What you grow up with, that’s what becomes normal. You could be smack dab in the middle of something extraordinary, but it’s simply everyday life for you.

In this conversation with Yvonne Lau we reflect on her experience of growing up as the daughter of immigrants from Southern China who ran an herb store in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was a time when a few dedicated young people from the mainstream culture began to show a respectful and insatiable interest in Chinese medicine.

The interest of those young people was part of what would become a growing acceptance of Chinese medicine in the west. And the herb store; it too has grown through the years.

Listen into this conversation of playing hide and seek behind bags of uncut herbs, some of the characters who made up the Asian Chinese medicine community, how her parents herb store has become a major supplier of medicinals, and some of the challenges we face in this moment of time.