Yes, you know Jinhua, Xuanwei or Rugao, but who is the fourth largest ham town in China?

Second Brother, whose value has doubled recently, is combined with salt and air-drying to form one of the most delicious local delicacies of Chinese people - ham.

You know the ham from Jinhua, Zhejiang, the ham from Xuanwei, Qujing, Yunnan, and maybe you also know the ham from Rugao, Nantong, Jiangsu, which is called the north leg (Jinhua ham is called the south leg), but China has not yet recognized the fourth largest ham.

Home of ham.

Why did these places become the hometown of ham? In the era before refrigerators, in China's rural areas, especially in the mountains and deep valleys in ethnic minority areas, the production of ham was inevitable as a way to store meat, protein, fat and salt needed by the human body.

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It not only stores the salt necessary for the human body, but also stores the meat for as long as possible through the sterilization effect of the salt.

The perfect combination of the two is ham.

From north to south of China, especially ethnic minorities and Hakkas in the south, as well as Anhui cuisine south of the Yangtze River, there is no shortage of hams and bacon and sausages that use salted and smoked food as a method. But why are hams from Jinhua and Xuanwei produced?

Got a name?

In addition to the Zhejiang Jinhua ham known as the south leg, the Jiangsu Rugao ham known as the north leg; and the three major hams in Yunnan: Xuanwei ham, Dali Dengnuo Town ham, and Lijiang Heqing ham; hams from all over the country are ranked high in China

There are also: Bijie Weining ham from Guizhou, Liupanshui Panxian ham (corresponding to Xuanwei ham on the south side of Wumeng Mountain, Weining ham on the Guizhou side on the north side of the mountain, and Panxian ham on the south side of the mountain, all three are

It can be called Wumengshan ham); Mianning ham from Daliang Prefecture, Sichuan; Xuanen ham from Xuanen County, Enshi Prefecture, Hubei Tujia Nationality; as well as Anfu ham from Jiangxi and Wanhua (Wannan Huazhu) ham from Xiuning, Wannan, Anhui

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As long as they are somewhat famous, there are already more than ten of them.

If there were a ranking list of China's top ten hams, it would be more than enough.

The ingredients of ham are salt, meat (mainly Second Senior Brother) and a little seasoning.

External forces are local climate conditions and geographical conditions.

The heaven and earth pigs are combined, the pigs are combined with salt, and every place is promoting how famous and delicious its ham is from the above aspects.

For example, Jinhua Ham claims that the pork it chooses is all black pig (both the head and feet are black, so it should be a black pig), and Wannan Hua Ham is naturally Wannan Pig.

This is a compliment to the pig.

In the southwest, Xuanwei and Dali boast that their climate and geographical conditions are good, and the air is suitable, which is conducive to the drying and curing of ham.

Although the hams from the southwest are all cured with Sichuan salt (well salt), and the hams from the southeast in Jinhua and Rugao (Huai salt) are all cured with sea salt, there are almost no hams from any place that boast that their household salt is rich in minerals and rich in minerals.

Contains the necessary content required by the human body, etc.

It seems that the little difference in molecular structure of salt makes it difficult to make a fuss about marketing.

Then, we can only praise the pig internally, and externally praise the local area for its good air, good sunshine, good wind direction, suitable climate, and unique natural geography.

If it doesn’t rain, it will be dry and chewy in the mouth. If it rains, it will be fermented and beneficial to the growth of probiotics.

The geographical mystery of the origin of Chinese ham. However, after carefully sorting out the above-mentioned famous ham hometowns in China, we found that the fame of local ham may be more related to the context of China's salt transportation route.

Let’s talk about the most famous Jinhua ham first. Jinhua is located in central Zhejiang. It is adjacent to the Fuchun River, the main trunk of Zhejiang, to the west. Many tributaries of the Zhejiang River originating from the coastal areas of eastern Zhejiang such as the Wuyi River and other tributaries flow westward and meet in Jinhua. Jinhua has been the center of Zhejiang since ancient times.

crossroads.

The name of Jinhua comes from the astronomical phenomenon of "the intersection of Venus and Wu Nu".

Whether it is the Jinhua area in history or Yiwu, the small commodity capital of the world today, Jinhua is a hub in central Zhejiang, connecting the southeastern coast and western Zhejiang as well as inland areas such as Jiangxi, Hunan, and southern Anhui.

The sea salt from the Zhoushan salt field can be collected in Jinhua via ancient river valleys such as the Wuyi River, and then transported along the Zhejiang River tributaries such as the Xin'an River to the mountains of southwestern Zhejiang and the hinterland of southern Anhui and Jiangxi further inland.

It can be said that Anfu in central Jiangxi is also located on the north stream of the Ganjiang River and at the crossroads of the ancient east-west road between Ganjiang and Hunan.

In the same way, Rugao in Nantong, Jiangsu Province is also close to the famous East China Sea Huaiyan Salt Fields such as Lv Sichang on the nearby coast.

Further north in Rugao is the base camp of Huaiyan, the starting point of Huaiyan since ancient times.

This is how Yancheng, Jiangsu Province got its name.

Follow the WeChat public account Our River (IP: womendehe) and leave a message in the background: Salt and cities. We will push you to the article Our River previously published about cities in China named after salt.

The southwest is the origin of various hams, and it is the center of the ancient salt road in the four provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Tibet.

Southwest China's table salt relies on millennium well salt from Zigong on the southeastern edge of the Sichuan Basin.

Taking this as the starting point and center of the circle, the four provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Tibet, as well as southwestern Hubei and western Hunan, rely on caravans to transport salt along the ancient road.

From north to south, Xuan'en in western Hubei is located at the junction of the four provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing (Sichuan) and Guizhou. It is at the intersection of the ancient tributaries of the Qingjiang River and the tributaries of the Wujiang River. It has been a gathering place for ethnic minorities such as the Tujia and Miao people since ancient times.

place.