The Heritage of Heluo and Traditional Chinese Medicine
The Yellow River (Huang He) and the Luo River (Luo Shui) are the earliest sites of the rise and prosperity of the Chinese nation. The He Tu (Yellow River Map) and the Luo Shu (Luo River Scroll) from Luoyang are considered the earliest books in China and the source of ancient Chinese civilization and culture.
The Heluo heritage that Taiwanese people carry and uphold actually refers to the “Heluo people” from the area around the Yellow and Luo Rivers, not “Hokkien” or “Fujian” people. The language passed down and commonly spoken is the “Heluo dialect.”
Through dynastic changes and generational shifts, they gradually migrated southward, following the chaos of the Five Barbarians Uprising (Wu Hu Luan Hua), eventually reaching Taiwan. With piety and adherence to ancient ways, passed down from father to son, they have consistently inherited the orthodox foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) culture, which is profound and spans over two thousand years. This includes the selection and grading of medicinal materials, written dosage calculations, preparation (pao zhi), and decoction/boiling—all strictly following ancient methods. They have maintained the pure Chinese tradition, untouched by changes in the times or political situations.
Professor Zhang Xianzhe’s Dedication
Professor Zhang Xianzhe, who devoted his life to the passing down of Traditional Chinese Medicine, spent decades visiting herb merchants throughout Taiwan. He integrated the precious knowledge of authentic, high-quality material identification—scattered among the folk wisdom of old TCM masters—with his 45 years of practical teaching experience at China Medical University.
He established a valuable database and used a highly sophisticated camera of the time to meticulously and thoroughly photograph the details of these rare herbs. In essence, he wrote history with photographs.
The Masterpiece: Illustrated Guide to Authentic Medicinal Materials
This carefully compiled work, “Illustrated Guide to Authentic Medicinal Materials” (Dao Di Yao Cai Tu Jian), which is digitized, visualized, and suitable for teaching, allows everyone to learn the valuable material identification knowledge held in the sleeves of the old TCM masters. This ensures the inheritance of TCM and serves as a testament to the Heluo TCM culture.
The “Heluo Materia Medica” Project
The purpose of the “Heluo Materia Medica” is to fully present Professor Zhang Xianzhe’s life’s work and monumental achievement, the Illustrated Guide to Authentic Medicinal Materials—a modern work comparable to Li Shizhen’s illustrated documentation of all herbs in the Compendium of Materia Medica—on a website for public access.
The most suitable users include:
TCM beginners, students, and practitioners who need to memorize the physical forms of medicinal materials.
General public from all groups—those focused on health care, beauty, wellness, and patients—who can use the website to learn about and identify medicinal materials.
Clinical TCM doctors, pharmacists, TCM sales professionals, and academics/teachers researching TCM, for whom it serves as a reference resource.
Drug researchers, product developers at biotech companies, natural therapy practitioners, herbal preparation research units, and alternative therapy and drug technology research institutions.
The Heluo Materia Medica and the Illustrated Guide to Authentic Medicinal Materials are rich in content and represent excellent resources for learning about medicinal materials. The search function is easy, making identification highly efficient, offering clarity and great benefit at a glance. This extraordinarily valuable digital materia medica and pictorial record is unparalleled in the history of herbalism, both ancient and modern, and is worthy of widespread promotion and use to benefit public health.