Ginseng [antikvár]

IntroductionA year or so ago, a raider armed with a dummy gun carried out a hold-up on a shop in Germany. An unremarkable occurrence these days, except that the raider demanded only one item. He made off with the shop's entire stock of ginseng, worth some $100. Everything else, including the till, was left untouched.This incident sums up the extraordinary impact that ginseng is making upon the western world. One of the oldest medicinal plants of frhe east, it might have been expected to disappear gradually from use and to be superseded entirely by modern drugs. Instead, interest in the plant has spread rapidly in recent years. Ginseng products are on sale now in most countries, and there have been two international conferences at which scientists have given papers on their trials and analyses of the plant.On a visit to Korea, I was taken to see ginseng growing on a small farm some two hours drive from Seoul. It was a hot day in early autumn, the sun blazing down on a countryside of villages, rice paddies and distant blue hills. After a long drive down the straight modern highways, we turned off onto narrow, unsurfaced roads where clouds of white dust were raised by the occasional car. The villages appeared to be untouched by the passing of time. Scarlet carpets of red peppers were spread out to dry in front of the tiny one-storey houses, and stooks of grain lay heaped in the fields. The road became narrower and rougher as we drove down the track to the farm.There, fringed by tall, daisy-like wild flowers of mauve, pink and white, stood the lines of neat thatched shades protecting the growing ginseng. A thatched watch tower on stilts rose from the centre of the field; the grower had often spent long hours up there at night on the look-out for thieves. Walking between the rows and crouching to peer under the shades, we saw the plants ready for harvest, each about two feet tall, with