Root of all evil?

Shanghaiist occasionally heads to the Bund for a night of entertainment. (No, not Bar Rouge. Preferably a burger and a couple of beers at Noah’s). To get there, we take the metro and get off at Henan Zhong Lu, walking the rest of the way to the Huangpu. And every single time as we ride the escalator from Exit 3 of the station up to the street, we can’t help but notice the city’s most bizarre billboard (pictured).

This, friends, is a distinctly R-rated piece of perennial herbaceous herb. At first we thought we were the only ones to notice something a bit ... revealing ... about the ginseng in this advertisement. But a little judicious Googling reveals that the offending root has caught the eye of several commentators: for instance, here and here (blocked in China).

Having seen the billboard, we’re just surprised that the list of medical benefits bestowed by the goodly herb doesn’t include, you know, this kind of thing. Actually, the Siberian variety does.

Anyway, the next time we walk into a traditional medicine store in China and see a bunch of drying herbs strung up about the place, we might think twice before telling the shopkeeper that his ginseng is particularly well hung.