In late April, GPHL’s Shennong Caotang Museum was listed as a key national cultural export project in the year 2019-2020 by five national departments. Only three projects from Guangdong were included on the list, with the other two being Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival and the copyright export project of the comic series ‘Legends of the Condor Heroes’.

The 2019-2020 Key National Cultural Export Projects were selected and acknowledged by the Ministry of Commerce, the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the National Radio and Television Administration, along with help from provincial departments, third-party institutions and experts.

Established in 2006, Shennong Caotang Museum is the first semi-enclosed garden-style TCM museum to combine nature and history in order to comprehensively showcase TCM culture, Lingnan medicine, TCM health preservation, homology culture of medicine and food, plantation of medicinal herbs and TCM’s cultural significance. It was awarded a national 4A tourist attraction status from China’s National Tourism Administration on December19th, 2017, being Guangdong’s first national 4A TCM tourist attraction.

As a whole, the museum is composed of two major areas: the TCM Garden and the Lingnan Medicine Garden. In the TCM Garden, there are mural walls, specimens, simulation processing tools, herbs and so on, presenting the history of TCM, time-honored brands in TCM, plantation of herbs, unique medicinal ingredients and herbs of the Lingnan Region, toxic medicinal materials, etc.

In the Lingnan Medicine Garden, there are four major parts, which are Lingnan medicine, TCM health preservation, the homology culture of medicine and food, and the plantation of medicinal plants.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Shennong Caotang Museum developed a sachet that uses Chinese herbs to help you detox. In early April, the sachets were included in GPHL’s 20 thousand medical kits for people undergoing quarantine as a way of expressing the company’s support for them in the fight against the outbreak.

On the afternoon of April 18th, African students at Sun Yat-sen University received a bag of epidemic supplies provided by GPHL, including the sachet. The sachets were also donated to Guangdong’s medical team in Hubei and their family members.

As of now, over 200,000 sachets have been sold.

Shennong Caotang’s moves in cultural exchange

Over the past decade, the museum has been featured in a dozen documentaries and TCM promo videos presented by CCTV and the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, including the ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’ and ‘Chinese Medicine’.

Wanglaoji herbal tea museum moved into the Museum’s Lingnan Medicine Garden at the end of 2013. In December 2018, Wanglaoji opened its first overseas museum in Manhattan, New York. Last April, Wanglaoji held a launch ceremony for its herbal tea museum project in Tokyo, Japan.

Last May, GPHL and the University of Auckland entered into an agreement to set up GPHL’s first overseas scholarship entitled the “New Zealand Wang Lao Ji Auspiciousness Cultural Ambassador Scholarship”, supporting students from the University of Auckland by offering an internship at GPHL.

On May 20th, 2019, GPHL and the Confucius Institute in Auckland (“CI in Auckland”) announced a TCM promotion partnership to co-found the ‘Shennong Caotang TCM Cultural Centre’ and work together in training future TCM talent and sharing educational resources.  A TCM Exhibition was also opened in the CI in Auckland on the same day, showcasing a variety of TCM products and herbs.

The museum has welcomed millions of international visitors and hosting a series of TCM themed activities, attendees including guests from the 2nd Investing in Africa Forum, the 2017 Fortune Global Forum, and the World Route Development Forum.

Guests of the 2017 Fortune Global Forum and their partners visit Shennong Caotang Museum.

Author: Monica Liu

Editors: Olivia Yang, Simon Haywood