A four-hour drive from Tang's facility, swathes of meadowrue corydalis root stretch freely across plots of land surrounded by mountains in Hongli village in Donglan. The herb is known for easing inflammation.

Once a battleground for the Red Army in the 1920s and '30s, this land is now redolent of medicinal herbs grown by ecological farming.

Huang Zhiying, a village official who oversees the TCM plantation, points out that a lot of knowledge and care goes into every step.

The journey begins around June every year, when the seeds are carefully dried and sown. It takes nearly a month for the seedlings to grow tall enough for the next critical phase — transferring them into nutrient cups.

"Seedlings are very delicate," Huang notes. "Sometimes, even after a week, you barely see any growth. It can take one or two months before they really start to come up," she explains.

This early stage happens inside specially prepared seedling sheds, where conditions like sunlight and temperature are carefully controlled — a necessity for the fragile young plants.

"Seedling cultivation isn't something you can rush. Without proper shelter and care, it simply won't work," she adds.

Around September or October, the mature seedlings are ready to be transplanted into the fields where the soil has to be plowed in advance, raised into ridges, covered with film, and then perforated for planting.