Town weaves itself a mugwort industry

By Tan Maolin, Yichang International Communication Studio

As Chinese New Year approaches, workers at a mugwort plant in Huanghua Town are busy producing moxa sticks.

Mugwort has been used all over Asia as a medicinal, spiritual and culinary ingredient since at least the Iron Age. With its multiple applications in healthcare and medical treatment, Chinese medicine practitioners have long regarded it as the “king of herbs”.

In Hubei province, mugwort isn’t important only at New Year. Yichang citizens make moxa pouches and hang mugwort leaves on doors during the Dragon Boat Festival, which occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar.

Huanghua Town began to develop its mugwort industry in 2018. Five years later, in 2023, it received a subsidy of 2.1 million yuan (US$292,500) from a Shanghai government program to help develop its mugwort processing industry. The funds were used to build a new processing plant and buy equipment.

The Huanghua Town plant is now turning out finished products such as moxa pillars and moxa sticks.

Dried mugwort in the plant

As the order book fills up, the town’s mugwort planting area has increased to about 2,000 mu (133 hectares) and the value of the yearly crop has risen to about 6 million yuan. Around 130 villagers have become mugwort cultivators for the Yichang Run’aitang Mugwort Professional Cooperative, the town’s main mugwort processing enterprise.

“Mugwort products are very popular with consumers. With the new equipment, we can produce more than 2,000 moxa sticks per day, which we mainly sell to healthcare centers,” said cooperative chairman Lu Guanghui.