WHEN Alexander Yuan shows you around Green Concepts, his 2,000 sq ft health shop in Causeway Bay, it's a return to the health food scene in America of the 70s.
''I'm still a hippie at heart,'' confesses the 45-year-old Hong Kong native. ''When I was in school in the United States, I was the only one with short hair.'' Dr Yuan's career is fresh out of the Woodstock era. After university in the US, he returned here to work for IBM in computers. It didn't last long. A career change was necessary for the restless mind.
He emigrated to Canada and spent five more years in school, earning credentials in chiropractic, naturopathy, homeopathy. Today, Dr Yuan approaches health, nutrition and a green lifestyle by combining the best of the East and West.
His philosophy - let the individual take responsibility for his health, wean yourself off doctors, pills, shots and traditional medicine - underscores the shop.
His interests surface among the 300,000 item inventory. Part of a wall is upholstered with cubby-holes, each filled with dried Western medicinal herbs. There's a rebounder (a mini-trampoline for individuals who want to exercise without jarring their joints) and a bird feeder, (''My fantasy. But it never sells.''), organic produce (fresh every Thursday from the New Territories), organic honey, soy milk sans sweetener, carob powder, whole wheat and vegetable pastas, the Rolls-Royce of juicers (The Champion,from California), books and magazines on gluten-free diets, fasting, dairy-free cooking, AIDS, depression, food combining, ageing, child rearing, pre-menstrual syndrome and sleep-disorders.
The shop serves as a resource centre with one table stacked with brochures and handouts. The bulletin boards alert customers to upcoming lectures. Optimum Health News, his newsletter, is bilingual.
