Traditional Chinese medicine has a long history of intranasal administration. Compared with the other administration routes, intranasal administration has the benefits of fast absorption, high bioavailability, high brain-targeting and non-invasive. In the past few years we take "Xingnaojing" and "Tongqiao Sanyu formula" as model drug and studied pharmacokinetics of effective components of different polarities. MDCK/MDCK-MDR1 cells were used to simulate blood brain barrier to study the permeate behaviors of different drug and the mechanism of enhancing effects of aromatic medicine. Then a microemulsion (modified by mPEG2000-PLA) was prepared for intranasal administration, and the pharmacokinetics and investigated tissue distribution were studied by fluorescence imaging. The irritation of the drug and different preparations were studied on human nasal epithelial cell (HNEC) cell and living animals. In this paper, we reviewed the achievements and hope that it can provide constructive suggestions for the future research.