With the mercury dropping, the annual gaofang season has kicked off in Shanghai. Local traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and pharmacies have unveiled their gaofang clinics.

Shanghai Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine launched its gaofang clinic on Monday. Gaofang is a seasonal herbal paste tonic made of condensed liquid herbal medicine chock full of ingredients like honey and brown sugar. Each paste is tailor-made according to a doctor's prescription.

Under TCM concepts, taking gaofang can enhance health, especially for elderly people and those with weak immunity and chronic diseases.

A man has his pulse checked by a doctor at Shanghai Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine on the first day of its gaofang clinic on Monday.

Yueyang's TCM doctors provided health lectures, exercises and imparted herbal knowledge to residents, who went all the way to the hospital for gaofang prescription.

While other hospitals hire pharmaceutical companies to produce gaofang, Yueyang is the only one adhering to traditional means. It has a special plant with 100 bronze vessels to make the tonic.

"Gaofang is a typical representative of TCM, so we have a special gaofang center, which consists of a gaofang plant and a gaofang museum to promote TCM culture," said Dr Zhou Jia, president of Yueyang hospital.

"We want to use gaofang to promote scientific theories of health protection and disease prevention among the public."

Yueyang has more than 40 years' experience in gaofang prescription and production. Some 5,000 people have made reservations at its gaofang clinic this year.

An elderly woman surnamed Wang said she has benefited from taking gaofang and came to prescribe this year's therapy on the first day of the gaofang clinic.

"I used to feel cold and weak in winter. After taking gaofang, my condition improved a lot," she noted.

Dr Zhou Yang from Yueyang's disease prevention center said that gaofang is suitable for people with chronic diseases, patients under rehabilitation, those with weak immunity, people who are likely to feel fatigue or are under strong work pressure, the elderly and people with frequent respiratory infection.

"However, not everyone can take gaofang. People with certain chronic disease outburts and those with poor gastric function should have the disease treated or have the gastric function restored before. People should visit a TCM doctor to have evaluation instead of buying or taking gaofang at random," he pointed out.