People describe the weather in Guangzhou is “sauna-like humidity”, “the suffocating heat and humidity can tale your breath away”. The Guangzhou people have their own way to overcome the problem. Getting rid of the body’s excess heat and toxins is a number one priority. The most common way of cooling off is drinking cool tea. This tea is brown in color, bittersweet in flavor, and made from traditional Chinese herbs. Anyone feeling a little overheated can buy this tea for three or four Yuan from stalls on every street corner. The cool tea is good fir coughs, colds, stomachaches, hangovers and overheating. The stall owners make the tea fresh and use different herbs for the different ailments.

Also, the long-stewed soup is one of the favorite recipes. The housewives of Guangzhou are skilled in Chinese medicine, and whether they are preparing herbs, vegetables, fruits, beans or meat, they try to use ingredients as a remedy. An experienced housewife can prepare over 100 different kinds of soup. Soup is part of every meal and the soups change with the seasons. “Winter restoration” is also a process they go through every year. Each time the seasons change, supermarkets scramble to display all kinds of soup ingredients. You may find soup ingredients for every part of the body. There is no wonder that the Guangzhou people live two or three year longer than the national average of China.