For generations, traditional Chinese medicine arrived with ceremony, as dried roots and bark were carefully measured from wooden drawers, carried home, and simmered in a slow, bitter ritual that demanded attention when the body required care.
Today, it can be ordered on ice and sipped on the go.
On the iconic Chunxi Road, a century-old commercial district in Chengdu, Sichuan province, southwestern China, a cup of coffee is rewriting expectations. "The first sip tastes like coffee," says Shazia, a Pakistani student studying in China. "But the finish has a hint of lemon, light and refreshing."
The drink is a dried tangerine peel and hawthorn Americano from Tong Ren Tang (Beijing TRT Group), a venerable traditional medicine pharmacy with a history spanning over 350 years.
For foreigners, the encounter can be puzzling. Why are coffee, bread, and new-style tea drinks in China increasingly infused with medicinal herbs? The answer reflects not a simple revival of traditional remedies, but a broader reorganization of health, anxiety, and everyday consumption.
Tong Ren Tang's foray into lifestyle commerce is emblematic. Founded in 1669, it has been associated with orthodox medicine since the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and in recent years has expanded into lifestyle-oriented formats. Through its youth-oriented sub-brand, Zhima Health, it now sells coffee, tea drinks, baked goods, and bottled "wellness waters," integrating familiar herbal ingredients into consumption settings that young consumers already frequent.
The menu sounds more culinary than clinical, with options like a goji berry latte, a monk fruit Americano, and a cinnamon cappuccino. These are not prescription medications. In Chinese tradition, they belong to what is known as the "medicinal and edible homology" system, where ingredients commonly used in cooking provide gentle nourishment, aid digestion, reduce sugar intake, and balance flavor.
The store design does much of the work. Visual cues from traditional pharmacies remain, but the atmosphere is contemporary and social media-friendly. Medicine no longer arrives through bitterness and patience, but through taste and convenience. The contrast of centuries-old ingredients served in a coffee cup softens psychological resistance. "It's not what I imagined Chinese medicine would be," says Shazia. "It's more like a new flavor."
Among young Chinese consumers, the appeal has less to do with therapeutic certainty and more with a sense of reassurance. He Yue, a 34-year-old programmer, says he doesn't stop to think about whether these herb-infused drinks have measurable effects.
"It's like maintaining good health in a punk way," he says, referring to a self-described approach where young people, under pressure and time constraints, borrow the language of health to make small, personalized adjustments to daily life. "At least I feel like I'm extending my life."
"Extending life" works less as a medical claim than as an emotional shorthand. Tong Ren Tang has described this group as a young, self-aware generation that oscillates between unhealthy habits and small acts of self-repair, seeking balance not through discipline but through everyday, low-effort rituals. In this sense, the product is the ritual.
What started in cafes has expanded. Herbal ingredients were first softened in coffee and tea drinks, then incorporated into baked goods. Chengdu's Second People's Hospital has become, somewhat unexpectedly, a destination for medicinal bread. On Chinese social media, posts documenting long queues have multiplied. Hospital staff say about 70 pieces are baked each morning and another 100 to 200 in the afternoon, most of which sell out.
Along a hospital corridor, standalone signs read like menus and prescriptions at once. The names blend nutrition with suggestion, such as Five Black Grains Vitality Bread, Five Honey Spleen-Nourishing Bread, and Orange Peel and Hawthorn Digestive Bread. Each costs 12 yuan ($1.72).
The well-known expression "medicinal and edible homology" also appears on the signs, referring to an official government catalog specifying which traditional medicinal materials can be used as food ingredients. First issued in 2002, the list has been expanded in several rounds and now covers more than 100 approved substances.
The bread is designed to address modern anxieties such as late nights, sedentary work, takeout-heavy diets, and digestive discomfort. Consumers don't seem to harbor illusions. Online, some joke about "hiding Chinese medicine inside bread." Others describe it as the cheapest way to "extend life." Few press on the question of efficacy. The hospital's involvement, it seems, provides enough reassurance.
The exact same emotional arithmetic underpins the boom in so-called "life-extending water." In Beijing offices, herbal tea shops often have their busiest hours in the evening. Orders flow smoothly as "nighttime water," "sleep water," or "ginseng water." The language borrows from internet slang, reframing exhaustion as something to be soothed rather than solved through consumption.
Herbal and functional beverages have also gained popularity in Western markets. The turmeric latte, for instance, and coffees or drinks infused with ingredients like ginseng or ganoderma lucidum (lingzhi) have become increasingly common in Europe and North America, often circulating alongside lifestyle settings such as yoga studios and meditation classes.
In recent years, some international food and beverage brands have begun incorporating herbal or functional components, marketing them as part of daily wellness routines rather than treatments.
According to a 2024 report by iiMedia Research, China's wellness tea beverage market reached 41.16 billion yuan in 2023 and is projected to exceed 100 billion yuan by 2028. More than 20 brands are explicitly positioned around TCM and wellness. Compared to the competitive bubble tea sector, this niche offers the possibility of higher margins. Price, rather than curbing demand, often reinforces the message. The logic: health isn't meant to be cheap.
TCM practitioners are careful to draw clear boundaries. Drinks and baked goods containing medicinal ingredients are considered food, not therapy. According to analysts, many of these products function more as lifestyle identity expressions than as health interventions.
Yet effectiveness is not the point. From a consumption perspective, what matters less is whether these products deliver measurable results than how they fit into daily life. In a high-intensity economy marked by long hours, late nights, and constant self-management, health is increasingly understood as something incremental and sustainable. Body care is no longer postponed until illness strikes but is woven into everyday decisions, like what to drink on the commute or what to have for breakfast.
In that sense, rather than returning as an authority, herbal medicine has resurfaced as a lighter, more everyday companion to modern life. No longer confined to prescriptions taken in times of illness, it now appears in coffee cups, bread baskets, and takeaway drinks, offering a way for people to renegotiate their relationship with health amid the pressures of a fast-paced lifestyle.
