Cool it with a baboon's blood, till the charm is firm and good

...or at least not as lethal.

It's soup day at home. Soup is a wonderful thing, it can warm you up, cool you down, be constructed delicately with a distinct air of chefiness, or made by upending a tin can into a pot. Generally, soup is a cause for joy!

Unless you're a good little Chinese girl living in Hong Kong.

Because when you're Chinese, there are two kinds of soup, the one to be consumed with the family as part of a meal, and one that is supposedly good for you.

And you know what, it would all be so much easier if it didn't work. But Chinese medicine is amazing. It'll cure almost anything you throw at it. It can do anything you want it to! You just need to go to the apothecary and describe your unique problem to the lovely people behind the counter, and they'll make anything you need!

Though despite all it's power, it would seem that there isn't anything one can do for the taste.

The soup my mother enjoys forcing down my neck tends to be black and viscous, smelling of toenails and herbs-- the uniquely distinctive smell given off by all Chinese medicine. There are no real words to describe the taste, my meagre linguistic ability fails in the face of such horrors. Suffice to say that once you get past the taste, swallowing it is like swallowing a bitter, lukewarm, poisonous frog...while it's still alive.

According to my mother, such soup, if taken regularly, will clear my skin, give me better blood circulation, soothe my throat, soothe my headaches, fight tooth decay, prevent pregnancy, give me better eyesight, cure cancer, enlarge my cup size, help me maintain longer and stronger erections, and get me a better deal on my mortgage.

I'm uncertain whether my mother truly thinks I have this much wrong with me, or if she just likes to watch me suffer.

That pot has been sitting on the back burner since morning, and even from upstairs, I can smell it's familiar, malodorous stench. It's only a matter of time before my mother will look up from her soap on TV, and declare that it's ready to drink, and look how wonderful she is to have made a whole pot for us! And we had better not waste any of it, or she'll kill us.

The last time I refused to drink the hated concoction, my mother not only screamed that I was a wasteful, selfish girl, and threw things at me, but she held me down, and tipped the potion down my throat, so that my only options were drink or drown.

It was a tough choice, let me tell you.

And staring at the menacing pr essence of that sturdy pot at the back of my kitchen, I still don't know if it was the right one.

Here's to hoping.