Salted Egg Travel Agency/Text This winter just ended, I have been in the Gaoligong Mountains on the southwest border of China. The main reason for living in Gaoligong Mountain is to grow coffee - the east side of Gaoligong Mountain produces the highest quality small grain coffee in China, and the experience in the mountains has also given me a wonderful experience that I have never lived in the mountains.
When I lived in the mountains, my favorite activity was to find a forest ranger, honey picker or herb picker as a guide, and climb to Gaoligong, where there is little human activity. As a genetic treasure trove of the world's biodiversity, Gaoligong has countless unseen and unheard of animals and plants, and every "adventure" into the mountains is a dangerous and mysterious, physically exhausting, but extremely romantic experience.
I saw a big beehive hidden in a tree hole in Gaoligong, climbed to the tree to pick dendrobium, picked walnuts under the wild walnut tree to eat, and trekked for 3 hours to soak in the wildest hot spring in the deep mountains.
Once when I went up the mountain, Brother Sun, a honey picker who often took me up the mountain to play, took me to see a peculiar flower, this kind of flower is open in a bunch, the color is beige, and the purple-black flower juice will fall out when knocked on the hand, and the scientific name is rice ball flower.
They are only found on both sides of China's southwestern border, at altitudes above 1,000 meters above sea level, and in warm climates, and the most rare flowers grow in the forests of the Gaoligong Mountains above 1,500 meters above sea level.
It blooms around March every year and withers at the end of April, and its nectar is very sweet, making it a favorite nectar source for wild bees and birds. At the beginning of March this year, the last time I entered Gaoligong, I happened to meet the first stubble of rice balls blooming, and I tapped the flowers on the palm of my hand like Brother Sun, and the purple-black nectar was sprinkled on my hands, although it was just a few drops of nectar, and there was still an obvious sweet fragrance wafting into the mouth when licking it with the tip of my tongue.
From early March to mid-to-late April, the season of rice balls is in full bloom, which will attract countless wild bees to gather honey around them, and the wild bees will return to the nest to brew after taking the nectar, and after 1-2 weeks, the mature nectar can finally ripen and fall.
Living in the mountains requires skills that are completely different from those of living in the city.
For example, picking wild honey, first look at the foot strength, all kinds of means of transportation to the deep mountains are all invalid, all rely on strong legs.
The first time I went up the mountain, it took me more than 6 hours to climb two mountains, and I felt that I was too good to do it, but the guide said, "I only used a tenth of my strength."
Then look at the eyesight and ear. The honey picker is the real-life version of "clairvoyance" and "tailwind ear". From the top of this hill, you can see the beehives in the valley opposite, you can see bees flying a few kilometers away, and sometimes you are walking with your head down, and suddenly you stop to listen to the bees, and tell me that it is "the hum of the bees when they come home", indicating that there is a hive nearby. I'm a capital suit.
Finally, it depends on the skill of collecting honey. On TV, beekeepers have to cover their hands and feet and wear a screen on their heads to collect honey, while people in the mountains do not, they all take honey with their bare hands - in fact, this technology also contains wisdom logic: not hurting bees and taking honey in moderation is the way to live in harmony between man and nature.
Because the sap of the rice ball flower itself is purple-black, bees can produce black honey, which is extremely rare and distinguishes it from ordinary golden honey.
The roots, leaves, and bark of the rice ball flower are used by the ethnic minorities in the mountains as a medicine to clear away heat and detoxify, promote dampness and reduce inflammation, so the people in the mountains believe that the black honey brewed from the juice of the rice ball flower also has the effect of curing diseases, and call the black honey "black gold" and "black pearl".
However, in 2011, the Kunming Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences did publish an article in the journal "New Botanist" pointing out that the pollen of rice balls contains a large amount of cyanocandins.
People who eat black honey for the first time will feel that black honey breaks through the imagination of the taste of honey. In addition to its own floral fragrance, black honey also has a mellow medicinal fragrance, but the sweetness is not so prominent, and there will be no "" feeling. Some people feel unaccustomed to black honey at first, but the more they drink it, the more they like it.
The people in the mountains are simple, and after obtaining the black honey, it is filtered several times, and then poured into the bottle to enjoy.
In fact, spring and summer are the most beautiful seasons in Gaoligong Mountain, the climate in Gaoligong Mountain is warm and humid at this time, all kinds of plants are in full bloom, and it is also a feast for wild bees to collect honey. Therefore, if you want to eat Gaoligong's alpine honey, spring and summer are the highest yield and the best honey quality.
The preciousness of the black honey of Gaoligong Mountain also lies in the fact that due to the high altitude of the rice ball flower, few other flowering crops can survive in the surrounding area, and the bees can only collect the sap of the rice ball flower, so the black honey of Gaoligong has a single and pure source, the taste is more mellow, and the risk of allergies is also reduced.
The latest batch of black honey collected was collected by honey collectors after two days of searching in the mountains, which is very precious.
Many people claim that honey has the effects of detoxification, laxative, beauty, slimming and weight loss, whether honey has these effects, I have not seen it with my own eyes, but honey is delicious, but it is indeed true.
In ancient times, honey was the only source of sweetness for human beings, fructose and glucose accounted for nearly 70% of honey, and sugar can be quickly converted into the energy required by the human body, you must know that human beings have not completely gotten rid of the shadow of hunger, so "sugar = energy = delicious" This point has been deeply engraved into our blood.
Since ancient times, honey is a high-grade food, even in modern times, many post-80s, post-90s memories still have the memory of going to a relative's house as a guest, and the host's family brought out a cup of sugar water to entertain memories, for no other reason, just because sugar has been a minority of the elite class since ancient times to be eligible to enjoy, the host brought out the sugar water to entertain, showing respect and attention to the guests.
The need for resources is the same, and humans love honey, and this is true on every continent on Earth.
In the New Testament, it is written that the first meal Jesus ate after the resurrection was honey and fish, the ancient Greeks regarded the bee as a sacred creature and printed it on coins for six centuries, the ancient Romans could pay taxes with honey instead of gold, in the Byzantine Empire, only saints and moral people could enjoy honey, and the indigenous people of North America used honey as the most precious sacrifice to the gods.
With honey, you can make a lot of everyday drinks and delicacies. I went to Gaoligong for the first time last spring and was fortunate enough to taste the freshly harvested black honey. In addition to drinking directly in water, local mountain people like to eat fresh walnuts dipped in black honey. The walnuts produced in Gaoligong are still the varieties before the improvement of the commercial society, with thick skin, small yield and ugly appearance, but they are easier to peel and not astringent than the improved varieties, and the oil of walnuts and the sweetness of honey are just harmoniously matched.
Walnuts + honey is also my favorite snack when I live in the mountains, which not only relieves the craving for sweets, but also completes the "KPI" of daily intake of high-quality nuts. Every time I chew honey walnuts, it is like getting into the mountains and forests of Gaoligong again, looking at the mountains and the rushing Nu River, and the breeze is blowing.
If you get black honey, you can also try other things such as lemon black honey water, black honey grapefruit tea, black honey green tea, black honey pear stew cup, etc.
By the way, if you have cough symptoms, you can indeed try taking a small sip of black honey to suppress cough.
Black honey is a supersaturated sugar solution, and the sugar in it, as it is swallowed with saliva, will form a protective film in the throat, reducing the irritation of throat inflammation in the cough and relieving the discomfort caused by coughing - which is why cough syrup is made so sweet and thick.
Of course, if you want to completely suppress the cough, you still have to rely on your own immune system or seek medical attention as soon as possible, after all, black honey is not a medicine.
Image source: Courtesy of the author