How to eat like a local in China's MOST POPULAR TOURIST SPOT!

Coming up in today's food adventure, I'm in one of China's most popular tourist destinations, but I'm determined to not just experience it on a surface level. Today, I'm going deeper, finding the most authentic experiences and learning more about the history of the incredible people that call this place home. So grab snacks, get comfy, and as always, don't forget to subscribe. Hello, hello, and welcome to another Chinese food adventure. And where I'm standing right now is what many people actually call China's most beautiful town, but I'm gonna let you be the judge. Welcome to Lijiang. So in case you're tuning in for the first time, I'm currently documenting my journey in Yunnan province as I travel along the very popular travel route that stretches from Kunming to Dali to Lijiang all the way up into Shangri-La. And today I'm spending the day in Lijiang, which is an extremely popular place for people to come and visit because it is so beautiful. So for that reason, I've gotten up really, really early to have a slice of what this town looks like before all the tourists arrive. And it is absolutely gorgeous. The architecture, the waterways, the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the background. But apart from being gorgeous, it also has a really interesting cultural background. So here in Lijiang, it's actually the home of the Nasi people. And a trip to Lijiang is simply incomplete without learning about the history and culture of the Nasi people. So that's what I'm gonna be doing today. But I thought instead of me introducing Nasi culture to you guys, the best thing I could possibly do is to invite someone who is actually of the Nasi ethnic minority to introduce the Nasi culture to us today in this video. And she suggested we meet at this very local morning market. Hello! Hello, sister! Good morning! Hello! Thank you for coming! Hello everyone! This is my new friend. We met last night and it was, yeah, we just hit it off right away. Can you introduce yourself a little bit, sister? Hello everyone! I'm from the Nasi ethnic minority. I live at the foot of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. My name is He Chunxin. I've lived in this place for 40 years. What I'm working on now is Yunnan's distinctive wild orange food. Please come and try it! Yeah, we're actually gonna be going there for lunch and learning more about the truffles that she is making all these dishes from. So I'm really excited about that. For us women, when we're working, the truffles can keep our shoulders warm. And they're also in the shape of a frog. Why are they in the shape of a frog? Because the Nasi people were originally a nomadic people. Our population is relatively small. And the frog symbolizes many children and many blessings. It's a totem for the Nasi people. And when you walk around Lijiang, you'll see frogs everywhere. Sculptures, paintings, on tourist help signs. As it stands today, the current population of Nasi people is around 400,000. So while the darker one is made from chickpeas, the yellow one is made from just normal peas. And today we're gonna be trying them both. Okay. Okay, history time. Back in the day, Lijiang was a key hub on the ancient Tea Horse Road, which was basically an historic trade route that connected the tea producing regions of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet. This resulted in an influx of people and culture and religions meeting and mixing here in Lijiang. Anyway, back to our Baba. It's been flattened out and she's about to pop it on the grill with some oil until it's nice and golden on the outside. Over here, we also have some spices we can add and have with our Baba as well. So we're just gonna add. To be precise, Lijiang sits at an altitude of 2,400 meters. And while I didn't suffer any altitude sickness here, I definitely could feel myself puffing a whole lot more walking up the stairs today. Ready for breakfast. So we've got our chickpea porridge here. First step is getting in there and just mixing it all together. It's basically like a salty, slightly spicy, very flavorful porridge, almost. What I really like is that it's quite viscous. So it really coats that bread amazingly well. Like you just dip it in and you've got this amazing coating on your bread. The flavor is amazing. I don't know how much flavor you actually get from the chickpea porridge itself, but from the flavors and all of the spices, you get so much flavor. Mala breakfast porridge, really. I have to say, this bread is absolutely incredible. It is so soft and fluffy. But we haven't quite finished yet. We have some chili. It's good? Let's try. I really like that because the bread is still warm and soft and fluffy, but then the chili, it's cold and crispy and very fragrant. It tastes more like capsicum. It's not spicy at all, really. As we were chatting through breakfast, I learned something really interesting about Nazi culture. The Nazi people have their own characters, such as the Dongba characters. The Dongba are the people who support the highest level of culture in the Nazi culture. I actually had the opportunity to sit down with a Dongba to learn more about these ancient Dongba characters that are still in use here in Lijiang. The Dongba are passed down from generation to generation. I've been using them for more than 30 generations. The Dongba characters are different from the Nazi characters. There are fewer people using them. Why do we use the Dongba characters? Because only the Dongba use the characters. So where do we use them? In general, the Dongba characters are the earliest, the most used, and the most used are the Dongba scriptures. It's a scripture like this. The Dongba scriptures are written on the Dongba paper with our Chinese characters. It contains the Nazi nature, natural law, medical knowledge, medicine, and so on. This is for men. For men, it's to build a house. For women, it's to make hair. And it's for children. As you can see, the characters are pictographic in nature and they'll actually hint to what the character itself means. And when I was having a wander around Lijiang Old Town later that day, I came across this store selling this Dongba script dictionary. So it's got the Dongba words inside, as well as what they mean. And the funniest thing is a lot of these characters, I don't need a dictionary to figure out what they actually mean. Loving this character. The dancing character. I feel like at the same time, this is a lot harder, but a lot easier to learn than Chinese characters. Because on one side, it's easier because you see it and you know what it's about. It's easier to read. But if you actually wanted to replicate this and actually write anything, it would take you so long. I mean, there are so many strokes. It's a lot more complicated. And there are a lot of characters to know. But the reason we know so much about Nazi culture and history isn't just thanks to these characters, but the paper they're written on. This paper is called Dongba paper. This paper is listed as a national heritage. Why is that? First, its raw material is a kind of rice bran and rice bran. The best material is rice bran. The peasants didn't dare to eat it, so they kept it for thousands of years. So this kind of paper can be preserved for 1,000 years. And the Dongba culture can be preserved to this day mainly because of this paper. But our food adventure with He Jiejie is not over. As she mentioned earlier, she owns a restaurant selling dishes containing all kinds of local mushrooms. And for lunch today, we're going to be getting into one of the main exports of the region. Of course, I'm talking about truffles. Yunnan produces a whopping 300 tons of truffles each year, which is about 10 times more than France's annual production. And I feel like on my channel recently, there has been a lot of truffle content. I mean, just a few weeks ago, I was in France eating a truffle banquet, a very expensive truffle banquet. I mean, typically outside of China, truffles are something that are very, very expensive associated with being expensive. But here in China, that has traditionally not been the case. It's just so interesting because for locals in many cases, this is just another mushroom, another produce to use and to fill bellies with. And my jaw was on the floor hearing about how they traditionally like to eat truffles here in Yunnan. And today she's prepared a truffle banquet for me and some of her friends. Don't worry, it's not just me eating all of this food. And every dish features the local black truffles in some way. We've got truffle steamed eggs, truffle stir-fried eggs, truffle sausage, cold mixed truffle and yak meat, truffle claypot rice, truffle dumplings, and even truffle guochao mixian, crossing bridge rice noodles. It's almost just like, what can we do with truffle? Like, let's just put it in everything. Oh my gosh. Look at the sauce coming out. You've just got all of that truffle juice, which I'm going to slurp up. I'm not going to waste a bit of this truffle. Oh wow. It's delicious, soft umami perfection. And the umami just kept coming and coming and coming. This is by far the most truffle I've ever ingested in one sitting. I just still can't get over how much truffle was on top of this. You almost have to like, pull the truffle to the side to see the meat underneath. One of my favorite dishes on the table here was this truffle guochao mixian, which I thought was a really fun take on the original that you'll find a lot in Kunming. So first ingredient to go in was our truffles. And basically how a guochao mixian works is you have all these little plates of ingredients that all go into this boiling pot of soup. And then finally you add the mixian. There is so much truffle in this that it actually looks like that black fungus that you sometimes see, like those mushrooms. Well, I guess it is a mushroom, but it's truffle. The truffle taste itself is pretty subtle. Like it doesn't super permeate the bowl. There is a slight mushroominess about this guochao mixian. Definitely when you put the truffle in your mouth and you just eat it, you're getting that truffle hit. Although perhaps slightly less intense in flavor to the truffles I tried in France earlier this year, but still very, very tasty. If you find yourself in Lijiang and you want to come visit He Jiejie at her restaurant here, you can say my name for a discount on her truffle banquet menu, which is inspired by the dishes in this video. This afternoon I've returned to Lijiang old town. I was filming in this very square this morning, but just a major difference is there's a lot more people here now. And you've got a lot of the stores that are now open. They're either selling like a local handicraft, a local snack, or it's a dress up shop. A lot of people like to come here, dress in a local costume and take photos. And of course, it's not a real old town here in China without a good old street food night market. So this here, this is Zhongyi Yueshi. And 6 p.m. every night, all of these stands come out. It's very lively. A lot of people here. A lot of specialties from both around China, also around Yunnan. I think my strategy at this market, because it is more on the touristy side, is just going for things that just really amuse me. I mean, this is a chicken wing filled with glutinous rice. Something I've never tried. It's definitely not bad. On the inside, we've got the glutinous rice. It's held together by the chicken skin on the outside, which is delicious by the way. It's basically chickeny glutinous rice. By the time I finished this snack, I found myself in a less visited corner of this market where I spied a door. And I thought I'd go check out what's inside. And wow, this is the vibe. Got a little like food hall here. And so many local food stalls. There was a lady here frying some chickpea cake, the jidolfen, the solidified version of what we ate this morning. Also, it's never a bad sign when you see locals eating the food. When it finished grilling, she added some sliced radish and spring onion, and then started adding the flavor. Sichuan peppercorn, salt, MSG, chili flakes, as well as vinegar and soy sauce. And here's the finished product. Wow. It looks so good. Honestly, this is the coolest. In the middle of this really touristy area, I've stumbled across this really local vibe. I'm eating alongside locals. I'm having a local Nasi snack, this jidolfen, that's been grilled over like literal coals. She was like blowing into it with the straw. And there are so many sauces that go on top of this. And it smells so incredible. Oh my goodness. So I've got two varieties of the chickpea jelly in here. One variety is this skin, which is a lot thinner. And then I have the very soft jelly underneath here. So I'll try that first. Oh, that's so good. This flavor combination is right up my alley. It's a mixture of like sour, salty, spicy, and also mouth-numbing. You can really taste that peppercorn in there as well. And combined with those textures, the two different textures, this one is a little bit more on the chewy side, a little bit, has a bit more resistance. And this is so soft and jelly-like, this piece of chickpea jelly. Slightly crunchy and crispy on the outside and really soaks up all that sauce at the bottom. It's so good. Another thing that really adds to the dish is this really beautiful, crunchy and refreshing texture from the lobo si, the little like radish strands on top. So you've got really all the textures in here, all the flavors. Oh, this is so up my alley. I have emerged from that incredible food hall. Man, I wish there was more things open that I could try there because it was a really cool experience. But I am back now to the more touristy side of this market. And I think I have room for one more thing. And I'm thinking, I mean, this is an option, these little mushroom soups that I'm seeing that looks like just like nice, one person serves a mushroom hot pot, essentially. This is also an option. It's like tofu stuffed with, I think that's mushrooms or something. And then it goes into this salty broth and gets cooked. That's also an option. Or I could have some yak shao kao. So what she's currently threading on her stick there is actually yak. And it's five yuan for one skewer. Welcome to Lijiang. Welcome to Chinese. Wait, what is this? There's so many people here. Let's try. Oh, yum. That is very tasty. It tastes beefy in the best way possible. Like that amazing beef taste without being like, I don't know, gamey or anything like that. Spices are great. It's spicy. I mean, my lips are burning right now. Guys, that is not lipstick. I have not applied lipstick all day. My lips have been so confused recently because I went from Singapore for a week where it's very hot and humid, came back to Chongqing where it's very dry and cold. My lips were cracking like crazy. And now I'm in Yunnan eating all of this like kind of spicy food and my lips just don't know what to do with themselves. They've never been juicier and plumper. I woke up in the morning, I was like swollen and red, but I was like, hey, that looks cute. Beauty is pain, they say. I think that's going to be a nice full stop on our day here in Lijiang. Thank you guys so much for watching. Lijiang is truly gorgeous. And learning about the local culture today has definitely allowed me to appreciate its beauty even more. As always, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. I will see you next week. Goodbye from Lijiang, bye.