Bencao House
Begin a reading$39

The house

Questions

问答wèn dá · asking and answering

Questions
24, in six groups
Price
US $39, once
Delivery
PDF by email, within 48 hours
Written by
One of four physicians, by hand
Refunds
Thirty days, no reason needed

These are the questions readers actually send us, answered at the length they deserve. What the report contains, what it costs and why, what a tongue photograph is for, where your answers are kept, the things we refuse to do, and what happens when a reading does not fit. No herbs, no needles, no diagnosis.

Macro detail of the deckled edge of printed pages with a small red seal impression.
Plate 01A page from a finished reading. The safety notes come first, before anything a reader might enjoy.

Before the list

The short version, in case you read nothing else.

You answer thirty questions and send one photograph of your tongue. Within 48 hours a physician who is licensed in China reads both and writes you a report in English, six to nine pages, signed. It costs US $39, once. Nothing renews, nothing ships, and there is nothing else for sale.

What you are buying is a considered opinion inside a particular tradition — a way of describing the pattern your sleep, appetite, temperature, digestion and energy make when you look at them together. That is a genuinely useful thing to have written down. It is not the same thing as care from somebody who can see you, and we say so on every page, including the first page of the report itself.

If a question below is answered in a way you do not like, that is the answer. We would rather lose the sale than be vague and be found out later.

Group 01

What you get

The object itself: length, form, and who made it.

What exactly do I receive for US $39?

A written report, delivered as a PDF by email: six to nine pages, usually between 2,000 and 3,000 words. It has five parts — the safety notes that come first, a description of the pattern your answers and tongue photograph point to in Chinese-medicine terms, what to eat and what to eat less of, three or four acupressure points you can reach with your own hands, and a short section on sleep, warmth and daily rhythm. It is signed by the physician who wrote it. You can read a complete one before you buy anything: the sample report on this site is real, published with the reader’s permission and with the identifying details changed.

Is it written by a person or generated by software?

By a person, every time. One of four physicians reads your intake and writes the report, and a second physician reads the draft before it is sent. It takes about two hours. We do not use a language model to write any part of a report, and we would not know how to make one that could look at a tongue photograph honestly.

Can I ask questions once I have read it?

Yes. One round of follow-up questions is included, and there is no time limit on it. Write back to the same address the report came from and the physician who wrote it answers. If your questions show the reading missed something, we would rather rewrite it than defend it.

Group 02

Cost and time

What it costs, why it costs that, and how long you wait.

Why US $39?

Because a report takes one physician about two hours, and nothing else is being sold. There is no product to ship, no ingredient to mark up, and no second appointment to sell you. We set the price at roughly what two hours of one person’s attention is worth in the city where they live, and we would rather be dull about that than pretend the number was arrived at by magic.

How long does it take?

Within 48 hours of your payment and completed intake, in almost every case. If your tongue photograph is unusable we will write and ask for another one, and the clock starts again when it arrives. If we are going to be late you will hear from a person before the deadline, not after it.

Is there a subscription, or anything you will sell me afterwards?

No, to both. One payment, one report: nothing to cancel, no membership, no automatic renewal. And we have nothing to sell you afterwards — we do not stock, ship or take a commission on any product, herbal or otherwise, and there is no affiliate link anywhere on this site. If a report ever reads as though it were steering you toward buying something, tell us, because that would be a failure of the writing.

Group 03

The tongue photograph

Why we ask for it, how to take one, and what happens if it is poor.

Why do you want a photograph of my tongue?

Because it is the one thing in a written intake that we cannot get from your words. The tongue body and its coating change slowly and are difficult to misreport: colour, shape, whether the edges are scalloped, whether the coating is thin or thick, dry or wet, and where on the tongue it sits. In the room it is the first thing we look at. At a distance it is the only direct observation we have.

How do I take a usable photograph?

Daylight, near a window, no lamp and no flash. First thing in the morning, before you eat, drink, brush your teeth or scrape your tongue. Face the light, put your tongue out relaxed and flat rather than pointed, and hold it out for no more than a couple of seconds — held longer, a tongue changes colour. Take three and send the clearest.

What if my photograph is poor?

We ask for another one. About one in nine is unusable, almost always because of artificial light, which turns a normal tongue orange, or because it was taken after coffee, which stains the coating. We would rather delay your report by a day than write about a colour we are not sure we saw.

What if I cannot send a photograph at all?

Write and tell us. We can write a reading from the thirty answers alone, but it is a weaker reading and we will say so in the report itself rather than quietly leaving it out. If you would rather not proceed on that basis, do not buy, and nothing is owed.

Group 04

Your photograph and your answers

Where the file goes, who can open it, and how to have it deleted.

What happens to my photograph and my answers?

They are stored encrypted, in one database, readable only by the four physicians and by nobody else. They are never sold, never shared with an advertiser, and never sent to a third party for analysis. The pages where you answer questions and read your report carry no analytics, no advertising pixel and no third-party script at all — that is enforced by the site’s content security policy, not by us remembering.

Do you use my answers to train anything?

No. Your intake is not used to train a model, ours or anyone else’s, and it is not included in any dataset that leaves our own database. If we ever want to use an anonymised pattern from your reading in a public essay, we will write and ask you first, in plain words, and you may say no without giving a reason.

Can you delete everything you hold about me?

Yes, at any time, without explaining why. Write to hello@bencaohouse.com and we delete your intake, your photograph and your report within seven days, and confirm when it is done. We keep only the record of the payment itself, which we are required to keep for tax purposes, and that record contains no health information.

Will my name appear anywhere?

Nowhere. We publish no names, no testimonials attached to a person, and no before-and-after anything. The sample report on this site was published with written permission and with every identifying detail changed. We do not ask for reviews.

Group 05

What we will not do

The refusals. They are the shape of the whole service.

Can you send me herbs?

No, and we will not make an exception. Herbal formulas are chosen in person and then adjusted at a week, at three weeks, and at the change of season by someone who can see you again. Sending a fixed bag across the world to someone we will never look at twice is an imitation of that practice, not the practice. It is also unlawful in most of the places you are reading this. We do not stock, ship, recommend by brand, or take any commission on a herbal product.

Is this a substitute for seeing my own doctor?

No — nothing we write is a diagnosis, a treatment, or a substitute for care from a clinician licensed where you live. Keep your appointments. Nothing in a report from us is a reason to delay care, to cancel a test, or to argue with someone who can put hands on you. Every report opens with a list of things that should send you to a doctor the same week, and that list comes before anything else on the page.

Will you tell me what is wrong with me?

We will not name a disease or rule one out — that is not something anyone can honestly do from a questionnaire and a photograph, and it is not what Chinese medicine does anyway. What we will do is describe the pattern your answers form in the tradition’s own vocabulary, say plainly how confident we are, and tell you which observations point the other way.

I am pregnant. Can you write for me?

We do not write readings during pregnancy, while you are trying to conceive, or in the first three months after birth. Several ordinary food and acupressure suggestions are ones we would change in those months, and changing them properly needs somebody who can see you regularly. If you buy and then tell us, we refund you in full.

I take medication. Does that rule me out?

No, and please tell us in the intake. We never tell you to start, stop, reduce or change any medication a doctor has given you — that decision belongs to the person who gave it to you. Knowing what you take simply changes what we suggest around it, particularly with food, and a report written without knowing is a worse report.

Do you write for children?

Not through this site. We write for adults, eighteen and over, answering for themselves. Children are read differently in Chinese medicine — the tongue, the pulse and the questions are all judged against a different baseline — and it needs somebody in the room.

Group 06

If it does not fit

Refunds, rewrites, and what to do when the reading is wrong.

What if the report does not fit me?

Tell us where it stops fitting. That single sentence is the most useful thing you can send, and it is often the sentence that shows what the intake missed. We will either rewrite the reading with what you have told us, or refund you in full. You choose, and you do not have to choose before you write.

What is your refund policy?

If we cannot complete your report, we refund you without being asked. If the report arrives and you think it is poor, write within thirty days and we refund you in full. We do not ask you to prove anything, and we do not make you keep a rewrite you did not want.

Do you write for readers outside the United States?

Yes. We write in English for readers anywhere, and most weeks the reports go to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Ireland. The food suggestions are adjusted to what you can actually buy where you live, so tell us in the intake if your kitchen is unusual or your climate is extreme.

How do I complain?

Write to care@bencaohouse.com. It is read by a physician who did not write your report. You get a reply from a person within three working days and a decision within ten. You may also complain to the consumer protection authority of your own state or country, and nothing we ask you to agree to takes that away.

Not answered here

Where the longer answers live.

Some questions are too long for a list. What we will not do sets out the refusals in full, with the reasoning behind each one and what we suggest instead. How a reading is made follows one intake from the thirty answers to the finished pages. The physicians names the four people, what each trained in, and where the licence is held — with the written disclosure in full.

If your question is not here and not there, write and ask it. A person answers, usually the same day, and if the question is good we add it to this page with your wording rather than ours. The address and what to put in a letter are on the contact page.

Questions

The rest of the answers are in the report itself.

Thirty questions, one photograph, US $39. A physician writes back within 48 hours.

Begin a reading$39Read a sample report