Consisting of the fresh or dried roots of Zingiber officinale, ginger has been cultivated for so long that its exact origin is unclear. Cultivated for millennia in both China and India, it reached the West at least two thousand years ago, recorded as a subject of a Roman tax in the second century after being imported via the Red Sea to Alexandria. In China, dried ginger (gan–jiang) is first mentioned in the earliest herbal, Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing. Fresh ginger, (sheng–jiang), was first listed in Ming Yi Bie Lu (Miscellaneous Records of Famous Physicians) and Ben Cao Jing Ji Zhu (Collection of Commentaries on the Classics of Materia Medica) both attributed to Tao Hong–jing, published during the dynasties of the North and South Kingdoms around the year 500 A.D. Fresh ginger and dried ginger are considered two distinct commodities. In fact, Tao Hong–jing felt that they were so different that they must come from two different plants!

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