Housewives as Kitchen Pharmacists
Housewives as Kitchen Pharmacists
Dr. Chuang Shu Chih, Gendered Identity, and Traditional Medicine in East Asia
By way of analyzing the health doctrine of Dr. Zhuang Shuqi 莊淑旂 (1920-2015), arguably the most popular author of traditional medicine in contemporary Taiwan, this paper discovers a surprisingly close alliance between gender role and traditional medicine, an alliance that she created on the basis of the allegedly traditional practice of viewing food as medicine. Instead of promoting the general idea that food has health benefits, Dr. Zhuang used her own personal tragedies to argue for the provocative idea that inappropriate intake of food is what causes people to fall victim to cancer. As each food functions like a double-edged sword, both the major cause of and a powerful tool for coping with cancer, preparing food in the kitchen, in her eyes, becomes comparable to handling effective and dangerous drugs in the “family pharmacy.” As the result, Dr. Zhuang urged housewives to identify themselves with the role of the “family pharmacist” and to take responsibility for the health of the whole Family.”
Keywords: Chinese Medicine, Gender, Housewife, Food, Traveling Comparison
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