Southern China’s Pharmaceutical Capital: The Thousand-Year Drug Trade and Concoction Arts of Zhangshu Town

Geographic Connections

Departing from Zhangshu City, Jiangxi (formerly Qingjiang County), heading west along the Gan River for about 50 kilometers brings you to Xingan County; heading upstream on the Yuan River for some 30 kilometers brings you to Gezhao Mountain—where the Eastern Han Daoist Ge Xuan practiced alchemy and taught medicinal concoction techniques. From there, descending southward along the Gan River to Nanchang and Jiujiang, and connecting via waterway to all of China—this was the starting point for Ming-Qing Zhangshu drug merchants’ “trade in all directions.”

I. Eastern Han Jian’an 7th Year (202 CE): Ge Xuan on Gezhao Mountain

In the year 202 CE (Eastern Han Jian’an seventh year), a Daoist named Ge Xuan built a hermitage on Gezhao Mountain in today’s Zhangshu City, Jiangxi. Ge Xuan was the founder of the Daoist Lingbao School, and on this Jiangnan mountain (less than 500 meters in elevation), he gathered medicinal herbs, practiced alchemy, authored texts, and systematically taught local residents the methods of processing traditional Chinese medicinal materials—what came to be called “Zhangshu Medicinal Concoction Techniques.”

The processing methods Ge Xuan taught were highly distinctive: herbs had to be gathered according to specific solar terms and hours; root and stem medicines had to be dug after Frost’s Descent (霜降); leaves had to be picked before morning dew dried; flowers before opening. Material processing required complex procedures like “nine steamings, nine sun-dryings” and “dual water-fire processing.” Ge Xuan systematized these methods in his writings, including the Zhouhou Beiji Fang (肘后备急方)—one of China’s earliest technical monographs on Chinese medicinal concoction.

Gezhao Mountain thus became the birthplace of southern Chinese medicinal concoction techniques, and “Ge Xuan’s Alchemy Site” remains today a Zhangshu cultural landmark. For 1,700 years after Ge Xuan, Zhangshu’s medicinal concoction techniques still follow the core processes he established—even as specific methods have been refined through successive dynasties.

II. Tang Dynasty: The Embryonic Form of the Zhangshu Drug Market

Before the Tang, Zhangshu was merely an ordinary agricultural settlement along the middle reaches of the Gan River. In the Kaiyuan 4th year (716 CE)—the same year Zhang Jiuling supervised the cutting of the Dayuling New Road—the opening of the Gan River-Dayuling commercial route enabled large-scale outward transport of Jiangxi’s interior produce. Zhangshu’s location at the confluence of the Gan and Yuan rivers made it one of the most important distribution hubs in the Gan River basin.

By the late Tang and Five Dynasties period, Zhangshu’s medicinal materials trade had begun to take shape. The Central Plains were in constant turmoil, and large numbers of physicians and drug merchants migrated south, with a substantial portion choosing the central Jiangxi region. Zhangshu’s proximity to drug sources (Gezhao Mountain), convenient transportation (Gan River shipping), and the concoction traditions left by Ge Xuan gradually formed the embryonic structure of a “drug market.”

In the Southern Tang period of the Five Dynasties, the Zhangshu drug market had become considerable in scale. Zhangshu drug merchants began forming “medicine guilds”—commercial organizations based on hometown, trade, and kinship ties. The formation of medicine guilds marked the transition of Zhangshu’s pharmaceutical industry from scattered individual operations to organized commercial networks.

III. Ming Dynasty: Zhangshu’s National Reputation

In the Hongwu period (1368-1398), the imperial court established “Huimin Medicine Bureaus” (惠民药局) in each province to handle official medicine supply. Jiangxi was one of the most important medicinal material producing regions in the Ming Dynasty, and Zhangshu drug merchants’ guild organizations were incorporated into the official medicinal supply system. Zhangshu drug merchants thus gained “official merchant” status, legitimizing their nationwide pharmaceutical trade.

In the mid-to-late Ming (15th-16th centuries), Zhangshu’s pharmaceutical national reputation reached its peak. “No medicine works unless it passes through Zhangshu” (药不过樟树不灵)—this proverb surviving to today originated in the Ming Dynasty. At that time, China’s national medicinal materials market was divided into “thirteen guilds,” among which the Jiangxi Guild (i.e., the Zhangshu Guild) was one of the largest, controlling wholesale pharmaceutical business in most southern provinces.

In the Ming Wanli period (1573-1620), the operational range of Zhangshu drug merchants had already covered most provinces of today’s China: north to Beijing and Tianjin, east to Shanghai and Hangzhou, south to Fujian and Guangdong, west to Hunan and Hubei. Zhangshu drug merchants were known for “honesty and trustworthiness, fair to all”—their commercial reputation was the fundamental reason why the place name “Zhangshu” could become synonymous with southern China’s pharmaceutical industry.

IV. Qing Dynasty Zenith: 132 Trades and the National Commercial Network

From the Qianlong to Daoguang periods (1736-1850), Zhangshu’s commerce reached its peak. During this era, Zhangshu Town hosted 132 distinct trades—an astonishing number, indicating that commercial specialization had reached an extremely high level.

Among the 132 trades, those directly related to pharmaceutical materials accounted for roughly one-third: medicinal materials shops, drug companies, pharmacies, herb-cutting shops, concoction shops, medicine box shops, medicine bag shops, medicine scale shops, and so on. The remaining two-thirds were service industries supporting the pharmaceutical sector: food and beverage, lodging, transportation (dock workers and boatmen), warehousing (medicine warehouses), finance (money shops), handicrafts (medicine instrument making), printing (pharmaceutical book engraving), and more.

Zhangshu’s prosperity derived from its geographic location. It sat at the confluence of the Gan and Yuan rivers, making it one of the most important inland river ports in the Poyang Lake basin. Medicinal materials from Gezhao Mountain and surrounding mountains flowed down the Yuan and Gan rivers, converging at Zhangshu; processed finished products traveled up the Gan, into Poyang Lake, into the Yangtze, and were sold nationwide.

From Jiaqing to Daoguang (1796-1850), Zhangshu’s resident population exceeded 20,000, with floating population bringing the total to nearly 50,000. This number, in Jiangxi at that time, ranked only after Nanchang, Jiujiang, and Jingdezhen.

V. Concoction Techniques: From Hand Workshops to National Intangible Heritage

Zhangshu’s Chinese medicinal concoction techniques constitute an important component of the Chinese pharmacopeia treasury. They feature three core characteristics:

First, adherence to “ancient-method processing”—the processing method for each herb follows ancient prescriptions with virtually no innovative modifications. This conservatism ensures stable medicinal effects, allowing Zhangshu traditional Chinese medicine to maintain consistent quality across centuries.

Second, extremely elaborate procedures—taking “nine steamings, nine sun-dryings” as an example: the same medicinal material must be steamed nine times and sun-dried nine times, each with fixed intervals, the entire process lasting months. Other common concoction methods include “honey-frying,” “wine-stir-frying,” “vinegar-processing,” “salt-curing,” “ginger-juice-mixing”—more than a dozen in all.

Third, emphasis on “complementary medicinal effects”—when formulating prescriptions, Zhangshu drug merchants paid special attention to the synergistic effects between herbs, opposing the use of any single herb in isolation. This aligns perfectly with the traditional Chinese medicine principle of “monarch, minister, assistant, envoy” (君臣佐使).

In 1956, Zhangshu’s traditional Chinese medicine shops underwent public-private joint operation, ending the traditional “shop in front, workshop behind” business model. Since the 1990s, Zhangshu’s medicinal concoction techniques have faced a succession crisis—as veteran pharmacists passed away, younger generations were unwilling to learn this time-consuming craft.

In 2014, “Zhangshu Medicinal Concoction Techniques” was inscribed on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The Zhangshu municipal government established the “China Pharmaceutical Capital” brand and holds an annual National Medicinal Materials and Medicines Fair—since 1958, one of Asia’s largest specialized traditional Chinese medicine exhibitions.

References

Historical materials for this article are primarily drawn from Qingjiang County Annals—Products, Qingjiang County Annals—Commerce, “Zhangshu Medicinal Concoction Techniques” (National Intangible Cultural Heritage Application Materials), Ge Xuan’s Zhouhou Beiji Fang, Ming-Qing Zhangshu merchant guild archive collections, and modern Zhangshu Pharmaceutical Industry Association research materials.