Season 1, Episode 3, Inspiration for Transformation.

Excerpts from the commentary for reference.

In the rules of eating, flavor is more important than anything else. The Chinese have never tied themselves to a boring food list. With their understanding of food, people are constantly trying to find inspiration for transformation.

As soon as the sky cleared, Yao Guiwen moved the bamboo plaque to the rooftop. These tofu balls are the fruit of several days of work by him and his wife. Some of the tofu has turned slightly yellow, but this level of change is far from enough. Yao Guiwen will have to wait patiently for a few more days. The dry, hard and dark brown skin is a sign of maturity. This change comes from natural fermentation.

Wang Cuihua tightly wraps the shapeless tender tofu and squeezes out the water before the tofu takes shape. If she doesn't hurry up, the fresh tofu will go rancid quickly, which means she has to wrap it quickly and has no time to rest.

A well-burned charcoal fire is the key to Yao Guiwen’s afternoon work.

The ancient city of Jianshui, located in the Honghe area of ??Yunnan, was called Lin'an in ancient times. In 1200, it was an important town in southwest China. Now, time has faded the dazzling glory. Like many small towns in Yunnan, Jianshui is a multi-ethnic settlement, and the mixture of various cultures creates a unique atmosphere and pattern.

The heat of the charcoal fire causes the hard tofu to expand rapidly, which is easily reminiscent of fermented dough. Jianshui people enjoy the special flavor created by air-drying and fermentation. The seasonings for dipping tofu vary, but for Yao Guiwen, the texture of the tofu itself is the most important.

The warmth of the river valley area makes it easy for tofu to ferment, while the moderate dryness prevents them from going rancid. Yao Guiwen is more sensitive than anyone else to the subtle relationship between wind, water, sunshine and tofu.

This is the most famous big well in Jianshui. Beside the well, the women built a tofu assembly line with just the cooperation of their fingers.

Every aspect of making tofu is inseparable from water. Jianshui people, who own 128 wells, know water very well. The Chinese believe that water can nourish people’s spirituality and consciousness. This is like how water shapes tofu. There is an indescribable connection between the two.

In Shiping, an ancient city less than 40 kilometers away from Jianshui, the tofu here has a very different temperament. The formed tofu is surprisingly large in size. The rare thing is that they are extremely tough and almost unbreakable. A little salt can keep them fresh to the greatest extent.

China's Yunnan has never been a major soybean producing area, but this does not prevent it from having a long history of tofu. Eat a tofu, throw a corn, and use this method to count. The buyer and seller have a tacit understanding.

In the past 30 years, Yao Guiwen’s tofu stall has rarely been deserted. It takes 30 minutes to walk home from the tofu stall, almost across the old city. The rapid development has changed many things in Jianshui. Over a long period of time, some variables disappear, some variables are modified, and new variables are added. There are always some that can stand the test of time and remain.

The lives of Yao Guiwen and Wang Cuihua surrounding Tofu are light and hard. The husband’s biggest wish is to go fishing in a distant lake, although he has never fished before. In the eyes of this couple, every piece of tofu is precious. They can help them provide for their children and live a happy and stable life.

In more than 1,000 years, with the immigration of northern ethnic groups several times, the Central Plains food culture represented by tofu has been deeply rooted in this fertile land in the southwest border, and has developed its own unique temperament. These consistent production details are reminiscent of the hinterland of the Central Plains thousands of kilometers away. There, China's tofu has gone through 2,000 years from its birth to its prosperity.

Hu Xuebing is rushing to the county town. He wants to sell today's tofu at the morning market.

Shou County is an ancient small county in northern Anhui Province. People here have an extraordinary affection for tofu. They firmly believe that their ancestors are the great inventors of tofu. In mid-October, the soybeans in northern Anhui have been harvested and returned to warehouses, and tofu made from new soybeans has always been the most popular. In China's thousands of years of farming history, soybeans have always occupied an important position. Among the known leguminous foods, soybeans are the richest and cheapest food source of protein, but their early situation was embarrassing. Cooked soybeans cannot arouse people's appetite and cause a lot of gastrointestinal bloating. There is an urgent need to find the best way to eat soybeans.

The white powder in the scale is gypsum, which is the key to turning soy milk into tofu. Hu Xuebing's skillful use of plaster is exactly the same as that of his ancestors. In the boiled soy milk, the denatured protein and gypsum quickly gel when they meet. This change is so huge that it can be noticed in an instant.

In distant times, gypsum often appeared in the secret books of Chinese magicians, and its origins with tofu are said to be precisely related to this. Many people believe that more than 2,000 years ago, it was Liu An, the king of Huainan who was keen on alchemy, who happened to add gypsum when cultivating elixir seedlings with soy milk in Bagong Mountain, thus inadvertently leading to the birth of tofu. Regardless of whether the facts are really that dramatic, the Chinese must have gone through a long process of exploration before tofu finally became a great Chinese food. In any case, the birth of tofu completely changed the fate of soybeans.

The infinitely tolerant personality of tofu creates a huge space for imagination for Chinese people who are good at cooking. Those unfavorable factors that originally embarrassed soybeans - trypsin inhibitors, unabsorbable sugars and phytic acid - have all been eliminated consciously or unconsciously through the ancient transformation methods of the Chinese. The emergence of tofu has brought the body's absorption and utilization of soy protein to a peak. Chinese chefs often surprise people with their understanding of tofu. It may be said that the Chinese use tofu to express their softness and adaptability. All these make a soybean sublime. These milky white slurries are evocative.