White Radish and Chen Pi Water

Why people make this drink

When a family member faces surgery that requires general anaesthesia, many readers in Nourilo’s community prepare a flask of this simple radish and chen pi water to bring to the hospital. In Nourilo’s own experience with a relative’s operation, the patient drank a large thermos of this water as soon as she was allowed fluids — and urinated freely not long after, which is traditionally understood to signal that the anaesthetic is moving out of the body. By contrast, a neighbour in the same ward who had not drunk it struggled for some time before she could urinate at all.

This is, in Nourilo’s words, an extremely easy drink to prepare in advance and bring along. The key is to sip it slowly and steadily, in small mouthfuls, and to drink as much as you comfortably can.