Guiling Gao

Being afraid of suffering from excessive internal heat, Cantonese love to have Guiling Gao. That is a kind of brown jelly that holds the shape of the vessel. It is said the Guiling Gao can clear internal heat. The bitterer, the better.

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More about Guilinggao

Guilinggao, also known as Tortoise Jelly or Turtle Jelly, is a jelly-like Chinese medicine, also sold as a dessert. It was traditionally made with the powdered plastron (shell) from the critically endangered turtle Cuora trifasciata (commonly known as "three-lined box turtle", or "golden coin turtle") and a variety of herbal products, in particular, China roots Smilax glabra. Although the golden coin turtle (Cuora trifasciata) is commercially farmed in modern China, it is extremely expensive;therefore, even when turtle-derived ingredients are used in commercially available Guilinggao, they come from other, more commonly available, turtle species.

More often, commercially available Guilinggao sold as a dessert does not contain turtle shell powder at all, despite the product name and the prominent turtle images on most brands' labels. They do, however, share the same herbal additives as the medicine and are similarly marketed as being good for skin complexion when ingested.