Yao Medicine
01 · Historical Records
Yao medicinal bathing took shape in the humid, hot climate of the mountainous areas of southern Qiandongnan, where the daily bathing practices of Yao stockade villages merged with the need to dispel disease, and the method of boiling a mixture of many plant medicines into a medicated liquid and steaming-and-immersing the body in a tub was thereby established. This recipe has always been transmitted and used only within Yao households, never shown casually to outsiders; it was passed down through accumulated generational experience rather than through medical texts, and bears deep regional and family marks. The Yao people of the Gaopo area of Congjiang County treat it as a daily means of strengthening the body, using it to ward off mountain mists and wind-cold and to relieve fatigue after labor. Zhao Youhui studied medicine with his mother from childhood, could recognize several dozen medicinal herbs and was well versed in their properties by his early teens, and is the representative transmission lineage of this technique in the locality.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Yao medicinal bathing is a traditional health-preservation and therapeutic method of the Yao people of the Gaopo Yao stockade in Congjiang County, Guizhou Province, in which herbal medicated bathing is used to strengthen the body, ward off wind and cold, relieve fatigue, and prevent and cure disease. It is a health-preserving good formula created by Yao ancestors, transmitted within the community but not to outsiders. Yao medicinal bathing mainly consists of boiling a mixture of many plant medicines at high heat into a medicated liquid, pouring it into a Chinese fir wooden tub, and having the person sit in the tub for steaming and immersion bathing, so that the medicinal liquid penetrates the five viscera and six bowels and all the channels and collaterals of the body, achieving the effects of dispelling wind and removing dampness, expelling sweat and toxins, and invigorating the blood and resolving stasis. This medicated bathing has no side effects and is beneficial and harmless to the internal organs, the blood, and the nervous system, in line with modern people's pursuit of green medicine.
Boiling the herbs into a medicinal liquor
A range of plants is washed and boiled hard into a dark decoction, which is strained to leave the liquor for bathing.
Steaming and soaking in a fir tub
The liquor is poured into a fir-wood tub where the bather steams first and then soaks, the wood retaining warmth.
Driving out wind, damp and toxins
The bath drives out wind and damp, promotes sweating and dispels toxins, clearing mountain miasma from the body surface.
A remedy kept inside the family
The formula and its timing are transmitted only within Yao households, which has kept the old remedy intact.
An entirely herbal external remedy
Being purely external and plant-based, it avoids ingested side effects and matches the modern preference for green medicine.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Congjiang County is the core heritage area of this medicinal bathing, and the Yao people of stockades such as Gaopo have followed the custom of decocting medicinal water in Chinese fir tubs for steaming-and-immersion bathing for generations. Its influence extends beyond provincial borders, with mutual reference to neighboring Yao villages, and its medicinal materials come mainly from local mountain products. Transmission takes place mostly among women within the family — between mothers and daughters and between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law — and apprentices of other surnames find it extremely difficult to learn the core combinations and heat control. As a national-level representative inheritor, Zhao Youhui has taught disciples mostly from his own and neighboring stockades, forming the actual transmission chain of Congjiang medicinal bathing.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
This unique Yao health-preservation culture has been transmitted for several centuries and is the crystallization of the collective wisdom of the Yao people. However, constrained by various objective conditions, the development of Yao medicine (medicinal bathing) has not been satisfactory, and it urgently needs protection and promotion. Zhao Youhui (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of Yao ethnicity, born in January 1955, from Congjiang County, Guizhou Province. From childhood he studied Yao herbal medicine with his mother, could recognize several dozen medicinal herbs by his early teens, and was well versed in their properties. He is skilled in applying Yao folk medicine and, by prescribing in accordance with the symptoms, has cured many patients suffering from puzzling and strange diseases. He is a representative inheritor of Yao medicine (medicinal bathing), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fifth batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhao Youhui 05-2962
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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