Poria

Poria is not a plant and not quite a mushroom. It is the hard underground body of a fungus that grows on the roots of pine, dug up as a pale lump the size of a fist and cut into white cubes. The Chinese name, 茯苓, is old enough that its etymology is argued about; the Shennong Bencao Jing has it in the upper class, c. 200 CE, and it has never left daily use since.

Poria carries a flavour the five-flavour scheme did not originally include: 淡, bland. Bland is a working category in Chinese pharmacy rather than an insult. It describes substances that percolate — that draw water out of the tissues and send it down and out — and it is why poria tastes of almost nothing while doing the most specific job on this list.

The picture it belongs to is the one Chinese medicine calls dampness: heaviness in the limbs, a head like a wrapped parcel, puffiness around the ankles in the evening, a thick coat on the tongue, loose stools, and tiredness that a long sleep does not fix. Poria appears in the classical formulas for that picture more often than anything else, usually paired with white atractylodes.

It also has the strangest place in Chinese street food of anything here. Beijing sells 茯苓饼 — poria pancakes, paper-thin discs of poria starch folded round honey and nuts — as a tourist sweet, which tells you how thoroughly this item is regarded as food rather than as anything else.

Poria cubes are chalky and hard and never soften completely; they are cooked into a pot for what they give the liquid, and most Chinese cooks eat them anyway because they are pleasant enough once they have swollen. The standard domestic use is congee, and the standard pairing is with job’s tears, which is doing a similar job from a different angle.

Poria is neutral, gentle and unusually well tolerated — it is one of the few items here with almost nothing to warn about. Its limitation is the mirror of its use: a substance whose job is to move water downwards is the wrong idea for a body that is already dry.