bitter Chinese herbal medicine. Figure/Network

In the distribution of taste buds,

spicy and sweet are at the tip of the tongue,

acid is at both ends of the middle of the tongue,

and bitter is at the root of the tongue.

Just like the once popular "XX on the tip of the tongue",

People like to taste the sweetness,

They despise the bitter taste bud,

even though it is the largest member of the taste bud.

But if you can't taste the bitter taste,

At the beginning of the origin, human beings may be poisoned by the grass cut from the intestines like Shennong.

It is a problem to eat bitterness,

It is even more a problem to eat bitterness.

In "bittersweet", "bitterness" is equally important.

It's a popular saying that people in Hunan are bitter, overbearing and bored. However, if "eating bitterness" is returned to the taste itself, how hard can Hunan people suffer and what kind of bitterness can they eat.

Some people like to eat sour food, while others are addicted to sugar. The same is broccoli, some people hate its bitterness, and some people eat it with relish. Scientists tell us that taste differences are very common among people all over the world.

According to statistics, about a quarter of people are not aware of the unique bitter taste of broccoli or spore cabbage when they eat it, while another part of the population is very sensitive to bitterness.

spore cabbage. Figure/Network

Whether you can endure hardship or not is related to the difference in taste. Its root lies in the screening of genes by the environment.

In the tradition of the homology of food and medicine, people in Hunan have their pains to eat.

The question of whether people in Hunan can bear hardships, we might as well first consider what they will eat if they can.

several herbs are often added to the soup. Figure/Network

Hunan Bitter Tales

In the saying that "spring is sour, summer is bitter, autumn is pungent, and winter is salty". Natsuna's suffering, the first bitter gourd.

Momordica charantia originated in eastern India and was introduced to China in the early Ming Dynasty. According to Fei Xin's book Xing Cha Sheng Lan in the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He brought back many rare species that most Chinese people had never heard of at that time. "There is a first-class melon, which is as big as a litchi," that is, bitter gourd that we eat every day today.

Momordica charantia L. is also called Vitis, Litchi, Melon, Red Sheep, etc. There are more than 41 varieties. The fruit surface has strange wrinkles, and the fruit contains momordicin, which has a special bitter taste.

Hunan bitter gourd is famous for its blue mountain and white bitter gourd, which was bred by crossing local eel bitter gourd with carp bitter gourd as female parent, and then selecting the best one. This is the "King of Bitter Melon" with the longest melon strips, the whitest appearance, the highest yield and the best quality in China. Generally, each melon weighs 1.5 kg, and the largest weighs 4 kg, which is exported to all parts of the country.

balsam pear in Lanshan County, Hunan Province. Figure/Network

For ordinary people, bitter gourd is planted in front of and behind the house, and there is no need for multiple kinds, just three or four plants. Among the different ways of eating, such as stir-frying and cold salad, bitter gourd stuffed with meat is the most meaningful.

Besides bitter gourd, what do we know about bitter taste?

The meat stuffed with bitter gourd is salty, fresh and crisp. Figure/Network

Bitter vegetables: "Peony Tofu" sounds gorgeous and tastes bitter

This is a short tree that grows on the edge of a creek, the scientific name of which is Tofu Chai, and the locals call it Tofu Leaf. The "Peony Tofu" made of tofu leaves is shaped by adding alkali and bittern after the leaf juice is filtered and leaked. "Peony Tofu" has a gorgeous name, but it tastes full of earthy flavor and bitter taste.

In fact, this kind of tofu made of leaves was popular in western Hunan. For example, in some villages in Shanye Town, Longshan, the difference is that it is called Turtledove Tofu locally. According to Hu Rongchun, the stationmaster of Liye Town Cultural Station, the turtledove tofu that his son often eats is made of a kind of leaves called turtledove tofu leaves. "It's very simple, just mash the juice and add some plant ash."

These green leaves are the raw materials for villagers to make "Lotus Tofu" by hand. Figure/Lu Qixing

In addition to bitter gourd and tofu leaves, there are more common bitter bamboo shoots, kale, dandelion, etc. all of them are bitter vegetables.

bitter bamboo shoots. Figure/Network

Bitter fruit: a mouthful of lotus heart tea, full of bitter taste

Silky chestnut, which is a kind of tree widely growing in eastern, southern and western Hunan, bears bitter taste and is also called bitter chestnut. In many places, including Zhuzhou and Chenzhou, people will go to the mountains to collect bitter chestnuts in times of food shortage, and then make them into tofu or dry them as meals.

bitter chestnut. Figure/Network

In addition to bitter chestnut, lotus seeds are widely distributed in Hunan. Mature lotus plumule contains a lot of organic alkali, and the lotus plumule without core has bitter taste.

In Huashi Town, 11,111 mu of lotus flowers in Xianglian are in full bloom, a large number of egrets soar in the sky, and the eighteen Luohan Mountains in Danxia landform echo each other from afar, forming a beautiful picture. Figure/Lu Qixing

Among the lotus seeds in Hunan, Xiangtan County is the most famous. The lotus seeds produced in Baishipu, Huashi and Jinshi in this county are called "three lotus seeds in one inch", and the three lotus seeds are arranged together, which is exactly one inch, hence the name.

The famous handmade white lotus in Huashi Town, also known as Cunsanlian, is the best of the lotus. The picture shows the ground white lotus. Figure/Lu Qixing

"Cunsanlian" was cooked, and the first-class white rock sugar was added to make "rock sugar lotus seed soup", which was milky, sweet and delicious, and became a famous dish for banquets in central Hunan.

"rock sugar lotus seed soup" is flat and sweet in nature, and has the effects of lowering blood pressure, strengthening spleen and stomach, nourishing brain and tranquilizing mind, nourishing essence and qi, moistening lung and clearing heart-fire, clearing away heat and inducing diuresis, and complements big fish and big meat, adding to the fun of the banquet. Lotus plumule can be made into lotus plumule tea. In addition to the general bitterness of tea drinks, lotus plumule tea has a unique bitterness, which is directed at people's hearts through the root of the tongue.

rock sugar tremella lotus seed soup. Figure/Network

Lily in Longshan County also has a bitter taste. According to the introduction of the Lily Industry Office of Longshan County, there are 85,111 mu of lilies planted in several towns with Shipai Town as the center. Its variety is Lilium lancifolium.

The planting area of this lily in China is about 1.5 million mu. Lily is a perennial herb, which usually eats fleshy scales at its roots.

A wild lily on the mountain in Liye. Figure/Lu Qixing

The characteristic of Lilium lancifolium is that it must be dug within one year, otherwise it will rot. Every year in mid-July, Longshan Lily enters the peak season of harvest and sales. By August and September, 211 tons of fresh lily are transported out from here every day. Some of them were sold to Changsha.

Lily tastes bitter because it contains many alkaloids. This bitter ingredient is either stir-fried, cold-mixed, or stewed, and becomes a summer dish.

The bigger the fresh lily, the better. The largest one is seven or two. The fresh lily is mainly sold in Shanghai, Guangdong and other places. Figure/Lu Qixing

Bitter grain: King Gewang has hundreds of Jin, and the largest one has hundreds of Jin

Compared with bitter gourd and lotus seeds, bitter buckwheat provides grain, even life-saving rations. Buckwheat can be harvested in 81 days, and can be planted twice a year. Buckwheat blooms at midnight, so it is also called "midnight flower". It belongs to a dicotyledonous plant of Polygonaceae, commonly known as Buckwheat, and its scientific name is Buckwheat Tatar. Tartary buckwheat likes to be cool and barren, and it grows mostly in alpine mountainous areas, and its seeds are edible.

tartary buckwheat. Figure/network

Like it, there is kudzu root. Digging pueraria lobata was once a rural landscape in Jishou, western Hunan. Every year at the end of summer, during the slack season, people take hoes and firewood knives to the deep forests. Many times, they have to climb the cliffs, hook the trees on the edge of the cliffs with hoes, climb halfway up the mountain, and start looking for kudzu vine on the steep hillside.

Digging kudzu is for Ge Fen. There is a kind of sweet potato, which is thick and short, thick in the middle, and the tiny roots are rich in starch and bitter in taste. It is called Pueraria lobata. Fresh pueraria lobata should be washed clean after digging home. Pueraria lobata with high powder content should be beaten flat on a stone and broken repeatedly until the pueraria lobata pulp oozes, washed in water, and the juice should be screened into a jar by sieving. After the starch is precipitated and made into kudzu cake, part of the water is air-dried, then wrapped with gauze or paper, hung and air-dried, and finally dried in the sun, which is the best Ge Fen.

kudzuvine root powder. Figure/Network

Bitter drinking: Bitter drinking is to wait for the husband's return

Bitterness not only appears in our vegetables, fruits and grains, but also in our drinks. Although the daily tea is mostly bitter, in Jianghua, there are still teas that have deliberately played the banner of bitter tea. Jianghua bitter tea is a typical bitter tea. The content of polyphenols in fresh leaves of summer tea is as high as 41%, so it is more bitter than ordinary tea.

Besides tea, bitter drinks include bitter gourd wine. In western Hunan, northern Hunan and other places, this is a very special wine. It pays attention to "the melon is in the bottle and the bottle is on the shelf", and the bottle is fixed on the bitter gourd shelf, so that the bitter gourd can grow up in the bottle. After the bitter gourd grows into a turquoise peel in the bottle, the bottle is filled with high-alcohol liquor and soaked for nearly two months. When the bitter gourd strips in the bottle become yellow and soaked, the wine can be drunk when it is turbid, and it will taste bitter and refreshing.

bitter gourd. Figure/Network

There is also a bitter wine in the southwest of Hunan. Every year, local people mix steamed glutinous rice with folk secret liquor koji, ferment for several days, and then add mountain spring water to make wine with an alcohol content of more than 11 degrees, which tastes bitter and sweet. Another source of the saying "bitter wine" is that there was once a couple in the local area, a famous bitter mother, who steamed an altar of water wine every year in order to wait for her husband to come back. But I didn't wait for my husband to return until I died. Later, people found dozens of jars of wine brewed by Bitter Mother for her husband, which was called Bitter Wine.

bitter wine. Figure/Network

The newly brewed bitter wine is milky white in color, sticky and silky, sweet and slightly bitter. The top grade is the bitter wine brewed on the ninth day of September, called chong yang wine, which can be put into Chinese New Year, so it is also called old wine. At that time, the color was bright, and it was silky when poured out, with sufficient strength and strong bitterness. This kind of wine has a low alcohol content and is suitable for drinking in large quantities. Drinking it in summer can quench thirst and drinking it in winter can dispel cold. It is an excellent drink for Dong people to entertain guests. There is a saying that "if you don't drink bitter wine in Dong township, you don't go to Dong family". However, it should be noted that bitter wine has great stamina, and once it is overdone, it is difficult to wake up, even for several days.

Bitter medicine: "Good medicine tastes bitter"

The most intuitive taste of bitterness is "good medicine tastes bitter". Today, we still have the custom of taking medicine as food. In Hunan, such as Anren's herbal stewed pig's feet, Liling's roadside Jing fried chicken and so on. Under the traditional concept of homology of medicine and food, Hunan people have a large number of medicinal ingredients.

stewed pig's feet with anren herbs. Figure/Jinlin

According to statistics, there are more than 4,511 species of medicinal resources in Lingnan area, accounting for 36% of the national medicinal resources, including about 4,111 species of plants. The tall mountains in eastern Hunan and western Hunan can be called the east and west walls of Hunan, which are both at the latitude suitable for the growth of herbal medicines, forming a huge drug storehouse.

For example, Atractylodes macrocephala has been produced in Pingjiang at the foot of Luoxiao Mountain for 411 years. There are more than 2,111 plant species in the whole mountain range, including more than 1,811 kinds of Chinese herbal medicines. Comparatively speaking, the mountainous area of western Hunan is wider, and the herbal medicine resources are even worse.

Pingjiang River under Luoxiao Mountain Range. Figure/Network

As early as the 1961s, the results of the first general survey of traditional Chinese medicine resources showed that there were 1,624 kinds of wild medicinal materials in the province, with a reserve of 5,111 tons. According to the statistics of relevant departments, Hunan has always been the second largest province of Chinese medicinal materials in China. Among them, the herbal records of past dynasties:

"Eucommia ulmoides Oliv. is rich in lakes, while Hunan is good", "Polyporus umbellatus and Ampelopsis Ampelopsis Grown in Hengshan Valley", "Ligustrum lucidum Grown in Wuling Valley" and "Atractylodes macrocephala is thin and yellow from Mufu Mountain".

atractylodes macrocephala. Figure/Network

By the middle of Qing Dynasty, Xiangtan had become a national medicinal materials trading center. There are over 11 local medicinal materials shops with official stamps, and "drug dealers in all provinces have to concentrate on Xiangtan and take what they need". At one time, there was a saying that "drugs can't reach Xiangtan, and drugs can't reach Xiangtan." Xiangtan's pharmaceutical status has been firmly established. By 1849, the purchase and sale of medicinal materials could reach 8 million yuan a year, and the pharmaceutical industry became an important economic pillar of Xiangtan.

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Breathing with natural time series

Text Zou Boke

Photography Lu Qixing

Editor Tang Bingbing Yeung Yi Yang Yuan (intern)