The West Lake in Hangzhou is not only famed for its serenity, but has also been home to noted scholars, artists, and national heroes for centuries. Today, a host of restored former residences stand as shrines of remembrance to the achievements of those celebrated historical figures. Among them is the legendary merchant Hu Xueyan of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), who is widely commemorated for his status as Hangzhou's noted man of medicine.

Hu was the founder and owner of Hu Qing Yu Tang drugstore, one of the most renowned TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) drugstores in China. Today, the beautifully preserved Qing Dynasty architecture of the original building serves as the location of Hangzhou's Traditional Chinese Medicine Museum.

Situated at the foot of Wushan hill on the southeast of the West Lake, this museum is the first of its kind in the country, with an area of more than 4,000 sq m. It comprises an exhibition hall, a healthcare clinic, a pharmacy, a sales department and a restaurant serving medicinal diets.

A large number of TCM pharmaceutical apparatus and over 10,000 medicinal plants, animals, and mineral samples are displayed in the museum, making it a veritable TCM shrine.

Within this massive complex just off Qinghefang Historic Street, there is a health care clinic where visitors can have first-hand experience of TCM diagnosis. After that, the pharmacy is the place where you can watch pharmacists prepare and measure your prescription by hand, from a plethora of shelves containing herbs and dried specimens of every description. They will divide up the various ingredients of your prescription into equal-sized portions and wrap them up into cute folded paper parcels for you to take home.

Just opposite the entrance to Hu Qing Yu Tang is a restaurant that serves dishes prepared with traditional medicinal ingredients. It is the place to go to wrap up a complete TCM experience.

As one of the eight ancient capitals in Chinese history, Hangzhou is widely acclaimed as the birthplace of the ancient pharmacopoeia of TCM.

In ancient times, Peng Zu, the god of longevity and the ancestor of healthcare, and Tong Jun, the creator of TCM, both practiced medicine and healthcare in today's Hangzhou. Then, at the beginning of the 12th century when the Song Dynasty (960-1127) moved its capital to Hangzhou, the first national pharmacy bureau was established there, which issued the first pharmacy regulation in the country.

The city is now home to several ancient TCM workshops, pharmacies and clinics, including Hu Qing Yu Tang, which dot Qinghefang Street, the most famous historic street in Hangzhou. The city is undoubtedly one of the best places in China to forgo skepticism and enjoy an authentic experience of this age-old science and culture.

Established in the early 19th century, Ye Zhong De Tang, which literally translates as cultivating and promoting virtue, was named after a poem by the Chinese poet Su Dongpo in Song Dynasty.

At the rear of the drugstore is the workshop, where many kinds of pills, powders, capsules and plasters with good medical efficacy are made according to secret recipes and empirical prescriptions handed down by ancestors. The largest national drug firm in Hangzhou at that time, it merged with Hu Qing Yu Tang in 1958.

Established in 1805, Zhang Tong Tai is recognized with Hu Qing Yu Tang and Ye Zhong De Tang as the three most prestigious drugstores in Hangzhou. It has made over 360 kinds of traditional medicine until now.

For a city highly revered for its rich natural resources, Hangzhou boasts rich medicinal materials. Wild life medicinal materials in Zhejiang are mainly found in the Tianmu, Yandang and Siming mountains.

Through years of development, the TCM industry in Hangzhou has flourished and given rise to a number of prestigious and large-scale TCM enterprises, such as China Qingchunbao Group, Hangzhou Tianmushan Pharmaceutical Enterprise Co Ltd and Hangzhou Mingsheng Pharmaceutical Group.

As known to many, it was the ancient quest for longevity that led to the founding of TCM, and this remains the fundamental goal in the employment of TCM as preventative medicine today.

Although accepting some of the nonscientific ideologies of TCM remains problematic for the Western medical community, these ideologies are also the most interesting and enlightening concepts of TCM, as they attempt to explain the unexplainable.

If you are willing to suspend the belief that everything needs to be proven through test tubes and X-rays, TCM can offer you an alternative way of viewing yourself and the world.

Hangzhou China Travel Service: 0086-0571-88398499; 0086-13588476467 (24h)