Book excerpt: Essential Chinese Medicine: Restoring Balance has gathered a total of 55 types of commonly-seen balancing medicinal materials, providing the details of each medicine including its origin, place of production, nature and flavour, meridian tropism, effects, treatment, usage and dosage, preparation methods of medicated diets and consumption methods. All of this information is further illustrated with high-quality colour photographs, and terms are written in both English and Chinese for easy reference.