: To Taste a Hundred Herbs: Gods, Ancestors and Medicine in a Chinese Village takes us into the warm circle of a peasant doctor, Dr. Shen, in whom the word healer expands to fit his role in the community as a trusted friend as well as the bearer of a very precise knowledge. Trained by his father and grandfather, Dr. Shen makes use of both traditional and Western medical practices. But it is his unusual skill at treating mental illness with traditional methods that has brought him patients from well beyond the local area, many of whom have failed to be cured in modern hospitals. Still, as a member of the Catholic minority, Dr. Shen is different from those who practice the "big religion." By way of exploring this difference, the film takes us on a veritable tour of the household gods who dwell very much in the present-day lives of country families.