Can Coffee Be Considered Traditional Chinese Medicine? A Hospital of TCM Selling Coffee and Accepting Medical Insurance?

When Traditional Chinese Medicine Meets Coffee

I once naively thought the coffee industry was competitive enough already. Then traditional Chinese medicine, in its bid to win over young people, decided that if it couldn't beat them, it would join them...

A few days ago, a post asking whether coffee or TCM was more "competitive" caught my eye. Inside, I discovered that the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hall under Harbin's Jiren Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital was actually selling coffee! Except this "coffee" wasn't coffee at all - it contained only herbal ingredients and not a trace of caffeine.

According to netizens, the "baristas" inside would take your pulse and customize herbal constitution teas and "coffee" to your specific physical condition - truly prescribing the right remedy! Some products were even prepared with pour-over extraction...

Seeing photos of the hand-poured "coffee," I immediately opened my own photo album. Hey, what a coincidence - isn't that exactly what I look like making instant Xia Sang Ju granules?

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

Admittedly, this "join them" strategy works! Plenty of Harbin netizens went to experience the wellness trend for themselves after seeing the posts. Whether the final results matter much is debatable - the hospital has already won simply by getting more young people to see TCM from a new angle.

The question everyone asked: can you pay with medical insurance? Surprisingly, yes - though not every product qualifies.

The Rise of Wellness Trends

In recent years, as younger generations chase wellness, more and more industries have piled onto the "wellness" track, and TCM-plus-anything has become a reliable formula for attention.

Curiously, traditional Chinese medicine on its own doesn't draw much of a crowd - but paired with coffee, its cultural opposite, the stark contrast instantly becomes a consumer trend young people eagerly chase.

A few years ago, Tong Ren Tang, hoping more young people would engage with TCM, used coffee as its entry point and pioneered drinks like goji berry lattes and hawthorn tangerine peel Americanos, opening the "coffee wellness" path: "Never slack on wellness; reach the pinnacle of life."

Young people have since embraced the principle of "staying up late is staying up late, but wellness can't be skipped" - so-called "punk wellness." Some coffee shop owners have been clever about it, opening their shops directly inside TCM pharmacies for an immediate visual dose of wellness.

Coffee and Traditional Chinese Medicine: Unlikely Friends

Now TCM hospitals are getting in on it too, opening TCM shops with coffeehouse atmospheres. Coffee and traditional Chinese medicine are like Tom and Jerry - they look like enemies but are really good friends.

Many netizens joke that if coffee trees were native to China, they would surely appear in the "Compendium of Materia Medica." Coffee doesn't appear in that text, but it can be found in the "Chinese Herbal Medicine" dictionary. Opinions differ, though, so whether coffee counts as TCM remains an open question.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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