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Wellness foods often get seen through a Western lens. These Bay Area Asian Americans are trying to reclaim them
Cathy Erway
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Chang feeds his chickens in the backyard of his home in Occidental, Calif.Jessica Christian / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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Erin Wilkins organizes herbs inside of her shop Herb Folk in Petaluma, Calif.Jessica Christian / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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Herb Folk sells jars of broth herbs, which are also used in the virtual workshop.Jessica Christian / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
Growing up, Adrian Chang spent a lot of time in his grandfather’s Chinese apothecary in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The small shop on Washington and Waverly streets, Superior Trading, closed two years ago, but Chang recalls the floor-to-ceiling drawers holding dried cicadas, twigs, berries, tangerine peels and even seahorses.
In 2017, I came across an extraordinary document in Sydney’s Mitchell Library: a handwritten list of 178 Aboriginal place names for Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River, compiled in 1829 by a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend John McGarvie. I was stunned. I stared at the screen, hardly believing my eyes.
After years of research, my own and others, I thought most of the Aboriginal names for the river were lost forever, destroyed in the aftermath of invasion and dispossession. Yet, suddenly, this cache of riches. A page from Rev McGarvie’s 1829 list of Aboriginal names for places on Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales