Fangshan, the mountain-ginseng gathering custom associated with Changbaishan, is organized around shared knowledge. A 2025 Jilin agriculture report says the custom was added to the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2008 and describes the China Ginseng Museum in Fusong as collecting, protecting and researching Changbaishan ginseng culture. A 2022 Jilin account describes a group led by an experienced shenbatou, whose knowledge guides companions through the work. The leader’s role is practical and social: the search depends on people noticing, calling, and responding to one another in the forest.
From the journal
Fangshan: The Language and Craft of Ginseng Gathering
Fusong’s ginseng-gathering custom records teamwork, spoken calls, tools, and a careful way of lifting a root from woodland.
Gathering as a group
Calls make a shared language
The provincial description records calls between gatherers, translated as “calling the mountain” and “answering the mountain.” Call and response help companions recognize one another while they search across the forest. The same account preserves a belief that ginseng could escape. This belongs to the custom’s folklore: the root is imagined as elusive, an idea that expresses the difficulty and value of finding it rather than a botanical claim.
A probe, a red thread, moss, and birch
The described tools and materials bring the practice into focus. A deer-bone probe is used to loosen earth around a root; red thread and copper coins carry customary significance. After it is lifted, the root may be wrapped in moss and birch leaves. Each object connects handling with meaning: the fine shape of the root calls for careful work, while the thread, coins, and natural wrapping place the harvest within a shared ritual vocabulary.
A forest tradition beside a cultivated crop
A 2025 response published by the Jilin Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine identifies the Fusong Ginseng Museum as the protection unit for the Changbaishan ginseng-gathering custom. Modern ginseng production has a different history. A provincial industry report and agriculture reply describe cultivated roots, breeding, standards, and markets; the custom describes forest knowledge, calls, tools, and group practice. The two belong in the same regional story, but commercial ginseng should not be assumed to come from a wild-gathering tradition.
A lineage kept in practice
The national intangible-heritage registry names Zhao Binglin, from Fusong, as a representative inheritor. Its profile says he learned the gathering craft in childhood from shenbatou Yu Xingrang. Beginning in the 1990s, Zhao established a 15-hectare practice base where younger people could learn the skills and customs; the registry also describes his teaching of disciples and research into the tradition. This record turns transmission into a concrete part of the story: knowledge passes through apprenticeship, observation, practice, and the rules attached to the work, as well as through a formal heritage listing. The profile also records Zhao’s work on four books about ginseng and Changbaishan culture, extending that teaching from field practice into written accounts.