Coughing - 20100730

Recently I has been coughing a lot. Either voluntarily or else.

Coughing was a nightmare to me. When I was a child, I contracted bronchitis. Referred by my uncle, if I am not wrong, I went to a Chinese medicine practitioner for treatment. Surname Ng, his clinic was located at a commercial building in Mongkok. I could still visualize the surrounding of the clinic. Most of the furniture was made by wood: chairs, cabinet, floor etc, the surrounding was warm. Doctor Ng was a guy in his middle age. He was rather short, with receding hair that his head was virtually bald. Nevertheless, he was always nice. If my coughing was much serious, doctor Ng might use those vacuum suckers to suck out the "air" inside my body. In addition, injection was possible, though I suspected that it was a western medical means.

Usually, I could leave the clinic with those herbal medicines. Herbs were picked out from the wooden "hundred sons" cabinet by a woman. The woman, rumoured to be the lover of doctor Ng, was a nice person, too. Her thick, black curly long hair was particularly impressive to me. With the herbal medicines deftly mixed up in paper bundles, it's time to back home.

So the bitter soup was waiting. Cooked from the herbs, the soup was unpleasant as hell. Cooking of the bitter soup was complex. Several bowls of water, boiled by slow heat, into one bowl of soup, with different herbs added in different sequences. This kind of difficult task could only be done by mum. According to a Chinese proverb, "bitter medicine is a good one", it seemed true in my case. After treatment, in a year or two, I was fully recovered from bronchitis.

So, until late July, I did forget the feeling of coughing. However, it is something anyone would opt for ignorance.