On
arrival in Hong Kong from China in October 1949, without my father, we were very
fortunate to be able to take refuge at an uncle’s place at Diamond Hill. This uncle and aunt had three children then and with six
of us, my mother and an aunt of hers, me and two younger sisters and an older
cousin, Diamond Hill soon proved too crowded to say the least. My mother
somehow managed to find a flat in Mong Kok, above an abattoir. Yes, an abattoir. The rent must have been quite cheap!
Although
our flat was on the third floor, we could hear the noise early in the morning
when activities started. Luckily, it did
not put me off meat or indeed medicine.
Strange!
Still,
the rent was considered expensive when compared with the more rural parts of
Hong Kong. Also, being in the middle of the wholesale market place of Kowloon,
it was considered rough and perhaps not so suitable for families with young
children.
Many
years later, I ventured back to the same street. The building was still there,
just about, but the abattoir had long since moved to probably some modern
premises. There used to be areas in
Kowloon that no developer would imagine developing, but that has changed, with
the old Kai Tak airport moved and height restrictions lifted. I would not be too sorry to see that part of
Kowloon redeveloped.
Anyway,
as soon as father arrived, a month after us, he found a house in The Forbidden
Hill in Tai Po, New Territories. What a lovely name for a place! The name has since been changed to Glamorous
Hill, “forbidden” and “glamorous” having the same Cantonese pronunciation. Not as good, I thought. If Forbidden is good
enough for our Emperors, it is good enough for the Cockroach Catcher.
The
weeks of the slaughter house noise would now be truly behind us. My father
accompanied the truck that took most of our possessions and the rest of us went
by train. We got off the train at the
then Tai Po Market Station.
I have this peculiar memory of a bright blue
sky and green hills as soon as the train emerged from the Shatin Tunnel, the
one going through the Lion Rock. Perhaps
it was the difference between the city and the countryside, known as the New
Territories, the part that China never ceded to Britain post Opium War but
leased for 99 years, with the lease terminating on the last day of June 1997.
It
was the age of steam. As the train was
about to go through the Shatin Tunnel, it sounded the horns and passengers in
the know alerted us that all the windows had to be shut. Emerging from the tunnel, we could see soot
deposits on the window panes. Eventually
I had to commute by train to my secondary (grammar) school in Kowloon. I had to shut the window if I happened to sit
next to one. It was quite a heavy window
for me and I had to lift it by the leather strap and secure the panel on a
latch at the top. Not shutting the
window in time would mean sooty face and sooty arms!
Our
home was a longish walk from the train station.
A rather complicated set of steps led up to our house on the hill.
“Pigs!” Yes, real ones, right at the entrance to our
compound. Well, apparently I was not
going to be rid of these. Luckily we
were not in a block of flats but in one of a pair of semi-detached village
cottages with a reasonable terrace and yard.
So the pigs were not so near that we could hear them inside our
home. As it turned out, the farmer and
his wife lived in a wooden hut just above us on the slope and the wife was our
sewage clearer.
Our
home was very much a simple house, with very thick walls, and a central front
door flanked by two windows. Being
semi-detached, the house had a free side wall with a window giving natural
light to the sitting area. The seat by
that window would become my favourite for reading books. It was so pleasant to curl up with three or
four books and smell the jasmine outside.
I remember spending much time over my physics reading there.
The
house looked as if it had two floors but alas, only the ground floor was
habitable. Some damage had been done to
the upper floor and the landlord decided it was simpler to let it as a single
storey home. Our roof was not made of
traditional tiles like those around us but of corrugated iron, and not that
secure as we found out when Typhoon Mary[1]
hit Hong Kong in 1960.
There
were two main bedrooms, with six foot high woodboard partitions and a sliding
door that nobody bothered to use. We all
had mosquito nets, which you might be surprised to hear not only kept
mosquitoes out, most of the time, and sometimes even kept cockroaches at
bay! Yes, cockroaches, my
nickname-sake. For those that have never
lived with cockroaches, beware of your toes touching the net, or you might have
them “cleaned” by the insects. Ha! Ha!
In
many ways, our home in the Forbidden Hill had the feel of a Chinese village
house typical of the South that I later came to recognise through my travels into
China.
Typically
there would be a giant wooden front door that had huge wooden shutters on the
inside to secure it at night. On the
outside you could lock it with a push bar and padlock.
The kitchen was in a single storey out-building, separated from the main house by a narrow three feet wide, open but walled-in passage way.
This
kept the house safe from fires, and also gave us free access to our neighbours’
house through the back doors, which were never locked.
My
eighteen years old cousin who left China with us slept outside the bedrooms in
the corridor leading to the kitchen. She
never complained and was more like a big sister to us and a daughter to my
parents.
For
a long time, our main fuel was dried grass collected from the hill at the back
of our house and, if we were lucky, dried twigs as well. Charcoal was used sometimes, but it was a
sort of back up as it cost money.
Soon,
we ‘upgraded’ from charcoal to kerosene, but in some respect, that might well
have been a “downgrade” because of its unpleasant smell.
Primitive
as it was, we had running water. To be fair, the colonial government did well
to supply us with clean tap water, as we were half way up the hill, the
Forbidden Hill, remember?! Our water
came from a stream the other side of Tai Po and to this day it is still one of the best
water for making our favourite Teochew tea of Iron Goddess of Mercy. The water was also supposed to be good for
growing bean sprouts. Most of the bean
sprouts sold in Hong Kong were grown here.
There
was, however, no hot water on tap. In
the summer, it was cold shower every day, at first from a hose and soon we had
the luxury of a shower head on a wooden structure created by my father. In the
winter, we boiled water and poured it into a very small iron bath tub.
Toilet?
What was that? We had spittoons and father boarded off a corner of the kitchen
so that it became our toilet. Later he built a wooden hut between the main
house and the kitchen. That is why we had the sewage clearing lady. Enough said.
During one of our re-union dinners, one of my medical school classmates
who is a native from Fan Ling, one train stop from Tai Po, described how when he first visited a
classmate living in the “city”, he was completely astonished to find a flushing
toilet. I felt so much better after
that.
The
water from the kitchen drained into an open gutter that ran through the passage
between the house and the kitchen. Father built a slanting half roof over this
so that when it rained, cooked food could reach the main house without getting
drenched. At other times, food
preparations were done in that sheltered open space. In fact it was a cool place to sit in the hot
summer months.
There
would be a very nice breeze, probably because it was shaded from the sun. I quite enjoyed sitting there, watching my
mother peeling, cutting and preparing vegetables.
Refrigerator? It had to wait for some years to materialize,
but that is another story.
Being
half way up the hill, what we did have was a phenomenal view of rice paddy
fields right in front of our house. Beyond
the paddy fields was the railway, and then some more village huts against the
rolling hills backdrop. A river ran along the railway track and the small
streams supplying the river had wonderful fish life and water insects that was
a delight when I showed my biology teacher years later. In those early years
the water was stunningly clear.
In
front of the house, there was a large concreted terrace where one could dry
clothes, vegetables and even rice if one grew it. Clothes were hand washed on
washing boards and sun dried most days on long bamboo sticks that were sold
specifically for that purpose. Clothes smelled good that way for as long as I
could remember.
We
were blessed with fruit trees of all kinds in the yard: guava, bananas of at
least three varieties, papaya, and loquat.
Our “orchard” supplied us with fresh fruits almost all through the
year.
From
as far back as I could remember, we raised chickens and turkeys. In my mind,
these chickens, free range and organic, still tasted the best to this day. We often cooked a chicken to treat visitors from the “city”. Recently when I had lunch with my medical
school classmates, one fondly remembered having lunch at my humble village home
on one of our group outings into the countryside. What stood out in his recollections were the
chicken and my father’s favourite Teochew yam dish. Those were the days!
We
bred our own chickens. It was a
wonderful experience to watch the mother hen sitting on a number of eggs for
most parts of the day, although they seemed to know that they could get off to
feed themselves when necessary. I think the chicks took twenty one days or so
to hatch, and on emerging, would follow mother hen around. We might have more than one hatching at any
time, but the same chicks always followed the same mother hen. That was in the 50s, long before the Nobel
Prize awarded on imprinting[2]. Hawks were still around in those days, and
although they tried, they found mother hen not someone to mess about with. Even we children were warned not to go near
the protective mother hens. Amazing side of nature!
We
had a netted enclosure for the chickens to keep them safe from predators at
night, and a specially built wooden hut with
corrugated iron roof for egg
laying. Eggs were laid on to a straw
lined metal basin placed under two planks set up for the hens. How they knew that it was the way to do it, I
never quite worked out, but there you go.
As these were fertilized eggs, chicken farms sent people round to buy
them, often offering very good prices, equivalent to the cost of two meals for
a person. Despite that, we still ate a
fair portion of our freshly laid eggs.
Hence my discerning taste for eggs!
My
mother’s aunt who escaped to Hong Kong with us was a Teochew native like my
parents. She was a great help to my
mother, doing most of the cooking, washing and cleaning chores. She spoke our home
village dialect of Teochew and, seldom venturing beyond our compound, never
managed to learn the Cantonese dialect commonly spoken in Hong Kong. My mother
gave her pocket money and occasionally she went down the hill to the corner
store. It was years later when she was
admitted to hospital in a diabetic coma that we realised she had been hoarding
sweets and jars and jars of sugar. I had just graduated from medical school
then and I still often blame myself for not spending enough time at home during
my medical studies to spot her condition.
She was one of the few women I knew who had bound feet – a fetish
allegedly ascribed to the Chinese men that I, as an open minded psychiatrist,
fail to comprehend; and how quickly the fetish died.
Our
neighbours in Swatow decided to move to the Forbidden Hill at the same time as
us, taking up the other half of the pair of semi-detached cottages. The family stayed as our neighbours for the
next twenty years or so. They too had an aunt who came from Swatow with them.
It
was perhaps unusual, but we and our neighbours got along well. Traditional
Chinese courtesy probably saw to it that nobody took advantage of anybody. I think most friendships that last is when no
party tries to take advantage of the other or, for that matter, rely on the
other party in a one sided way. There was a lot of giving though. During Chinese festivals, there was always
much sharing of food, and that was traditional style Teochew food that I have
come to miss. Now, the children have all grown up and the older generation
passed away. Being scattered around the
world, we do not see one another that often, but when we do we are still very
close.
Figure 8 Teochew Kuehs
There
is so much in the natural world that we have not yet fathomed. But before we
have a chance to work things out,
developers often come in, concrete the place up and what might one day
be a cure for some disease is wiped out.
This reminds me of the story of Artemisinin, now reckoned to be the most powerful anti-malaria drug.
It was recorded in the Chinese book of Herbal Medicine, which is over a thousand
years old, as treatment for swamp fever. Its rediscovery by China in the
twentieth century was met with skepticism, until it was noted that during the
Sino-Indian conflict Chinese soldiers were not dying from the malaria that was
rampant in that part of the world. For a long time, the Chinese did not share
the findings with the rest of the world.
By chance, specimens of the plant were found along the banks of Potomac
River in 2008. It took some years before
the drug was developed by the West. By
now it is the standard treatment of choice.
In fact, back in the ninety sixties, a female Chinese doctor, Tu Youyou,
when scouring through the Ancient Chinese Herbal Medicine book found the herb
mentioned as a cure for swamp fever, and developed a way to extract the Artemisinin. In 2015, she was retrospectively recognized
and awarded the Nobel Prize.
I
know how lucky I was to have had the opportunity at an early age to be exposed
to a world still very much in its raw state. It set me up for a lifelong
interest in living things and the environment in which we live. Our good neighbours had two boys and two
girls whereas I had three younger sisters.
We were never allowed to play in the streets though, and as a result I
was not what you would call streetwise.
The
school year started in September and it was spring when we moved to Tai Po. A rather rough school in a rough
neighbourhood seemed to be the only choice open to me. It was a good half hour’s walk from
home. My two sisters were younger than
me, so I was the first to go to school.
My youngest sister was not yet born.
Our local government primary school did not start taking pupils until
Grade 3. Education was not made
compulsory until 1978. Parents had to
pay school fees for their children in any school, government or privately
run. The Government schools were
cheaper but in fact had higher standards on the whole, unless you could afford
the elite schools which were generally run by the Anglican or Catholic
Church. The International Schools scene
was a much later phenomenon.
My
father had good martial arts training and my wife always maintains that his
good posture and good health were probably due to that. He lived to ninety two. In his wisdom he taught me some martial arts
moves for self defence purposes.
Well,
I lasted in that school for one half-day!
Dressed in a pristine white school uniform, I found myself in an
uncomfortable situation. These boys were
a head taller than me. I later realised
that I was at least a year or two younger.
They looked dirty and rough. I
kept my head down and tried to work out what to do. I cannot remember a thing about the teacher
except she sounded tired and was always shouting. At break time this boy wanted to know what
was in my pencil box. I declined to show
him and he tried to punch me in the stomach.
It is strange how something that is still fresh in your mind can rush to
your defence. I put my father’s martial
arts lesson to immediate use. Not only
did I avoid getting punched, but I even managed to return his “compliments”.
Unfortunately,
my defensive move was seen by the teacher.
She took me to one side and at lunch time when mother brought my lunch,
the teacher told her I was too “violent” for her school. She promptly returned
the month’s school fees and off we went, mother and me.
Most
parents would have given me a wallop and a good telling off. My mother only asked: “Are you all
right?” It is so good to have parents
who knew and trusted you. Even then I
knew I was not wrong, and so did my mother.
My father actually had a good laugh with our neighbour over this
episode. They all agreed that it was too
rough a school for me and I did not start school again till the next September,
when the new school year began, I was still the youngest.
At
that time my father was running a poultry farm trying to make a living, as he
had not managed to find a job. He
decided to home school me and got me to recite classical Chinese texts. I had been to Kindergarten in China and was
already reading and writing and had good number sense. I did not see this as something unusual – our
great niece of four in Hong Kong can do the same. Some of the classical Chinese texts I can
remember and recite to this day.
Temporarily
freed from school, I had more time to do other things and to get to know the
village and our new home.
Across
the farm separated by a river was an elevated railway track, with a slope of at least thirty feet ending in a
five foot tall wall of granite blocks that held the river embankment together -
very solid engineering indeed. The embankment was the best place to fish and we
had to cross the river to get there.
There
were boulders serving as stepping stones, but only the older kids had long
enough strides. The younger ones had to
be carried across, and found it a thrilling crossing. Only the older children,
including myself, were allowed to handle the fishing hooks and bait, but we all
had fun.
Figure 9 Crossing the River
For
fishing rod, we used a bamboo stick with a fishing line tied to one end. The best places were the side tributaries
where the flow slowed down. In the stagnant bits of water could be found
abundant little fishes, mosquito larvae and rich aquatic life. We used a small
net to get the smaller fishes and kept them in pots complete with plants that
we found in the river. Some of the little fishes had beautiful rainbow coloured
vertical stripes. We had to separate
them and keep each in its own small individual clay pot. Otherwise there would be fierce fights and
casualties. When the fishes died off we
replenished the pots with new ones. It
might not be deemed politically correct now, but I loved playing with
them. Some of the best things in life
are free!
During
summer weekends the whole family often took the train for one stop to a beach
outing at a cove. Back in Swatow in
China in the late forties, we had a very nice beach club that was well equipped
with a huge cabana built of bamboo and timber.
I am not sure if one needed to pay, but I remember having great pleasure
learning to swim and playing with the sand. That tradition continued with the
discovery of this little cove in Tai Po Kau, Kau being the Chinese word for cove. This beach was attractive in many ways. We improvised and constructed our own special
open tent with a big square piece of cloth supported by four upright
bamboos. The bamboos were secured by
strings and wood pegs. That shaded us
from the sun.
The
beach proved to be a major attraction for the city relatives who first gave us
shelter when we came to Hong Kong. They
were siblings of my aunt, wife of my father’s older brother, in Bangkok.
Two or three families were involved and very few would miss such a
Sunday outing in the summer season.
Figure 10 Tai Po Kau Beach
One
of the main drawbacks of the beach was that a few places had rocks with stuck
oyster shells. These had sharp edges and they could easily cut a wandering foot
or arm. Soon enough the grown-ups mapped out the hazard zones. These outings
must have lasted a good dozen years and are still remembered fondly as
highlights of our childhood. Such outings also fostered the friendship between
the children. Our neighbours often
joined us with their four children.
Their mother was a good swimmer and I used to admire how she could cover
great distances without much effort.
This
cove was also where I first learned to snorkel. In those days we had snorkels
that had a ping pong ball in a cage at the end of an umbrella handle shaped
snorkel tube. When submerged under water, the ball floated up to block the
opening of the tube, thus stopping water getting in.
As
the children grew older and time became taken up with studies, such beach
activities came to a stop. The sea became rather polluted with the increase in
population, and the water in this particular cove was no longer clear for
snorkeling. Going to the seaside became
an activity for an annual class outing and later something to do with one’s
girlfriend. Now this cove had been
filled in and 20-storey high buildings stood where we once snorkeled and swam.
When
I moved to England, snorkeling became a thing of the distant past. Imagine the surprise when as adults we went
to the Great Barrier Reef and were given
snorkels that bore no resemblance to the ones I used in my childhood . There was no ping pong ball in a cage and
there was a drain at the bottom. The top was slightly curved with a clever
design so that water from waves could not get in. Any water that managed to get
in was drained away at the bottom. I
looked at it and smiled. One must always
question traditional beliefs and methods. We can be blinded by what looks like
a most sensible and reasonable approach – ping pong ball in a cage, and get
stuck there.
Our
house looked down into a fertile valley of small holdings of orchards and
poultry farms. A large part of the whole area was covered by rice paddy fields.
Yes,
I was fortunate enough to have seen the traditional Chinese paddy fields and
observed the full sowing to harvest cycle. We passed these fields on our way to
father’s farm. The cycle started with
the closely sown seedlings, then the transplanting when the seedlings were
pulled and spaced out in rows. Rice started life in flooded paddy fields. An ingenious flooding system was in place and
where required special foot operated water transporting systems were
installed. These were like step machines
and mostly operated by women. This is
what people in modern days pay to do in a gym!
The irrigation pedals were mainly operated by Hakka women who were originally
migrants from Northern and Central China. Hakka meaning “guest family”. They donned iconic black wide-rim hats and
wore traditional black silk pant suits.
The same black silk, stiff mud treated silk called jiao-chou, is now
used in haute couture with a high price tag.
I have never worked out the reason for the black colour, but perhaps it
is 100% UV opaque.
Before
planting out, the tightly packed fresh rice seedlings were a sight to
behold. They had a fresh green colour
that was so attractive that the image was permanently imprinted in my
memory. Think wheatgrass next time you
see it at a juice bar and then spread it out to two or three fields. Two or three fields are all you need for your
imagination
Before
the planting out, there was the ploughing. As rice was mostly grown in clay
soil, the ploughing was done when the fields were flooded. The plough was pulled by a huge “water
buffalo”, a very clever animal that could heed verbal commands. There was no John Deer or Toro and no petrol
or diesel fumes either, but always a young boy who looked after the
buffalo. Known as the “water buffalo
kid”, he was responsible for taking the buffalo to its grazing field, and he
rode it as depicted in many Chinese paintings.
What about school, you may ask.
Remember? There was no compulsory
education.
The
planting out was interesting for the speed with which it was accomplished. As
if by magic what were just rectangular sections of water-filled mud fields
became suddenly transformed, dotted at regular intervals with little green
plants. The next stage was nothing to write home about, visually. When the
plants got to about two feet the beautiful green colour returned, only more so
and more spectacular. As the wind blew,
one could imagine an alluring green sea.
Such vision lasted only a brief time, before the rice fields were
drained dry and the ears formed and turned golden.
Then
came harvest – no Combines either.
Everything was done manually.
Special bashing stations were set up so that the rice stalks could be
thrashed in the fields to remove the rice seeds. The stalks were bundled up for fuel and rice
seeds put into carts and transported to various village houses, where they were
spread out to dry. After that they were
milled to get rid of the husks and to produce the best tasting “new rice” of
the season. These farm houses also had
stone mills to grind the rice into flour for making the best gluten free
noodles, cakes and pan cakes. The
millstones were made of granite and the mills operated by foot. There was one such farmhouse further to the
left of us down a slope and we used to get rice flour from them for major
festivals. Rice flour is specialty
flour in the West, but for us it was a standard kitchen ingredient.
We
sometimes ventured deeper into the village up the gentle valley. At the end was a quite well known Taoist
monastery. We took many visitors there
to have pictures taken. On the way we
passed through thick wooded areas where the sun could hardly peep through. There fresh mushrooms of the Chinese variety
were grown – one use of the rice stalks mixed with horse manure, I was
told. These too were very pretty and
mysterious at the same time. The
mushrooms were sun dried before being sold.
Nowadays fresh Shitake is gourmet food.
Further
up the valley across the small mountain range was the village of Lam Tsuen,
where the source of our river was located.
Lam Tsuen was where we often went camping in our boy scouting days. We camped away from the villages and used
water from the river to cook and make tea.
Further
on from Lam Tsuen was Shek Kong, where the British Air Force in Hong Kong was
based. The sight of a Vampire doing
tricks in the air was our regular entertainment. Some years later when we were invited to have
dinner at the RAF Club on Piccadilly in London, I saw a photo of the
Vampire. I related my experience to Nelson, our host. We met Nelson when we had our vacation condo
in Myrtle Beach and once he hosted a musical soiree at home
when our younger daughter gave a piano recital and he sang O Danny Boy. Such touching memories!
Going
up the back of our new home, we saw other villagers picking firewood. There
seemed to be an unwritten rule. People gathered just enough for their own use,
not harvesting to the exclusion of others. For a while we used firewood for
cooking in our kitchen. The kitchen was also equipped to use straw, but straw
was rather smoky. That was why at meal
times smoke could be seen coming out of different chimneys, not an unpleasant
sight at sunset.
Kite
flying was a source of great amusement.
Kites were made with special paper and split bamboo. Some boys coated the lines with ground glass
and glue in order to cut other people’s lines.
We tended to fly ours when the big boys were fighting elsewhere. Now and again there might be an encounter but
if you then moved away they tended not to bother you. You might still lose the kite to the trees or
to the power lines. It was great fun
nevertheless.
Right
in the middle of our yard to the right of the house is one of my favourite
trees: the loquat tree. With our chicken
providing true organic fertilizers, we had some of the best loquats I have ever
tasted. They were best when left to
ripen on the tree and my parents would wrap up the fruit bunches in brown paper
bags. In my retirement, I saw some
similar trees in our holiday resort of Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.
Having been assured by the gardener that they were edible, I tried one and announced to my wife that it
was indeed loquat. Strange that also in
Myrtle Beach, one of the first fish I caught was a pompano, which my mother
used to buy in the wet market. Perhaps
we picked Myrtle Beach for a good reason.
The
bananas, however, could not be left to ripen on the trees, because the animals
would have got them! A special corner
space was set up in the kitchen next to the stoves and a tripod of some sort
was constructed with twigs to hold the banana bunches for ripening. The many banana trees in Panama certainly
made me feel at home.
Another
of my favourite is the guava. There were
two distinct kinds, one with a green flesh even when ripe and the other pinkish. We had the pink variety, while our neighbours
the green one. We also sampled lot of
guavas on our visits to Bangkok.
At
the back of our house were a couple of huts and then wilderness. Our city visitors used to love hiking up the
hill. These visitors were the same
relatives who went swimming with us. When it was too cool to swim, they
gathered at our house instead of at the beach.
With fresh farm poultry and various fresh vegetables and fruits that we
grew, we always had a good spread. From
all these fairly regular parties, we were able to glean the broader family
history. The continuity provided by such
contacts was, on reflection, of great value to me. There were things that your own parents might
not want to talk about but other relatives might, and slowly I was able to
build a better picture of life in the past, life in the Chinese village, life
during the war, life in Shanghai, and life in Swatow.
After
lunch the whole party would climb to the top of the hill for a panoramic view,
and that view was magnificent. The top was not difficult to reach as
technically it was only a hill, although hill and mountain are the same word in
Chinese. Only one aunt would have
difficulty, the one who had Rheumatic heart disease, a crippling condition
caused by a strain of Haemolytic Streptococcus.
A school friend and a spouse of a university friend also suffered from
this. The modern day drive to get doctors
to cut down on the use of antibiotics may have one unexpected effect. There is
now resurgence of Rheumatic heart disease, Rheumatic fever and related
conditions and in child psychiatry the emergence of PANDAS (Paediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated
with Streptococcal Infections[4]).
On top of that, Sepsis in children is a big killer. Yet there is no attempt to control the use of
antibiotics in chicken and other animal feeds as such usage greatly improves
the meat yield per pound of feed. Even
if there are laws controlling such use, vets are known to have ways to bypass
them, even in Germany. Looking back now,
I do wonder if such early exposure to other people’s illnesses planted
questions in my mind and made me want to know more about them. This is more so with the aunt of our
neighbour who was a devout Buddist vegan.
She suffered badly from B12 deficiency and eventually needed regular
injections.
As
luck would have it, when I took my post graduate Psychiatric specialty
examination in London my practical case was that of “Subacute Combined
Degeneration of Spinal Cord” (nerve fibers that control movement and sensation
are damaged) as a result of B12 deficiency.
[2] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1973/press-release/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudognaphalium_affine In Chinese this plant is known as "mouse
yeast grass and used to make rice-flour pastry for the Qingming Festival; it is
sometimes used to flavor the caozai guo consumed on Tai Powan on Tomb Sweeping
Day in the spring.
[4] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/pandas
