In search of the holy mushroom

I DON'T know why Westerners pooh-pooh Chinese medicine. It's not that different from East Coast American medicine as practised by generations of New York mothers in the late 40s.

They may not have dabbled in powdered antelope horn or ginseng root but my childhood memories are filled with a variety of natural potions and elixirs that were concocted to keep youngsters fit and healthy.

Each night there were tumblers of honey water, to keep me nice and sweet. Then the morning dose of cod liver oil. Taken with my eyes shut, the smelly, strong-testing, caramel coloured substance was spooned into us. Even the freshly squeezed orange juice chaser was a sly part of the formula.

It took a tenacious germ to get past all our natural preventive remedies with the result that a case of sniffles was a rarity. When a sneeze did sneak through, nobody ran off to the corner drugstore. Instead, steaming hot bowls of chicken soup (lovinglyreferred to as ''Jewish penicillin'') materialised from the kitchen.

So, when the charming little Big Paradise Tea Room opened last summer, I was most intrigued. The half-a-dozen sheets of paper taped to its windows appeared to contain highly technical medical information about mushrooms.

As the data was all in Chinese, I ventured inside and sought out the proprietor. Much younger than I had expected and engagingly articulate about his tea, Avin Yiu sat at one of the five small rosewood tables on matching stools and chatted.