Drinking herbal coffee, tasting nourishing herbal cuisine, and wearing Chinese herbal sachetsa - activities promoting traditional Chinese medicine are being rolled out in Qingpu District in an innovative manner.

Ganshan He's TCM culture originating in Qingpu can be dated back to the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). It has been included in Shanghai's intangible cultural heritage representative item list.

"The family has been practising medicine for generations, and the Jiangnan region has always been an important area for He's TCM practice," according to He Ting, the 29th generation inheritor of the family, and a doctor at Qingpu Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital.

"The 20th generation of the family, physician He Wangmo settled in Qingpu to practise medicine, becoming the founder of Ganshan He's TCM culture," said He. "This showed the "tenacity and persistence of the family."

Spanning more than 800 years, He's traditional Chinese medicine has been inherited and developed through 30 generations, involving more than 300 outstanding physicians.

They have left behind a wealth of traditional Chinese medicine materials and medical records and made significant contributions to the prosperity and development of traditional Chinese medicine.

Out on a rice field, a traditional Chinese medicine culture promotion activity was held over the weekend.

People sipped a cup of herbal coffee made from calming and brain-tonic Chinese herbs, listening to the health principles from "Huangdi Neijing" (Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine), widely deemed as the fundamental treaties on traditional Chinese medicine.

They sank their teeth into delicacies such as stewed chicken with astragalus and gastrodia. Wearing a horse face skirt, they walked in a Jiangnan water town with a sachet emitting a faint medicinal fragrance around the waist. People also practised guasha (scraping the neck, chest or back to relieve pains) and moxibustion.