something different. Plant roots, dried flowers, animal bones, mineral dust, and — yes, this is real — even dust collected from the roof beam, which is recorded in classical Chinese medical texts. Every drawer has its own smell. Some are sweet, some bitter, some dusty, some sharp.

Chinese medicine is not only what you take when you are sick. Its shadow is everywhere in daily life: in the incense burned at home, in the plasters pasted on a sore shoulder, in the seasoning of a stew, in the rice wine my uncle kept under the stairs, and in the small bowl of soup my mother insisted I finish.

But here is the part that stayed with me: in every pharmacy cabinet, there is always one drawer that does not contain any medicine at all.

Inside that drawer, you will find prescriptions, ledgers, an abacus, and a few objects the pharmacist keeps for himself. Maybe a photograph. Maybe an old letter. Maybe a ticket from a train he once took. That drawer is the private corner of a public wall. It is the place where the person, not the profession, survives.

5baba is that drawer.

This site is not a clinic, not a shop, not a course, and not a guide to becoming "healthy the Chinese way." I am not a doctor. I am simply a son who grew up breathing the smell of those drawers, and who wants to show you where I came from.

Some of the things I will write about may touch on herbs, food, seasons, and old habits. But I will only tell you what I saw, smelled, and remember. What you do with it is entirely yours.

Thank you for opening the drawer with me.