Tengchong is an ideal place for travelers to have fun. 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 eating style here is completely beyond my expectation. All the way from Kunming, Jianshui and mangshi, the taste buds have always remained at a pleasant high point. On the first day I arrived in Tengchong, my tongue felt the rough style of this small border town: roasted meat (in the water), copper ladle and earthen pot, without the fine seasoning in southeastern Yunnan and the rich colors of the Dai people. Tengchong's diet took the heroic route of opening up and closing in, which was a bit "out of place" in the secluded western Yunnan.
At first, I was inevitably depressed, 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 flour is an unsurprising breakfast choice in Tengchong. You don't need to look for it, but you can find it everywhere in the streets.
When I first ate thin bean powder, I felt a little kind. It reminded me of Beijing's noodle tea. Although it's just a bowl of simple paste, you will know the color of the ingredients at the first bite. Noodle tea is ground with millet, and the main ingredient of thin bean powder is peas. After grinding into powder, it is fried first and then boiled. When eating, more than a dozen different seasonings can be added, 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 eat the fragrance of beans. Tengchong people also like to add bait shreds and soak bait pieces into thin bean flour-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 is worthy of universal choice.
a few months after I came back from Yunnan, I went to Shandong, and accidentally ate the local breakfast "Tianmao" (a kind of salty porridge made of stick flour)-if noodle tea is a cousin of thin bean powder, Tianmao can probably be called a cousin. Two kinds of food separated by thousands of miles are so similar that I am sure that there must be some connection between them.
actually, 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 technology of making thin bean powder was exactly followed by the Han people from China.
similar food is not an isolated case. In addition to thin bean flour, there is also a kind of food called "brain" in Heshun ancient town of Tengchong. As a famous "hometown of overseas Chinese", Heshun's architecture, diet and some traditional handicrafts all show the imprint of the Central Plains. "Mind", like thin bean powder, is also a product of food culture born of "guarding the border".
it's Shanxi people who have made the * * * song this time. The "brain" of old Taiyuan is a nourishing soup made of mutton, yam, lotus root and yellow wine. I don't know if it is because the slightly bitter taste is not pleasing. Under the reinterpretation of immigrants, Shun Mind has become a sweet soup. Ciba fried crispy spread at the bottom of the bowl, with poached eggs in the middle layer, covered with shredded pork, tofu and omelet, 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 sweet.
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 Province is not bait silk and bait pieces.
The "bait" that Yunnan people say is different forms of rice food made of rice. It is here that the famous legend of "Great Rescue" was first invented by hu jia wan people in Tengchong.
The biggest difference between shredded bait and rice noodles lies in the taste difference caused by density. Rice noodles are made by grinding rice into rice pulp and then "squeezing" them 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 summed up: "Not very hungry, eat rice noodles; If you want to fill your stomach and resist hunger, eat bait or bait. " You can see how full this thing is.
In history, there have been several large-scale migrations to the south in the Central Plains, and people invented rice noodles according to local conditions because they missed their hometown noodles but could not eat wheat. As the most densely populated area of Han people in western Yunnan, Tengchong 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, must be jealous: isn't this the treatment I could enjoy before, and it was usurped by rice.
Knowing the origin of shredded bait and bait pieces, it is not surprising that it is so like fried noodles in the north when you see the "rescue" of frying miscellaneous vegetables. Eating solid and chewy bait like noodles will understand the good intentions of immigrants. The food style of a place is a vivid history written on the dining table.
Besides being linked with the culture of the Central Plains, Tengchong's diet gives people another intuitive impression that it is rough. 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 restaurant with a big sign. This roasted meat is not Cantonese roasted meat, but traditional Tengchong earth roasted meat. There are dozens of smoked pork heads, pig ears, fat intestines, pig hearts, pig bellies and other parts in the store, which is a bit like the "box shop" in Beijing that used to sell cooked food such as salted and marinated meat. Just choose a few samples, and the store will pour ready-made braised pork soup. The staple food is of course one of bait silk, bait pieces or rice noodles. This is a big bowl full of pigs in the water, and braised pork is too delicate compared with it.
If you can't get used to the local roasted meat with water as the main ingredient, there are also roasted meat rolls.
Roasted pork is fried pork, which is fat and thin, and it is a common local snack with seasoning and rolled powder. Because of the hot weather, many places in Yunnan like to eat cold rolled rice noodles and so on.
Compared with Jianshui's cold roll powder, Tengchong's pork roll powder has a lot of meat materials, including eight or nine kinds of shredded pork and skin, plus ingredients, which makes a big bowl full of excitement, but the taste is 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, which goes straight to wait for a while's, leaving no room for aftertaste.
the thick lines of Tengchong diet are closely related to the history of the ancient tea-horse road for more than 1 years. As the hub of the ancient tea-horse road, Tengchong has been ushered in and sent to caravan teams since ancient times. Before the construction of the Yunnan-Myanmar Highway in 1937, caravan was the most important mode of transportation in the deep mountains of Yunnan. A group of people walked for months, connecting the inaccessible Yunnan-Guizhou and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The biggest demand of horse drivers who sleep in the wind and sleep in the open air is that their food is easy to carry and store. Therefore, smoked roasted meat and air-dried meat have become the first choice to supplement protein. When eating, take it out, chop it into large pieces and stew it in a big pot. If you can buy fresh meat in the market, you will also change your taste. For the horse driver who consumes a lot of physical strength every day, eating enough is the last word, and there is no condition to be picky about taste.
To deeply experience this food culture of caravan, Tongpiao beef hotpot is the ultimate choice. Compared with this "horizontal dish", the roasted rice noodles just now became a small fight in an instant.
In the eyes of horse drivers, the fine ingredients of Chaoshan beef hotpot are far less realistic than the copper ladle beef eaten by the weight. The caravan porters who shuttled between Yunnan and Tibet took the copper ladle made by Bai craftsmen when they set out. When they arrived in Tibetan areas, simple Tibetans sent their own slaughtered cattle, and they could have a hearty red soup and big meat on the spot.
On the day when we decided to eat beef with copper ladle, we just climbed down from the volcano park, shivering with two legs, like two exhausted horse drivers, looking forward to being revived 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 spices when eating. The copper ladle has a good thermal conductivity. Under the blessing of charcoal fire, the original beef is very enjoyable, dipped in spices richer than Korean food, and then ordered a plate of mint to get greasy. A catty of beef and beef offal have been wiped out by us.
nowadays, people are paying more and more attention to delicacy when eating hot pot, but in fact, roughness is its true nature. Chongqing hot pot can not be separated from the dock culture, and instant-boiled mutton rose in the March of Mongolia, all of which were created by the working class in every way. This beef scoop in Tengchong is a complete return to the essence of hot pot, and people who eat it enjoy themselves.
Frankly speaking, Tengchong is not the best place to eat in Yunnan, but it has given me the most special experience in Yunnan. Besides feeling the taste of my hometown from other places, I can also see a river and lake.
Wen/Xixia