Why is Tengchong's diet special in Yunnan?

For travelers, Tengchong is an ideal place to play. The existence of Gaoligong Mountain makes this southwest town have both the rainforest style of Banna and the spring city climate of Kunming. The ancient Dali kingdom is like an oriental utopia.

But the rough way to eat here is completely out of my expectation. Along the way from Kunming, Jianshui and mangshi, the taste buds have always remained at a pleasant high point. On the first day in Tengchong, my tongue felt the rough customs of this small border town: barbecue (in the water), copper ladle and earthen pot, without the fine seasoning in southeast Yunnan and the rich color of Dai people. Tengchong's diet is an open and closed heroic route, which is a bit "out of place" in isolated western Yunnan.

At first, my heart was inevitably lost, but after staying for a week, I gradually understood the reasons behind this difference and realized that the uniqueness of this small town is not limited to its best hot springs in Yunnan. Tengchong's diet is written on two key words.

Thin bean powder is not surprising for breakfast in Tengchong. You don't need to look for it, you can see it everywhere.

It's the first time to eat thin bean flour, and I feel a little kind. This reminds me of the noodle tea in Beijing. Although it is just a bowl of simple paste, you can know the color of the ingredients at the first bite. Noodle tea is ground with millet, and the main component of thin bean powder is peas. After grinding into powder, fry first and then cook. When eating, you can add more than a dozen different seasonings, such as soy sauce vinegar, fermented milk, garlic juice and pepper oil.

I prefer simple seasoning, even a little salt and chopped green onion, so that I can enjoy the fragrance of beans. Tengchong people also like to add bait shreds and soak the bait pieces in thin bean powder-I can't eat these solid rice foods with my eyes open. The best combination is fried dough sticks, which can be soaked and dipped, and it is worthy of universal choice.

A few months after I came back from Yunnan, I went to Shandong and accidentally ate the local breakfast "Sweet Foam" (a kind of salty porridge made of stick flour)-if the noodle tea is the cousin of thin bean powder, Sweet Foam can probably be called a cousin. Two foods thousands of miles apart are so similar that I'm sure there must be some connection between them.

In fact, Tengchong is indeed a special area in Yunnan. If the whole province is divided by Yuanjiang, which flows from northwest to southeast, the northeast of Yuanjiang is inhabited by Han people, while the southwest of Yuanjiang is inhabited by ethnic minorities-except Tengchong. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang recovered the whole territory of Yunnan, and the large-scale military migration made Tengchong the farthest Han inhabited area from the Central Plains.

During the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, the production technology of thin bean powder was spread here with the Han people.

Similar food is not an isolated case. In addition to thin bean powder, Tengchong and Heshun ancient town also have a kind of food called "brain". As a famous hometown of overseas Chinese, Heshun's architecture, diet and some traditional handicrafts all show the imprint of the Central Plains. "Heart", like thin bean powder, is also a product of food culture born of "guarding the border".

This time, the people who made * * * songs are from Shanxi. The brain of old Taiyuan is a nourishing soup made of mutton, yam, lotus root and yellow wine. I don't know if it's because the bitter taste is unpleasant. Under the reinterpretation of immigrants, Shun's mind became a sweet soup. Zanba fried crisp is spread at the bottom of the bowl, with a layer of poached eggs in the middle, covered with shredded pork, tofu and egg rolls, and finally poured with rice wine mixed with brown sugar. For people who have left their homes, the taste they want to remember most is sweetness.

Although these blended foods have their own characteristics, they are still confined to Tengchong. To say that the most thoroughly influenced by Han culture, the farthest food in Yunnan is not bait silk and bait slices.

What Yunnan people call "bait" is different forms of rice food made of rice. It is here that ten thousand people in Tengchong created the famous legend of "Great Rescue".

The biggest difference between bait silk and rice noodles lies in the taste difference caused by density. Rice flour is made by grinding rice into rice slurry and then "squeezing" it with a machine. They are smooth in taste and high in water content, so they are not hungry, while the bait with the same volume is much more solid and chewy. Wang Zengqi concluded: "Not very hungry, eat rice noodles; If you want to fill your stomach and fight hunger, eat bait or bait. " You can see how full this thing is.

There have been several large-scale migrations to the south in the Central Plains in history. People missed their hometown noodles but could not eat wheat, so they invented rice noodles according to local conditions. Tengchong, as the most densely populated area of Han nationality in western Yunnan, is obviously not satisfied with this substitution, so people turn steamed rice into a lump, imagine rice Baba as dough, knead it, roll it into pieces, and then cut it into silk or strips. This scene, if seen by noodles, will be jealous: isn't this the treatment I used to enjoy, and I was usurped by rice?

Knowing the origin of shredded bait and bait pieces, it is not surprising to see that the "rescue" of fried miscellaneous vegetables is so like the "fried noodles" in the north. Eating solid and chewy bait such as noodles will understand the good intentions of immigrants. The food style of a place is a vivid history written on the dining table.

In addition to the cultural connection with the Central Plains, another intuitive impression of Tengchong diet is roughness. This roughness is not the fierceness or wildness of the surrounding ethnic minorities' diet, but the informality of eating meat and drinking.

Near our hotel, there is a barbecue shop with a big sign. This roasted meat is not Cantonese roasted meat, but traditional Tengchong earth roasted meat. There are dozens of smoked pig heads, pig ears, fat intestines, pig hearts, pig bellies and other parts in the store, which is a bit like the "box hotel" in Beijing that used to sell cooked food such as salted and braised pork. Just pick a few samples and the store will pour ready-made braised pork soup. The staple food is, of course, one of shredded bait, sliced bait or rice noodles. This is a pig in a big bowl of water. The braised pork is too delicate compared with it.

If you can't get used to burning meat with water-based soil, there are also meat rolls.

Roast pork is fried pork, which is fat and thin. It is a common local snack with seasoning and rolling powder. Because of the hot weather, many places in Yunnan like to eat cold rice noodles and the like.

Compared with Jianshui's cold roll powder, Tengchong's pork roll powder gave a lot of meat, including shredded pork, skin and ingredients. It was very exciting to hold a big bowl, but the taste was not as layered as expected. If the seasoning in southeastern Yunnan is embroidery, one stitch and one thread, one board and one eye; Then Tengchong's craftsmanship is like patching, and it goes straight to wait for a while, leaving no room for aftertaste.

The thick lines of Tengchong diet are inseparable from the history of the ancient tea-horse road for more than 1000 years. Tengchong, as the hub of the ancient tea-horse road, has been sent to caravans since ancient times. 1937 Before the construction of the Yunnan-Myanmar Highway, caravan was the most important mode of transportation in the deep mountains of Yunnan. A group of people walked for several months, connecting the inaccessible Yunnan-Guizhou and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The biggest demand of coachmen who sleep in the open air for food is easy to carry and store, so smoked barbecue and air-dried meat have become the first choice to supplement protein. Take it out when eating, chop it into big pieces and stew it in a big pot. If you can buy fresh meat in the market, you will also change your taste. For a coachman who consumes a lot of physical strength every day, eating is the last word, and there is no condition to be picky about taste.

In order to deeply experience the food culture of this caravan, Tongpiao beef hotpot is the ultimate choice. Compared with this "horizontal dish", the baked rice noodles just now instantly turned into a small fight.

In the eyes of the coachman, the essence of Chaoshan beef hot pot is far less than that of copper ladle beef eaten by weight. The caravan porters who shuttled between Yunnan and Tibet set out with copper spoons made by Bai craftsmen. When they arrive in Tibetan areas, simple Tibetans send their slaughtered cows, and they can have a hearty red soup and meat on the spot.

On the day when we decided to eat beef with copper ladle, we just climbed down from the volcano park, our legs trembling, like two exhausted horse drivers, looking forward to being resurrected with blood by this big meal.

The fact is really not disappointing. Beef and beef offal are stewed in advance and then put into the soup cooked with seasoning when eating. The copper ladle has good thermal conductivity. Under the blessing of charcoal fire, the original beef is very enjoyable, dipped in spices stronger than Korean food, and then ordered a plate of mint to get tired. A catty of beef and offal have been wiped out by us.

Nowadays, people pay more and more attention to delicacy when eating hot pot. In fact, roughness is its true color. Chongqing hot pot can not be separated from the dock culture, and instant-boiled mutton rose in March in Mongolia, which was created by the working class in all aspects. This beef spoon in Tengchong has completely returned to the essence of hot pot, and people who eat it enjoy it.

Frankly speaking, Tengchong is not the best place in Yunnan, but it has given me the most special experience in Yunnan. In addition to feeling the taste of hometown from other places, you can also see a river and lake.

Text/Xixia