8 Tujia dishes that taste of Xiangxi
From the smoked pork every mountain household hangs, to the pounded glutinous-rice cake of festival days.
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This is the cornerstone of the Tujia kitchen and the very image of mountain food preservation. Villagers rub pork belly (and sausage, chicken and fish) with salt and seasonings, then hang it over the household fire-pit so woodsmoke cures it continuously for weeks or even months. The smoke slowly drives out the moisture until the meat is dense, deep reddish-brown, and carries a woodsmoke aroma all the way through. It's usually sliced thin and stir-fried with garlic stems, dried chilli or mountain vegetables — a fine balance of salt, smoke and fat, and one of the flavours Zhangjiajie locals are most attached to.
Another piece of Tujia preservation wisdom — fresh freshwater fish is coated in toasted rice bran (糟) and fermented in a sealed jar for months until it turns naturally sour. It's often made in summer because it keeps for ages without any need for cold. To serve, it's fried or stir-fried in local tea-seed oil: the taste leads with sour, then salt and the toasty fragrance of the rice bran, with firm flesh and no fishy smell. Anyone who enjoys fermented-sour flavours — the same idea as much of Southeast Asia's preserved fish — will take to it more easily than they'd expect.
The sister dish to sour fish, made with pork instead — the Tujia coat cut pork belly in rice bran and salt and ferment it in a jar until sour, so it keeps right through the winter. To eat, it's stir-fried until fragrant, and the flavour is tangy and salty with a touch of fat and the scent of rice bran. The sourness cuts the richness of the pork belly just right, and it's wonderful with plain rice. Together with sour fish, this is the dish that best explains the Tujia fermenting kitchen — not loud or fiery, but a deep flavour drawn out by time.
The name may give you pause, but this is everyday home food the Tujia have made for generations — mashed tofu mixed with pig blood and seasonings, shaped into blocks and then smoked over the fire-pit or air-dried just like la-rou, until you have a dense, dark block. Sliced and stir-fried with la-rou, garlic stems and chilli, it turns smoky, savoury and pleasantly chewy, with none of the off-putting smell you might fear. It's another clever Tujia way to waste nothing and turn it into a long-keeping side dish — give it one open-minded bite and the mountain kitchen makes sense.
This is the finest foraged delicacy in all of Zhangjiajie — yan'er (岩耳), or cliff "ear fungus", is a black lichen that grows on damp sandstone cliffs in the Wulingyuan area, named for its ear-like shape. It genuinely is pricey and rare, because harvesting it means climbing high cliffs to prise off one piece at a time, gathering only a little each trip. The Tujia usually stew it in soup with free-range chicken or duck, drawing a deep, fragrant broth and a slippery, crunchy texture. On a menu it costs noticeably more than ordinary plates — but it's a true taste of the mountains that's hard to find elsewhere, and worth trying once if the budget stretches.
If la-rou is the heavy side of the Tujia kitchen, hezha is the warmest and lightest — finely ground soybeans simmered with foraged or chopped leafy greens until the pot turns thick and smooth, with some families adding a little chilli for a fragrant kick. The flavour is creamy from the soybeans, fresh with greens, and comforting. The Tujia have eaten hezha as an everyday staple forever — there's even a local saying that a day without hezha leaves you unsettled, which tells you just how much it's the mountain people's comfort food. Order it as a pot in the middle of the table for everyone to share.
Gegen (葛根) is the root of a vine that grows in the mountain forests; the Tujia dig it up and grind it into a powder that becomes several things. The most popular is to stir the kudzu powder into hot water until it sets into a translucent jelly, drizzled with sugar or honey — smooth, cool and refreshing. Some places sell it as kudzu cakes or tea. In Chinese tradition kudzu is considered a cooling tonic, so it's sold everywhere around the park gates as powder, jelly and health snacks. It's a regional food you can take home as a gift, and a gentle sweet note quite unlike ordinary desserts.
A regional food tied to Tujia festivals to finish — ciba (糍粑) is steamed glutinous rice pounded in a mortar until smooth and sticky, then shaped into round cakes. By tradition it's pounded around New Year and big celebrations, the whole village taking turns at the pestle. To eat, it's grilled over the fire-pit until the surface puffs and crisps, or fried golden, then dipped in sugar or ground peanuts; the inside turns chewy and stretchy, fragrant with glutinous rice. Hot off the fire it's lovely, and you'll find it at snack stalls around the park and in town — the warm street snack that suits the cool mountain air best.