My Mind Expanding Trip to China

If you think about China, what comes to your mind? For me, pollution is top of the list. After that is untrustworthy products. Then comes over-population. Mixed into all of that is a government that controls what people know about politics and the rest of the world by keeping them isolated from international news.

I’m just back from a trip to China to visit our suppliers and it expanded my mind by changing a number of the above beliefs. Many of our adaptogenic herbs grow in Siberia, a region shared by both Russia and China. Well of course, doing business with Russia is out of the question. China, on the other hand, is home to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and, as a result, has a robust trade in herbs and other wellness ingredients like mushrooms. 

True confessions here: it was my first trip to China and it shouldn’t have been. I actually was doing business with China back in the ‘70’s when I worked at Celestial. China was just opening up to trade and I had a partnership with another company to import eleuthero, the herb that launched the adaptogenic category and was then called “Siberian Ginseng”. But I kept traveling to other continents like Africa and South America, never reaching China at the time.

Fast forward to 2020, I was on my way there when Covid hit. That was the year we introduced our Mushroom Adaptogen blends and although I had met our suppliers here in the US, I have a policy of always visiting new suppliers at their facility. After Covid waned, my aging mother kept me rooted in Santa Barbara. With her passing last summer, at last I was ready to go!

I do have to say, I have a very good sense about how to detect a good supplier after 50 years of working with exporters around the world. I’m pleased to know that that sense not only didn’t fail me in this case, but redeemed my faith in why human connection is the most important element in a good supplier relationship.

Adaptogens from the North of China

Right near the North Korean border, there is a beautiful mountainous region called Changbai with a national forest and pristine wilderness. In order to certify an organic ingredient, you need a large region like a national forest where no agricultural inputs could pollute wild harvested herbs. The Changbai mountains are just the type of protected region I look for when sourcing ingredients. 

It was quite cold in Changbai and I was grateful I packed my down jacket. I was met at the airport by Moses, my supplier who I began working with in 2018 after being introduced to him by one of my successors at Celestial. Moses is in his late ‘50’s and began his career in the herb business in the ‘90’s by trading ginseng, honey and royal jelly. His brother, who is an engineer, joined him and together they built a large factory with many machines allowing them to clean, dry, sort, grade, and pack over 400 botanicals they supply to buyers around the world.

I was there to check out our eleuthero root, astragalus root and schisandra berries, three adaptogenic herbs that are well known in TCM. I also wanted to see for myself this region’s habitat where their wild dandelion grows. I was excited to find that it is just as pristine if not more so than the areas in E. Europe where our dandelion root is currently wild harvested. 

In fact, one of the major impressions I took away from my trip to China was how much of it is still wilderness. China is full of lakes, rivers, mountains and forests. Wow! I simply wasn’t expecting the size of China’s vast natural resources and I only saw a small fraction of the whole country!

The factory was in the middle of processing the fall harvest of ginseng roots, a botanical I’ve admired for many years but kept from putting in Teeccino because of the difficulty getting a pesticide-free, certified organic supply. I was surprised with the lengths to which my supplier tested incoming material using his own state-of-the art laboratory equipment as well as confirming his test results at world-class third party labs like Eurofins, an international laboratory we use as well. In fact, Moses knew more about analyzing test results and using the best panels to detect pesticide and heavy metal than anyone I’ve ever worked with before. I was super impressed to say the least! 

Moses’s team prepared a variety of herbal samples for me to taste. They experimented with roasting to my specifications and really worked hard during my visit to meet and exceed all my requirements. Despite inclement weather, I got to walk in the national forest where our herbs are harvested to check out the dandelion, astragalus and schisandra berries which had just been collected. 

Most fun of all was visiting the largest ginseng market in the world and watching the people sort mountains of incoming roots to grade them for sale to exporters. At least a mile of stores selling ginseng and other TCM ingredients like mushrooms lined either side of the street. A very large indoor arena was the actual trading marketplace and it was bustling with activity all day and night as trucks arrived from the mountains piled high with roots. 

This was a community like none other I’ve ever seen organized around a single herb but then ginseng is revered across the globe for its ability to increase the vital force called “qi” in TCM. It is the king of tonic herbs and of course it doesn’t hurt that it is thought to support a man’s libido!

However, this marketplace is not where my supplier buys his ginseng. His contracts with farmers are tightly controlled from the inception. It’s essential to choose the right land where the roots are grown for at least 5 years to monitor all inputs to make sure organic standards are strictly complied with. Seeing how so many other businesses buy their ginseng roots without any controls, testing, or large facilities in which to process them, made me realize all the more how fortunate we are to work with such high qualities guaranteed by the integrity of our supplier. 

Where the functional wellness mushrooms grow

Seven hours south by jet in an entirely different region of China where it’s hot and humid, our mushroom supplier enlightened me about the mushroom trade in China.

Although you can find online offers for ‘functional’ wellness mushrooms from hundreds of Chinese traders, there are only three companies that actually grow and extract mushrooms in China. Fortunately, we buy from the best one of them which my trip proved for me. 

Sadly, there is a lot of adulteration in the extract business in China brought on by the demand by international buyers to get lower and lower prices. The traders comply by adding a cheap filler, called maltodextrin (MD), to the extracts they buy from these three companies and then sell to unsuspecting buyers. 

Many of our competitors are selling these adulterated extracts because they either don’t know better or are just turning a blind eye in order to get the price they want. You can test for MD to be sure you are getting pure mushroom extracts but maybe they don’t want to know? I was told that American buyers are importing extracts with up to 70% MD because they want such low prices! 

Most of our competitors have their products made by co-manufacturers who purchase the raw ingredients for them. We are so fortunate to be in control of both our raw materials and the manufacturing of our products at our own facility. 

That’s why it’s so important to get to know your supplier by traveling to see for yourself where the products you’re importing are being grown and processed. With my supplier, I traveled to a small village in the mountains where every family participates in some part of growing lion’s mane and tremella mushrooms. For instance, one family may specialize in making the natural substrate for the mushrooms to grow on. Another one makes the logs while another family specializes in inoculating the logs. It’s an entire industry and everyone contributes their specialty as part of it. 

I was amazed at the innovative methods these rural communities have developed to produce masses of fruiting bodies, the part of the fungus we call mushrooms. Here in the US, growers concentrate on growing mycelium, the ‘roots’ of mushrooms that grow underground, which is easier and faster than growing mushrooms. There’s a lot of controversy about mycelium versus fruiting bodies and I’ve written about it in another blog, Mushrooms, Longevity and Immunity. 

I have to say, I was overwhelmed standing in the middle of so many lion’s mane and tremella mushrooms growing so vibrantly from floor to ceiling on massive numbers of rows around me. Their collective vibration gave me a contact high! 

Lion’s mane mushrooms positively quiver as their brain-shaped white bulbs make you feel their ability to accelerate your own cognitive functions. Tremella mushrooms are known for promoting beauty from the inside out with their natural hyaluronic acid. When I stroked tremella mushrooms against my face, it was so soft and moist, I just wanted to have a tremella facial on the spot!

Reishi grows in whole different area where again, the village specializes in cultivating it. The harvest was almost at the end when I was there, but I got to stand in a field of reishi mushrooms that had just sprayed their spores into the air where giant vacuum machines sucked the spores up. It’s quite something to see clouds of spores being released all at once from so many mushrooms! Reishi spores as well as the fruiting bodies are consumed for their high antioxidants and immunity promoting benefits. We use the fruiting bodies in Reishi Eleuthero but I have plans for a future product from Teeccino using reishi spores too.

Is a supplier the real deal?

When you visit a supplier’s factory, you have to watch for the name of the company on the building itself. Many traders pretend to be producers by taking you to a factory that they don’t own. I was told lots of stories about how traders try to fake manufacturing facilities.  Fortunately in the case of both of my suppliers, their factory names were proudly displayed on the walls of their buildings.  

Just like with my adaptogen supplier, the mushroom facility where the extracts are made was full of extraction machinery and complete testing laboratories to assure quality control. I was fascinated to see each step of the extraction process and to learn how they were assuring the highest quality in their products.

Watch for my videos on Instagram and Facebook

I could go on and on about my trip but I have to refer you now to our Instagram and Facebook feeds where I plan to release more stories accompanied by videos I took of all these experiences. If you don’t follow Teeccino yet, please join us on your favorite social media platform so you can enjoy seeing and learning more about how functional wellness mushrooms and adaptogenic herbs are grown and harvested in China!