Pien Tze Huang: A 1555 Court Formula Under State-Secret Protection Since 1992

Disclaimer: This page is for historical and cultural education only and is not medical advice. References to traditional use describe what is traditionally believed, not a claim that this product treats, cures, or prevents any disease. These statements have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or any other regulator. Consult a qualified physician with any health questions.

Pien Tze Huang (片仔癀), made by Zhangzhou Pien Tze Huang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd in Zhangzhou, Fujian, traces its formula to 1555 and an origin story involving an imperial court physician. It is one of the clearest documented cases of formal state-secret formula protection among the houses covered on this site: the formula was placed under China's state-secret formula protection in 1992, and the house received national-level intangible cultural heritage recognition in 2011 (third batch).

Pien Tze Huang's formula and manufacturing process are protected as a state secret — one of the eight great secret formulas (八大保密配方), as they are popularly known in China. A protected formula being kept confidential is a matter of tradition, not a claim about efficacy — see the disclaimer above.

What's publicly known about the formula

Public descriptions of Pien Tze Huang's composition name musk (麝香), bezoar/calculus bovis (牛黄), snake bile (蛇胆), and notoginseng/sanqi (三七) as components. Its traditional positioning centers on temporary swelling and pain — described here as a traditional use, not a clinical claim; see the disclaimer above.

Overseas presence: export and distributors, not an official web storefront

This site's research did not find an official-level, consumer-facing English website for Pien Tze Huang comparable to what Tong Ren Tang operates (see the Tong Ren Tang page). A company information page exists in English, but it reads as a corporate profile rather than a consumer or e-commerce site.

Overseas reach instead runs mainly through export and regional distributors/retail agents:

• Products are available through third-party retailers in Singapore (including Eu Yan Sang and Yue Hwa, and listings on marketplaces such as Lazada), as well as in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and in Canada.
• Around 2025, a Pien Tze Huang-branded traditional pharmacy opened in Macau.
• The company has publicly encouraged overseas distributors to open dedicated Pien Tze Huang retail counters, and has described exploring partnerships in Cambodia, Vietnam, the United States, Singapore, and Malaysia.

As with every brand on this site, a third-party retailer carrying a product, or a company's own statement about exploring new markets, is not treated here as proof of the current scale of overseas sales.

English-language media and naming

English coverage of Pien Tze Huang found in this research consists mainly of Chinese official or semi-official wire content (for example, Xinhua Silk Road distributed via PRNewswire) and academic pharmacology papers (indexed on platforms such as PMC, Springer, and ScienceDirect) rather than independent consumer or mainstream media — plus one feature article in NewsChina Magazine. No coverage from outlets such as the New York Times, BBC, or Reuters turned up in this round of research.

The brand's English name appears in several forms: "Pien Tze Huang" (the most common official, space-separated form), a lowercase "Pien tze huang" variant (seen in reference-site article titles), "Pientzehuang" (run together, seen in some academic citations), and the abbreviation "PZH." Older Wade-Giles-style forms are theoretically possible for a name this old but were not found in actual use during this research.