Chinese pharmacies are among the oldest continuously operating businesses in Beijing, and the big ones are worth an hour even if you buy nothing. They are shops first and heritage sites second, which is exactly what makes them interesting: behind the carved facade and the black-and-gold signboards the trade they were built for is still going on, with prescriptions handed across the counter and herbs weighed out on small brass balances.
What a medicine hall looks like
The classic layout is a tall shop with a long counter down one side and the wall behind it filled with hundreds of small wooden drawers, each labelled with the name of a herb, mineral or prepared medicine. Above the counter hang framed prescriptions and old signboards; in the larger houses there is a rear hall for consultations and a dispensary where prescriptions are assembled. The smell is the giveaway - dried roots, bark, liquorice, dried citrus peel and preserved dates, all of it sweet and woody at the same time.
What you can buy
Even without a prescription there is plenty for a visitor: boxed herbal teas and cooling drinks, dried chrysanthemum and goji berries, jars of preserved plum and hawthorn sweets, plasters and warming balms, and gift boxes of ginseng, deer antler and other tonic ingredients that range from a few tens of yuan to a great deal more. Prices are marked, and the larger houses sell packaged goods with printed instructions and ingredients lists that are easier to carry home than loose herbs. Staff at the main counters rarely speak much English, but pointing at a packaged box works perfectly well, and the big houses usually have one counter that is used to dealing with foreign customers.
Practical notes
The historic concentration of medicine halls is around Dashilan and the Qianmen Street area, with the largest and oldest houses within a few minutes of each other, which makes a natural stop on a walk between Tiananmen Square and the old commercial lanes. Shops generally open around nine in the morning and stay open into the evening, seven days a week; weekends are busiest. Bring a translation app if you intend to ask for anything specific, and remember that anything sold as a medicine rather than a food is something to buy on the advice of a qualified practitioner rather than on impulse.
