Ginseng store entrenched in Chinese tradition

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, June 20, 2001 | 8:27 a.m.

Whether your back aches, you've got a bad case of the sniffles or you just want a hot cup of soothing herbal tea, chances favor the idea that T & T Ginseng Inc., a Chinese herb and medicine store in the Chinatown Plaza, has something for you. The store, which is well known in the Las Vegas Chinese community, has been in business for seven years. In late January it moved to its current, larger location on Spring Mountain Road.

This narrow-but-densely-stocked shop is run by James and Mylin Ta, a Chinese couple raised in Vietnam. James learned the business from an uncle, and he has always got his nose in a Chinese herbal dictionary to help translate and describe his wares to non-Chinese customers. He is proud of the fact that nearly 50 percent of his business is Caucasian, over-the-counter shoppers who come to select from hundreds of teas, such Chinese cold remedies as Yin Chao, and a vast array of vitamins and food supplements.

Ninety-six wooden drawers built into a side wall, each stocked with four separate box compartments, contain a variety of medicinal herbs. These herbs, many of which are not commonly known in the West, are the mainstay of Chinese prescription medicine, the raison d'etre for the store.

Chinese doctors first prescribe herbs, which are later mixed in the store by a specially trained employee analogous to a Western pharmacist. Usually the herbs are brewed as teas or tonics, and used to treat a variety of ailments -- everything from colds to hypertension or diabetes mellitus.

The Tas were kind enough to conduct a minitour of their shop, explaining their vast inventory and why they stock certain items. Ginseng in particular is sold in great quantity.

Ginseng is a root that grows wild all over north Asia, especially Korea, and in several places in North America, particularly Minnesota and Ontario in Canada.

Potency varies greatly and so do the prices. According to James Ta, a 2-ounce piece of Manchurian wild ginseng can cost between $1 and $2,000. You can also buy a small root for less than $2.

Ginseng is alleged to have legendary properties. The Chinese say it balances chi, the force that regulates positive and negative energy in the body, increases energy, relieves stress, strengthens the immune system and boosts the sex drive. Perhaps that is why the botanical name, panax ginseng, is related to the word panacea or cure-all.

Upon entering T & T, there is a large metal pot filled with complimentary ginseng tea for all visitors. One of the more popular forms of ginseng sold is Korean Red, which comes in 15-ounce boxes. This ginseng comes in three different grades: Good, $79, Earth, $150 and Heaven, $250. You can also buy ginseng coffee, ginseng capsules and whole roots at varying prices.

But this shop has much more and the tour is fascinating. Mylin displayed a brace of ingredients used to make nutritious soups: canned abalone, $28 for 15 ounces; dried abalone, $60 for one ounce; bird's nest, which the Chinese use to make a thick soup, for as much as $150 per ounce; and an array of dried scallops at greatly varying prices.

One wall is taken up with hundreds of teas sold in bags, powders, bricks and other forms. One of the more popular teas is Dragonwell, or Lung Ching green tea, 100 bags for $3.99. This tea is said to be an antioxidant, to retard colon cancer and to be an antidote for many ailments. A price of $9.99 is the cost of Monkey Picked Ti-Kuan tea, a good-tasting brown tea.

The refrigerator case is crammed full of products used in Chinese cooking, but again with an emphasis on soups. You will find dried shrimp, dried squid, fish maw and gingko nuts, fresh pine nuts, $6.90 per pound, and many other exotic products.

Shelves, meanwhile, are stocked with Chinese sausage, dried plums, homemade beef jerky and snack foods Asians love. A 16-ounce bag of salted pistachios is $3.89. Have you ever tried green-tea flavored pumpkin seeds? You can get them here.

The store sells seaweed soaps for the skin, acupuncture needles and aloe vera in big jars priced well below comparable sizes in health food stores. The vitamin section sells multis imported from Switzerland, royal jelly for the complexion, even analgesics such as Zheng Gu Shui, a topical pain reliever the owners say is their best-selling nonfood item.

The most interesting part of the store, though, is the apothecary, those wooden drawers. The thing is, the store will not sell you a mixture of these herbs without a prescription. In other words, you can't just ask for them unless you've either seen a Chinese doctor or consulted a textbook that has specific prescriptions written in them.

The Tas pulled out a drawer at random, and showed the contents. In the drawer were black seaweed, an herb called desmodium stryaciflium, used to treat inflammations of the urinary tract, the Chinese herb kwan go and thallus laminariae, which is said to cool and detoxify the body.

When the herbs are measured, muddled and mixed, they look quite strange to anyone unfamiliar with Chinese medicine. But they are all natural and the product of a medical tradition that is thousands of years old and one that predates Greek and Roman medicine by quite a while.

Even if you don't plan to partake, a visit to T & T Ginseng Inc. is a compelling cultural encounter, a quick trip to Asia that doesn't require a passport.