About the Art of Dao Di Yao Cai

As perpetuators of knowlege and Teachers on the Way, sages have guided Asia's advanced herbal tradition from distant past to modern times. Sages not only identified and classified medicinal properties of plants, minerals and animals into a pharmacopoeia, they also worked with regional folk herbalists, wildcrafters, and farmers to better understand the native climatic and geographic growing regions of the different medicinals, including optimal seasonal harvest time and drying methods. This identification of authentic crude medicinals and their proper preparation is known as Dao Di Yao Cai, or Dao-Earth Medicinals.

The Dao Earth herbal culture of Dao Di Yao Cai continues to inform, penetrate and support an entire eco-system of society: wildcrafters deliver herbs from rural countryside into small village shops where they are traded and sold. Collective farms and tribal peoples harvest and prepare their cultivated plants as fulfillment for pre-arranged contracts or making them available for purchase by professional herb buyers who will deliver them to large herbal market places for sale to hospitals, manufacturers, and international buyers. The livelihoods of many are forged from this timeless tradition, a tradition which has survived societal, governmental, and industrial changes and upheaval.

In modern times, this Dao Earth tradition continues to guide herb sourcing and determines the value and grade of medicinals, and is a large part of the modern health care system in Asia which is spreading to the West.