9 families that tellthe whole Zhangjiajie story
Ordered by how distinctive they are — each family has its own deep guide, so read on in the dish you most want to eat first.
1
Order this first if you want to know the city — a dry pot of several things stir-braised together, usually smoked pork, beef tripe, radish and tofu, cooked with chilli and no soup. Legend traces it to the Ming dynasty's Jiajing era (around 1555) as the "combined dish (合菜)" Tujia soldiers ate in a hurry before being conscripted to fight pirates. Locals queue for it daily. You eat it dry with rice first, and some places add broth afterwards to turn it into a hotpot — read the full guide.
2
The signature flavour of Tujia mountain food — pork (along with sausage, chicken and fish) is salt-cured and then hung and smoked over the fire-pit for weeks or months, until it's firm, dark and deeply smoky. It was the way to preserve food through a fridge-less winter. To eat, it's thin-sliced and stir-fried with green garlic, dried chilli or dried bamboo shoots, the salt-smoke-fat playing off the fragrant chilli. Every Tujia home keeps some by the stove, and it's the star of sanxiaguo too — read it in the Tujia food guide.
The heart of Tujia preserving — fish and pork are tossed with rice bran (糟), salt and roasted rice, then packed into jars for months or even a year, until they take on a deep fermented sourness. To serve, they're fried or steamed: firm, tangy-salty, scented with roasted rice. It's a flavour people from outside Xiangxi don't know, and one the Tujia love deeply, born of an age with no fridge and a need to keep protein through the cold. It's one of the dishes that tells the mountain way of life best, and worth trying if you want the truest Tujia taste — read it in the Tujia food guide.
Another fire-pit staple of the Tujia — tofu is mashed with pig blood, minced pork and seasonings, shaped into blocks and then smoked until dry, giving dark, dense, smoky cakes. To eat, it's thin-sliced and stir-fried with green garlic and chilli, or dropped into sanxiaguo. The taste is salty, smoky and chewy — like a smoked sausage but firmer. Tujia families made it during the new-year pig slaughter, and it's a regular ingredient in the mountains' stir-fries — read it in the Tujia food guide.
The rarest, hardest-to-get mountain treasure in Zhangjiajie — yan'er is a wild black fungus that grows clinging to the sheer rock faces of Wulingyuan, so it has to be climbed for, which makes it scarce and many times pricier than ordinary mushrooms. It's crisp and springy, thicker than wood-ear, and usually simmered into soup with free-range chicken or an old duck, the broth clear and naturally sweet. The Tujia serve it to honoured guests. If you spot it on a menu and the budget stretches, it's worth trying once, because you'll rarely find it outside Xiangxi — read it in the Tujia food guide.
The face of the Hunan-heat strand in Zhangjiajie — a big fish head split in half, topped with bright-red fermented chopped chilli (剁椒), garlic and ginger, then steamed and finished with hot oil poured over. The cheek and head meat come out soft and juicy, the fermented chilli's fragrant heat cutting any fishiness. It's a centre-of-table dish to share with rice, and the heat is Hunan-style — fragrant, not numbing. If you don't take much chilli, ask for 微辣 (mild) — read it in the Hunan spicy food guide.
The light, mountain side of the meal that deserves a place on the table — the Xiangxi hills are rich in wild bamboo shoots (山笋), often stir-fried with la-rou smoked pork so the smoke plays off the crisp sweetness of the shoots, and in seasonal mountain greens (野菜) of many kinds, stir-fried or simmered into soup. Some seasons there are dried bamboo shoots kept for stir-frying year-round. These dishes are inexpensive but taste genuinely of the hills, and they balance a meal full of smoked meat and chilli. Foraged greens are simply part of mountain life for the Tujia.
A home-style dish the Tujia have eaten in every household forever — finely ground soybeans simmered together with chopped greens (mustard greens or pickled greens), giving a thick, pale-green pot with a mild, nutty taste. Some homes add chilli or minced pork. The Tujia have a saying that a bowl of hezha a day takes you to ninety-nine. It's filling, cheap and gentle on the palate, and it balances the other spicy dishes well — when you've eaten heat all day, a bowl of hezha is just the thing to rest your palate — read it in the Tujia food guide.
9
The sweet bite that closes a mountain meal nicely — ciba is made from glutinous rice steamed and then pounded in a mortar until chewy, shaped into slabs or rounds, and grilled over charcoal or fried until the crust is golden and the inside stays soft. It's eaten with sugar, ground peanut or sesame, fragrant with toasted rice. Markets and the park gates have stalls grilling ciba fresh to eat hot on the go. Traditionally the Tujia pounded ciba together around the new year as a ritual. Kids love it, and travellers buy plenty to snack on — read it in the snacks guide.