Sea Cucumber in Traditional Chinese Medicine: Historical Context and Modern Trade Implications

Somewhere in the Ming Dynasty — China, between 1368 and 1644 — a scholar named Xie Zhaozhe wrote a text called Wu Za Zu, or "Five Assorted Offerings." In it, he recorded an observation that would shape the trajectory of an entire ocean industry for the next four centuries: "The sea cucumber is a warm tonic with the same medical effect as ginseng, which is why it is called ginseng of the sea."

That single sentence — written by a Ming Dynasty literati in a miscellaneous essay — is the origin point of the most consequential demand signal in global sea cucumber trade. Understanding why China became the world's dominant sea cucumber consumer requires understanding what sea cucumber meant — and continues to mean — within the framework of traditional Chinese medicine. And understanding that history is inseparable from understanding why the modern trade looks the way it does.

Ginseng of the Sea: The Origins of Sea Cucumber's Status in Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine operates on a framework that is fundamentally different from Western biomedical classification. Food and medicine exist on a continuum rather than as separate categories. The concept of bu — nourishment, replenishment, tonic — is central to understanding how sea cucumber acquired its cultural and economic status.

According to the Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao Gangmu), the foundational text of Chinese pharmacopoeia compiled by Li Shizhen in the late Ming Dynasty, sea cucumber "cures impotence, and is naturally warm as ginseng, hence the name haiseng — ginseng in the sea." This linguistic equation — sea cucumber as marine ginseng — was not merely poetic. It positioned sea cucumber within the same therapeutic category as one of the most revered substances in Chinese medical tradition, assigning it the same warming and tonifying properties that ginseng was understood to possess.

China has a very long history of consuming sea cucumbers. The historical record shows that the Chinese have been eating sea cucumbers as early as the Three Kingdoms Period. During the Southern Song Dynasty, sea cucumbers from Wenzhou were already recognized as a regional specialty, transported to the imperial capital as a premium food item. By the Ming Dynasty, this regional delicacy had acquired the status of a medicinal tonic for the wealthy, cementing the dual identity — luxury food and therapeutic substance — that sea cucumber carries to the present day.

Sea cucumber has been regarded as a highly nutritional food since ancient times, giving it a high economic value today, and making it one of the "eight valuable seafoods" in China. The other seven — abalone, shark fin, fish maw, bird's nest, lobster, geoduck clam, and Japanese tiger prawn — place sea cucumber in a specific cultural category: expensive, auspicious, and associated with health, longevity, and social status.

The Therapeutic Framework: What Traditional Chinese Medicine Says Sea Cucumber Does

The text Wu Za Zu states that sea cucumber could "nourish kidney, enrich essence, strengthen yang, and treat impotence," as well as help prevent ageing of organs. These claims are expressed within the framework of traditional Chinese medicine theory, in which "kidney" refers not merely to the anatomical organ but to a broader constellation of vital functions including reproductive health, bone density, and aging processes.

Traditionally, sea cucumbers have been used to cure rheumatism, kidney problems, reproductive disorders, impotence, asthma, joint pain, back pain, hypertension, cuts and burns, wound injuries, and constipation. This broad therapeutic range reflects the general tonic character attributed to sea cucumber in traditional systems — not a targeted treatment for a single condition, but a restorative substance believed to support systemic vitality.

In the Qin dynasty, sea cucumbers were considered a good remedy equal to ginseng for "yin deficiency of kidney, ischemia, dysentery, and ulcers." The equivalence to ginseng was not incidental — ginseng commanded extraordinary prices in Chinese markets, and the identification of sea cucumber as its marine equivalent immediately positioned sea cucumber as a high-value commodity capable of sustaining long-distance trade.

The Trade Route That Built an Industry: Makassar and the China Connection

The gap between Chinese demand and Chinese supply is the origin of Indonesia's role in the global sea cucumber trade. China's own coastal waters could not supply the volume or species diversity that growing demand required. The solution came from 4,000 kilometers away — from the shallow coral reef systems of the Indonesian archipelago, and from the maritime communities of South Sulawesi who knew those waters intimately.

For at least 300 years, trepang has been a highly priced commodity in the Chinese market. Originally, its fishing and trade was a specialized business centered on the town of Makassar in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The rise of trepang fishing in the 17th century added valuable export merchandise to the rich shallow seas surrounding the islands of Southeast Asia, enabling local communities to become part of large trading networks and greatly supporting their economic development.

Historically, trepang trade was a specialized business, almost completely in the hands of Makassarese, Bugis, and Bajau maritime communities. These groups — whose seafaring knowledge and networks extended across the entire Indonesian archipelago and beyond — built the infrastructure of the trepang trade before modern export systems existed. They established the drying and processing methods, the seasonal harvesting rhythms, and the commercial relationships with Chinese trading intermediaries that made Indonesian sea cucumber the dominant supply source for Chinese markets.

The geographic reach of this trade was extraordinary. Makassan fleets sailed south as well as north — reaching the northern coastline of Australia in search of sea cucumber grounds, establishing what researchers have documented as one of the earliest sustained interactions between Southeast Asian maritime communities and Australian Aboriginal peoples. The traditional way of processing sea cucumber — dried body wall or beche-de-mer — has been passed along for more than 1,000 years. The advantages of this preparation are its simplicity, low cost, stability — it keeps more than 10 years in storage — and ease of transportation. It was precisely this combination of properties that made long-distance trade viable: a perishable marine animal transformed by low-tech processing into a stable commodity capable of surviving months-long ocean voyages.

From Imperial Courts to Modern Markets: The Continuity of Demand

Due to its powerful symbolism and medicinal properties, sea cucumber is the subject of many Chinese legends and tales that have been passed down from generation to generation. Holothurians, especially Apostichopus japonicus, have been part of the diet of the Chinese people for centuries; they are also woven into the fabric of Chinese culture as one of the most important foods.

This cultural embeddedness — centuries deep, reinforced by medical texts, legends, and elite consumption patterns — is what distinguishes sea cucumber demand in Chinese markets from the demand for most other seafood commodities. It is not simply a preference for a particular food. It is the continuation of a cultural practice that connects the modern consumer to dynastic China, to the symbolism of health and longevity, and to the social ritual of serving luxury food.

The desire for tonics by the Chinese promoted the export of sea cucumbers during the next 300 years — and that desire continues to drive the premium market today. The specific therapeutic claims of traditional Chinese medicine — even where they have not been validated through modern clinical trials — continue to shape purchasing behavior, product positioning, and price formation in Chinese markets in ways that have no parallel in Western seafood consumption.

What Traditional Medicine History Means for Modern Supply Chains

The history of sea cucumber in traditional Chinese medicine has three direct implications for the modern trade that are often underappreciated by participants entering the market from outside the Chinese consumer cultural context.

The first is the premium for species associated with tonic status. Not all sea cucumbers are equal in the traditional medicine framework. Species that were historically consumed by emperors and literati — particularly Apostichopus japonicus in the temperate north, and Holothuria scabra and Holothuria fuscogilva in the tropical Indo-Pacific — carry cultural premium that market prices continue to reflect. This is why the price spread between species is so extreme, and why aquaculture production of Apostichopus japonicus at industrial scale has not suppressed its price.

The second is the stability of luxury positioning. Products that occupy a ceremonial and gift-giving function in Chinese culture — and sea cucumber is firmly in this category — maintain premium pricing through economic cycles in ways that commodity seafood does not. The demand signal that drove Makassan fleets across the Timor Sea in the 17th century is the same demand signal operating in the wholesale markets of Hong Kong and Shanghai today.

The third is the weight of historical authenticity. Indonesian sea cucumber — sourced from the same archipelagic waters, processed by the same communities, traded along the same routes that supplied the Ming Dynasty court — carries a provenance that no other source geography can replicate. This is not merely a marketing narrative. It is documented historical fact, recorded in academic research from PLOS ONE, the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, and the Korean Journal of Medical History.

Understanding this history is not separate from understanding the trade. It is the trade.

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Sepanjang — Indonesia's Specialty Ocean Products Co. Sourcing high-quality sea cucumber directly from Indonesian waters for over 20 years.