Collecting Knowledge about Medicinal Ingredients in Northwestern Sichuan in the 1950s

Abstract

This article explores China’s state-level knowledge production on medicinal ingredients in northwestern Sichuan in the 1950s. Drawing on county-level archives, published materials and interviews, this historical article traces how different levels of governments and state-owned trading companies produced knowledge about medicinal ingredients and its production. It argues that on one hand the state’s procurement standards codified the knowledge about medicinal ingredients from the marketplace and the local producers. On the other hand, direct extraction of knowledge from the medicine gatherers and cultivators verbalized and collected the previously tacit local knowledge about the production of medicinal ingredients, which would help to alleviate the shortage in the supply of traditional Chinese medicines throughout the 1950s.