Every five days, a country market converges in a horn-honking, pig-squealing clamor on the old arching stone bridge that spans the river coursing through here.
For as long as anyone can remember, the biggest crop in this valley has been its tall, thick corn. But in the last two years, a new crop, qinghao, or sweet wormwood, has been crowned king, driven by a desperate need in the tropical world for new malaria treatments.
The rugged valleys and steep gorges along the Apeng River here in central China have long been a symbol of idyllic remoteness. Even China's dazzling economic takeoff had done little to change that, until the World Health Organization approved a malaria treatment using artemisinin, the active ingredient of the qinghao plant, in 2001.
Since then, the plant's market value has nearly quadrupled. In the process, qinghao has become an unlikely driver of globalization in these parts, sending peasants scouring the mountainsides to harvest the wild bush.
Just as eager to cash in, farmers are replacing plots of corn, tobacco and potato with the herb, which is bought and sold from bulging burlap sacks amid frenzied market day crowds by dealers wielding brass handheld scales.
Despite China's long history and ancient medical traditions, artemisinin-based drugs are the first Chinese pharmaceutical product to be broadly distributed internationally, beyond more traditional remedies like ginseng.
In antiquity, it was written that parts of this southeastern region of
Chongqing Province were so isolated that the people here did not know what dynasty they lived under. Today, mounting a full-court press driven in part by demand for the drug, the Chinese government is rushing to remedy that, building the first highways into the area, along with a rail line and a small airport.
Confusion over dynasties seems to have given way nowadays to confusion over all the fuss being made over sweet wormwood, an ancient folk remedy for colds and fevers, even as trade in the herb begins to line people's pockets.
"I don't know what medicine this makes," said Sun Lingui, a 23-year-old qinghao dealer who had staked out a prime position on the bridge here on a recent market day. He sold the herb along with a bushel full of dried beetles that he said were a remedy for respiratory problems.
"I know it is used to extract something called artemisinin," Sun added. "Anyway, it is for some kind of medicine, and I hear that tropical countries all need it."
Sun said he had gleaned the little he knew about the plant from a television program, which spoke of the herb's rapidly increasing value and alluded to its health benefits. What those benefits were, he, like the peasants surrounding him, could not quite recall.
The fact that this traditional Chinese drug, which the peasants of this village say is good for everything from sniffles to healing wounds, is the greatest recent hope in global efforts to fight malaria, which kills more than a million people each year, mostly in Africa, is scarcely appreciated here.
With established anti-malarial medicines rapidly losing their effectiveness, the World Health Organization recommended in 2001 that countries afflicted with the disease switch to a combination therapy based in part on the Chinese drug. After a slow start in adopting artemisinin-based drugs, demand has skyrocketed in the last two years, with projections that 300 million doses will be needed next year.
Ding Derong, a scientist with China's Southwest Agriculture University who has studied artemisinin for 30 years, said that 30,000 tonnes to 40,000 tonnes of the crop would be needed to meet that demand, but that only 20,000 were likely to be harvested.
"This is a very easy thing to plant and grow, but it is hard to cultivate good quality seeds," Ding said. "At first, farmers will choose cheap seeds over good ones. The result is there will be a lot of disorder."
Jiang Yifei, spokeswoman of the Holley Corp, the largest Chinese producer of artemisinin, said the biggest challenge in increasing production was "organizing farmers to start standardized cultivation."
Holley supplies the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis with artemisinin. Novartis uses the active ingredient from the herb to produce the drug Coartem, which it supplies at cost to the World Health Organization for distribution.
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