The best ginseng in China comes from Changbai Mountain, but in ancient times, only Changbai Mountain was rich in ginseng, a rare medicinal material. Therefore, in ancient times, people went into the mountains and forests in the northeast to look for ginseng, and many ginseng gatherers died.
ginseng
After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, because Changbai Mountain was the land of Longxing in the Qing Dynasty, in order to keep the mystery of Changbai Mountain, Manchu rulers prohibited Han people from going out of the customs, let alone entering Changbai Mountain to collect ginseng. Therefore, in the Qing dynasty, wild ginseng was extremely precious among the people, and it was often impossible to buy it with money.
However, emperors and empresses, as rulers of the Qing Dynasty, ate ginseng every day to nourish their bodies. Over time, almost all the wild ginseng on the surface of Changbai Mountain has been mined, even if there is, it is hidden in the deep mountains and forests.
So with the passage of time, the supply of ginseng in the palace is getting less and less, which makes the doctors and chefs in the palace very embarrassed, because the emperor eats ginseng every day to supplement his body, and the ladies-in-waiting also drink ginseng tea every day. Ginseng is really an indispensable item in the palace. What can we do without ginseng?
Unexpectedly, the shortage of ginseng in the palace was actually "solved" by foreigners, and foreigners also "swept away" the 3 billion taels of silver in the Qing Dynasty. What's going on here?
This story begins with a missionary in Kangxi period. During the reign of Emperor Kangxi, there was a missionary named Du Demei, who was highly valued by Emperor Kangxi. He even went in and out of the palace freely and had many contacts with Emperor Kangxi. He found that the emperors, queens and ordinary concubines in the palace ate a plant root every day, which surprised him.
Driven by curiosity, Du Demei rummaged through domestic medical books and often asked doctors in Imperial Hospital for advice. He didn't know that what the imperial concubine ate was called ginseng, which was only produced in Changbai Mountain in the northeast and had the effect of prolonging life and bringing back the dead. That's a Chinese medicine.
However, the number of wild ginseng in Changbai Mountain is very small. After years of picking, there is little left, so the price of precious wild ginseng is much higher than that of Huang Jingui with the same weight.
Knowing that wild ginseng is so scarce, Du Demei moved his mind. As a missionary, with the permission of Emperor Kangxi, he went to Changbai Mountain many times to look for ginseng. Then he returned to the palace and wrote a paper about his experience and the relevant information provided by doctors in Imperial Hospital, which was published in the west.
Du Demei's paper vividly described this magical oriental plant to westerners, which attracted a large number of westerners to come to Changbai Mountain in China to seek gold. They used the status of missionaries to freely go in and out of the Northeast and look for ginseng in Changbai Mountain. But as we said earlier, wild ginseng in Changbai Mountain has been mined for a long time, and there are basically few left. Naturally, these foreigners have returned in vain.
Foreigners who have been beaten in the northeast have not given up, because in their eyes, ginseng, a magical plant with a higher price than gold, is really attractive.
A group photo of Qing court officials and foreigners in the late Qing Dynasty
Ginseng was not found in the northeast, so some wise people thought, is it possible to have ginseng in the mountains at the same latitude in North America and Northeast China? After all, the climate of the two places is similar, and it is very likely that the same type of plants will appear.
With this idea, they immediately took action, and a large number of gold prospectors began to look for "ginseng" in the mountains of Canada. Indeed, they did not live up to expectations. In the mountainous areas of southeastern Canada, they found that almost all the mountains were the same plants as China ginseng, so they were overjoyed and picked them, dried them and shipped them to China.
A foreign businessman who transports ginseng to Darfur
At that time, the Chinese palace was still worried about the source of ginseng. Seeing that these foreigners have actually shipped a large number of "ginseng", they are naturally overjoyed. All the ginseng shipped by foreigners from North China were accepted by the order, and the price was the same as that of Changbai Mountain ginseng in.
In North America, this kind of "ginseng" can be said to be worthless, and no one wants to throw it on the roadside. It is just an ordinary road plant. After being sold to the Qing dynasty by "packaged" adult ginseng, those businessmen earned a lot of money and the profits were incredible.
This situation lasted for 100 years until the "ginseng" in Canada was exhausted, and in the process, foreigners also earned billions of taels of silver from the Qing Dynasty through Canadian ginseng.
What the Qing Emperor and the harem didn't know was that the "ginseng" shipped by westerners was actually not ginseng in the traditional sense of China, but another kind of ginseng plant, which had some functions of Changbai Mountain wild ginseng, but it could not replace Changbai Mountain wild ginseng. Compared with the authentic Changbai Mountain wild ginseng, its efficacy still has a certain gap.
American ginseng tuber
Later, China people understood this difference, so they didn't treat these things from Europe and America as ginseng, but named them American ginseng or American ginseng, and the name American ginseng came from the United States.
Seeing that the British made a lot of money by selling "fake" ginseng, Americans were unwilling to lag behind. They found a large number of ginseng in the northern United States, transported it to China as ginseng, and even made a lot of money. Now there is certainly no shortage of "ginseng" in the palace, but the Qing treasury is also being hollowed out by them.
Because the American star-spangled banner looks very flowery, many people called it Citigroup with the United States in the late Qing Dynasty, so this kind of ginseng from the United States is also called American ginseng.
It is difficult for us to prove whether ginseng is so magical, because it is extremely difficult to find wild ginseng with a long history, and ginseng can only play a specific role as a Chinese herbal medicine. In addition to its year, its specific variety and place of origin are also important, because different places of origin have different atmosphere of heaven and earth.
Artificial cultivated ginseng garden
This is why we eat seasonal vegetables and the fruits and vegetables produced around our residence are healthier.
At present, ginseng, Korean ginseng and American ginseng in China have all entered the state of artificial breeding and large-scale breeding, and their prices have long been similar to those of some common medicinal materials, but their efficacy is far less than that of traditional wild ginseng with high years. It can be said that the two have become two different things.