This is a post written by guest blogger Janine C of Sunday Driver.
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I could hear my travel agent cock an eyebrow over the phone. "Your friend Chaxiubao sure has an erm, interesting itinerary here."
For one, the itinerary didn't start with the places he'd visit. It started with the food he planned to eat. This here, clearly, is a man with the right priorities.
And, it looked a lot less like an itinerary than a compendium of the most esoteric, furthest-out culinary oddities Yunnan had to offer.
"27th October 2006" it read, "FOOD : wild mushroom and matsutake hotpot, black ant caviar and raw pork, Naxi style". That was only Day One.
Days Two to Ten featured more hair-raisers - deep fried termites made an appearance, as did "whole roasted super suckling pig so young its eyes have not yet opened". Dinner on Day Eight was the ominous "Zhao Hu chicken soup". The author's note read : "extremely poisonous herbs used in the preparation of this soup – HIGHLY TOXIC - it is said that he who drinks this soup will be protected from influenza and colds for a whole year thereafter on the principle of using poison to combat poison". Chicken soup to take out your soul. This was intoxicating stuff. The Chaxiubao Grand Tour of Yunnan was about to take a headlong plunge into the raging rapids of Yunnan cuisine, and there was no way I'd miss this ride.
And so for ten days this autumn, Chaxiubao hunted down every strange and wonderful meal there was in the wild wild west that was culinary Yunnan.
"It will be tough" he warned. And it was – there were hours of winding mountain road, 4000 feet above sea level, single-lane gravel tracks shared with overflowing buses and shaggy wandering yaks. There were hairpin turns with rock face on one side and 200 feet drops on the other. There was no hot water sometimes, and toilets that should be slapped with a biohazard warning.
Nothing stopped the guy. He'd arrive in town, sniff the air, and like a heat-seeking missile track with unerring accuracy the best, freshest, most unusual meal there was. Sometimes that meant very live bullfrogs skinned before our very eyes, transformed into a racy stir fry in minutes. Other times it involved our being proffered for our inspection the hindquarters of what looked very much like an endangered species before the recent owner of the said hindquarters became a very expensive pashimna shawl (leg was delicious by the way).
There was yak cheese and honey, black bear bile, tree bark and precious Chinese herbs. There were banquets of rose petals and flowers. There was larvae, fungi, things that were worm in winter and
vegetal in summer...
But I'm just the pupil riding shotgun with the master. Those wonderful food stories, and much much more, are more properly for Chaxiubao to tell. I'm going to start with saying a big thank you to him for bringing me along for the ride. Wish y'all were here too :)
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