Yunnan food

Yunnan food

 
In which we describe typical Yunnan food, some of the local dishes you’ll likely encounter on our Yunnan tours and a few tips on where to eat, what to order and, of course, how to eat it.

Firstly, you can forget everything you already know about Chinese cuisine. In most European countries for Chinese read Cantonese with Sichuan probably being the only regularly featured regional variation. Kunming is over 1000 kilometres from Hong Kong and 2500 from Beijing and possesses a strong and unique culinary identity of its own. Climate and topography are key with a strong, emphasis on traditional, local products while myriad influences are drawn from the myriad ethnic groups inhabiting the region.

Even within Yunnan – a province larger than Germany – there are strong regional variations with a large Muslim minority in the southeast, Tibetan in the northwest and Dai (Tai) in the southwest. So, on our tours you will also sample Hani food in Yuanyang, Bai specialities in Dali, Naxi in Lijiang and try a Tibetan meal in Shangri La.

Local people are justifiably proud of their culinary traditions and while you will come across more classic Cantonese offerings in Kunming – as well as Sichuan menus etc – local residents like to eat their own food while domestic tourists visiting Yunnan from say Shanghai or Beijing, are keen to try local specialities. Cooking is an art form in China, its citizens are naturally born foodies and much of the social life revolves around eating and drinking.

Tibetan influences include ingredients such as barley, dairy products (sheep and yak’s milk) including cheese, butter, yoghurt etcetera while potatoes or flat breads often replace rice. More dairy products – this time from goat’s milk – also feature in Yunannese Muslim cooking while Dai cuisine shows some clear similarities to that of their Lao, northern Thai and Shan cousins over the border.

In addition to cheese, cured ham, bacon and sausages (mainly pork) – none of which one would commonly associate with Chinese food – feature heavily while various pulses, largely absent form Southeast Asian diets, are also seen. Visitors are also surprised by the liberal use of chillies and spiciness of Yunnan food and even non-spicy dishes are often accompanied by a chilli dip or dried chilli flakes. (Yunnanese chillies, while ubiquitous, are not as fiery as Lao or Thai ones and mild versions of dishes can of course be ordered.)

Despite the emphasis on pork products as well as the surprising amount of dairy, there is such a huge and diverse range of dishes that both vegetarians and vegans will also be spoilt for choice. (You can also check out the China section in our recent gluten-free travel post.) We sampled some highly unusual vegetable offerings including something called stir-fried frog skin tree while our favourite were the tangy and spicy lotus stalks. (The former may actually be a lichen that grows on trees – we’re having problems finding information on it, but it tasted surprisingly good.)

Fish is nowhere near such an important food source as in Southeast Asian countries – due both to terrain and distance from the sea – although it does feature in areas such as the vicinity of Lake Fuxian and Lake Erhai.

The style of eating is typically Chinese so while locals may grab a bowl of noodles for lunch, dinners are usually taken communally with shared dishes laid in the centre of the table. As in Southeast Asian countries there are no courses – starters, main course etc – with all dishes eaten together and desserts notable by their absence. (Happily, due to the scarcity of foreign tourists, you won’t see any of the tourist orientated eateries set menus with spring roll starters, main courses and fried banana desserts, so beloved of popular Vietnamese travel destinations.) Needless to say, everything is eaten with chopsticks and generally speaking the only time you’ll see knives, forks and spoons is at hotel buffet breakfasts. You can of course request them and some restaurants may be able to dig some up for you but not all. (We suggest if you are considering travel in Yunnan then you’d better start practicing with your chopsticks as soon as possible.)

A major drawback in eating Chinese style, as far Western visitors go, is the quantity of food and dishes. In our experience of eating with locals, they rarely finish half of what they ordered. This is the way it’s done and is a long-standing cultural trait that’s very hard to change so, while we’ve tried our best, we suspect this may still happen with some of the meals selected by the local tour-leader.

Sampling local, Yunnan food, is, as usual, an important element of our Southeast Asia small group tours and approximately half the meals are inclusive and half not. Inclusive lunches, especially when on the road, are more convenient while we’ve included one dinner in each distinct region in order to show you a reasonable cross-section of the varied cuisines. Due mainly to language issues, non-inclusive dinners are kept to destinations where it’s easy to find more tourist-orientated restaurants with English menus such as Dali and Lijiang. (Ironically, we’d try our best to avoid the touristy cafes in say Thailand or Cambodia there are simply so few Western visitors in Yunnan that the reverse is true.) Otherwise we’ve selected lodges and inns with experience of dealing with foreign visitors so again, staff should speak some English and in-house menus will be bilingual. (Our lodge in Yuanyang offers some excellent, local Hani dishes – with explanations – while our delightful Shuhe guesthouse proffers Naxi specialities.)

A final note on Yunnan food concerns the carbs and interestingly we just spent 10 days in China without once being served rice. Noodles – mainly in soup form for breakfast and lunch – are ubiquitous but dinners regularly feature potatoes; stir-fried, rostis or in stews. (Rice is there to simply fill you up, so you can’t eat so much of the tastier offerings, and thus not something you’d serve at a meal if you want to impress guests.)

Meals are often accompanied by beer or tea rather than drinking water. The latter is free and the former cheaper than bottled mineral water which is expensive. The beer is actually low in alcohol, (often only 2.5-2.5%), so it’s a bit like earlier times back home when beer was also more common than water at meal times.(You’ll also have the excuse that your mid-morning beer in a glass bottle is more eco-friendly than a plastic water bottle.) Bon appetit!