Well, I have finished my exhaustive study into the uses my friends and neighbours put dried figs to and can report.
I’m reliably informed that the vast majority are simply rehydrated and eaten as a table fruit. However some are made into a sort of tisane or fruit ‘tea’. However the suggestion I got most, apart from just eating the thing was to make a 煲汤 (bāo tāng).
煲汤 (bāo tāng) is the Mandarin verb ‘to simmer’ but is also used as a noun to describe a type of restorative soup given to invalids or hypochondriacs. As the name suggests it is a long simmered soup, usually rather simple, consisting of a bone stock (pork or chicken) with a few added ingredients matched to the ailment in traditional Chinese medicine. Most of these symptoms are stunningly vague, so pretty much anything goes, including dried figs.
I have no intention of simmering bones for hours and throwing in some figs, just for your amusement, so here’s a picture of a totally different 煲汤 (bāo tāng). This one is a pork bone stock (the bones have been simmered so long they are crumbling away). In the stock is 海带 (hǎi dài) - Kelp – the seaweed. No doubt as a cure for drowning. There was also some ginger and a few yellow soy beans.
No one was willing to give an opinion on what the figs might be good for.