Snake Oil

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Yes, this is what it looks like.  It's in the window of a shop near my home along with some other jars full of odious mysteries known only the the practitioners of the some of the blacker medical arts.  I have no idea what this stuff is touted to do when you drink it, but I bet it has something to do with enhanced manliness.  Hell, you'd have to be pretty manly to even want to try to drink some of that vile stuff.

I'm pretty sure that the liquid is baijiu which literally means "really shitty tasting white liquor that only Chinese men will drink".  So you add a snake, and some other things unfit for human consumption, and you have a form or "traditional" Chinese medicine.  Tradition in this case does not enjoy the same status as acupuncture or Tai Chi,  It is more of the tradition of Snake Oil salesmen and the belief that there is a sucker born every minute.