Small dose, big job: TCM technician's 30-year devotion to pill-making

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"Roll the medicine strips on the board slowly and gently, press the boluses with power balanced, wrap them with the gold foil and glass paper, then coat them with wax and stamp on them..."

For the past 34 year, Zhang Dongmei, a chief technician working at Tongrentang, China's largest producer of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), has been repeating the handmade procedures several times, only to make sure that the best quality of the medicinal pills known as Angongniuhuang, a Chinese medicine used to treat various acute cerebrovascular diseases, are produced.

The traditional skill of handmade medicine boluses has been handed down through generations for more than 200 years. For Zhang, it's not just the superior medicinal material, but also the process that creates such life-saving pills.

"Only the round, smooth, light, exquisite boluses that have gone through the intricate handmade skills, with each one weighing exactly 3 grams, pass the quality test, " Zhang said.