Jilin enthusiasts mix Chinese herbal medicines with tourism

Kang Jian – a health and nature enthusiast, born in the 1980s – is an example of one of the people who have in recent years been making efforts to combine the cultivation of Chinese herbal medicines with regional tourism, to boost rural revitalization in Northeast China's Jilin province, according to local media reports.

He is one of a band of young people who are willing to live in mountainous areas and focus on cultivating traditional Chinese herbs, advocating that their work will also be of interest to growing numbers of ecotourists.

The Changbai Mountains in Jilin are renowned as a source of pristine water and are also regarded by naturalists as an animal and plant gene bank.

Songling village, administered by Baishan city, was chosen by a number of enthusiasts to cultivate traditional Chinese herbs because of its high-altitude microclimate. It is suitable in particular for the cultivation of the alpine mugwort that is used in Chinese medicine.

Kang Jian lives in the Changbai Mountains and is developing a 10 mu (0.67 hectares) Chinese herbal medicine mugwort experimental field, using abandoned land.

The Changbai Mountain mugwort has four varieties and the experimental field in Songling village has proved to be successful. The next step is to scout for so-called hollow villages in the Changbai Mountains – which are remote and nearly abandoned villages that are about to disappear – to pilot the integration of traditional Chinese medicine culture and rural tourism revitalization.

Kang is promoting the traditional hand-pounding of moxa using a stone mortar, as well as the process of rolling moxa sticks and columns. Visitors can experience the whole process of making traditional hand-pounded moxa.

There are moves to have traditional stone mortar moxa pounding – and the whole process of traditional hand-rolling moxa sticks – recognized as intangible cultural heritage.