It is not that "gold is not fake, asafoetida is not real", but "skullcap is not fake, asafoetida is not real".

Meaning: Scutellaria baicalensis is not (not easy to be faked), and asafoetida is not true (easy to be faked).

Because Scutellaria baicalensis is everywhere and very common, so the price is relatively low and it is generally not counterfeited, so it is said that "Scutellaria baicalensis is not fake";

And because "Asafoetida" is relatively rare , the price is high, and some people tend to fake asafoetida in order to make profits, so it is said that "asafoetida is not genuine".

"Scutellaria baicalensis" and "Asafoetida" are both Chinese medicinal names:

Scutellaria baicalensis, also known as Camellia baicalensis root and Tujin tea root, is a perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Scutellaria genus of the Lamiaceae family; it has a fleshy rhizome. Plump, leaves are hard and papery, lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, racemes are terminal on stems and branches, corolla is purple, purple-red to blue, filaments are flat, style is slender, disk is ring-shaped, ovary is brown , small nuts are ovoid in shape, and the flowering and fruiting period is from July to September. Scutellaria baicalensis grows on sunny grass slopes and wasteland at an altitude of 60 to 1,300 (1,700 to 2,000) meters. Produced in Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Henan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Sichuan and other places, it can be planted in most provinces and regions in northern China. It is distributed in Eastern Siberia, Russia, Mongolia, North Korea, and Japan. The type specimen was collected from Russia.

Asafoetida, a traditional Chinese medicine name. Born in the Gobi Desert and barren mountains, distributed in Xinjiang. It is the resin of the Umbelliferae plant Xinjiang Asafoetida or Fukang Asafoetida. It can be harvested from the peak flowering stage to the early fruiting stage in late spring and early summer, but it is better to harvest during the peak flowering stage. Cut diagonally from the upper part of the stem downwards in stages, collect the exuded milky resin, and dry it in the shade.