Bencao House
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Food as medicine

Job’s tears

薏苡仁Yì Yǐ Rén

四气 Nature
Cool · 凉
五味 Flavour
Sweet · Bland
归经 Channels
Spleen · Stomach · Lung
Shared-origin list
2002 catalogue · 薏苡仁

Job’s tears are cool, sweet and bland, and belong to the Spleen, Stomach and Lung channels. They are a true grain, cooked much like pearl barley, and Chinese medicine uses them where a body feels heavy, puffy and slow rather than unwell. The Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE, lists them in the upper class; Chinese kitchens boil them with red beans.

A small heap of polished job’s tears barley grains, bone white, photographed on warm plaster.
Coix lacryma-jobi var. ma-yuen · Hulled grain, raw or dry-fried

Coix lacryma-jobi var. ma-yuen

四气 · Nature

  1. cold
  2. cool
  3. neutral
  4. warm
  5. hot
Cools gently

五味 · Flavour

sour
Gathers and holdsLiver
bitter
Drains and driesHeart
sweet
Fills, slows, harmonisesSpleen
pungent
Disperses and movesLung
salty
Softens and sends downKidney
归经 Channels
Spleen · Stomach · Lung
Part used
Hulled grain, raw or dry-fried
Shared-origin list
2002 catalogue · 薏苡仁

In the canon

What the texts say

Job’s tears is a grain, not a herb — a hard, pearl-white seed about the size of a chickpea, cooked and eaten like barley. English calls it Job’s tears for the shape of the wild husk. Chinese calls it 薏苡仁, and the Shennong Bencao Jing put it in the upper class in c. 200 CE, among the very first substances a person could eat indefinitely.

Shennong Bencao JingThe Divine Husbandman’s Classic of Materia Medicac. 200 CE

Sweet and slightly cold. It eases what is heavy and cramped in the sinews, and moves water.

Upper class, among the grains

It has one of the better anecdotes in the Chinese record. The Han general Ma Yuan brought cartloads of the grain back from a southern campaign in the first century CE, having found that it helped his troops through the wet heat of the far south. His enemies at court claimed the carts were full of pearls. The story outlived the accusation, and the grain is still what southern Chinese kitchens reach for in the wet months.

Its classical job is the same as poria’s and it is usually cooked with it: draining dampness. The difference is direction. Poria is neutral and works quietly downwards; job’s tears is cool, and also carries a classical reputation for easing heaviness and aching in the limbs. Southern China eats it in July.

In a kitchen

How it is actually used

Two things to know before you cook it. It must be soaked, or it will still be hard after an hour and a half. And it can be dry-fried first — 炒薏米 — which browns the grain, takes the cool edge off it, and is what a Chinese cook does for anyone who runs cold or has a delicate stomach. The dry-fried version is also the better tasting one.

Red bean and job’s tears water

Four cups1 hour, plus soaking

90 g · ½ cup
Job’s tears, soaked overnight
90 g · ½ cup
Adzuki beans, soaked overnight
1.5 L · 6 cups
Cold water
1 piece · 3 g
Aged tangerine peel, optional
  1. Soak both the grain and the beans overnight in plenty of cold water, then drain and rinse. Skipping this is the reason most first attempts fail.
  2. Optional and worth it: dry-fry the drained job’s tears in a pan with no oil over medium heat for five or six minutes, until they smell nutty and have gone faintly gold. This makes the pot warmer in the Chinese reading and much better in the cup.
  3. Simmer everything in the cold water, lid ajar, for an hour, until the grain is tender and the liquid has gone cloudy pink.
  4. Drink the liquid warm through the day, and eat the grain and beans with a little salt if you want a meal out of it. No sugar; southern Chinese kitchens keep this one savoury or plain.

This is the single most common home remedy in southern China for the sticky end of summer, and it is a cooking pot rather than anything more than that. The dry-fried version keeps in the cupboard for months in a sealed jar.

Who it is for

Who it suits, and who it does not

Job’s tears is cool, and that is the one thing to hold onto. It is well suited to a heavy, humid, over-full picture and poorly suited to somebody who is already cold, thin and dry. Dry-frying moves it partway toward neutral, which is exactly why the technique exists.

Tends to suit

  • Heavy, aching limbs in humid weather.
  • Puffiness that comes and goes, worse in the evening.
  • A greasy tongue coat and a general feeling of being waterlogged.
  • Skin that is oily and congested rather than dry.
  • Late summer in any wet climate.

Tends not to suit

  • Pregnancy — a standing traditional caution, and one Chinese practice takes seriously.
  • Anyone who runs cold, with cold hands and loose stools.
  • Dry skin, dry stools, or a body that is already thin and depleted.
  • Anyone passing water frequently at night already.

Honestly

What to know before you start

The reading

Job’s tears suits some people and not others

This page describes a food. It cannot tell you whether it belongs in your week, because it knows nothing about how you sleep, eat or feel the cold. A reading does: thirty questions, one photograph of your tongue, and a document written in English by a physician licensed in China for US $39, sent within 48 hours.

Begin a reading$39Read a sample report