Taste in It: Anthropologists' Story of Field Eating, by Peng Wenbin/Fu Haihong, Edition: The Commercial Press, March 2021
The following is an excerpt from Taste in the World: The Anthropologist's Story of Field Eating, with images added by the editor and not owned in the book.
The taste and test of hand-grabbed meat
Author 丨Wang Jianmin (Minzu University of China)
Mutton is a delicacy, and Xinjiang's mutton seems to be praised by people. I grew up in Xinjiang since I was a child, and I also love mutton. Later, when I went to the mainland to study and work, I still did fieldwork in different parts of Xinjiang, and I learned more and more stories and sayings about mutton that are closely related to local identity, and I also had some insights into anthropological field relations.
People all over Xinjiang say that local lamb is the best. The Altay people tell you: "The local sheep eat Chinese herbs, drink mineral water, and take the golden road." The Wei Ploughman will say: "Because the sheep grow on the salt and alkali grass beach with wild Chinese herbs such as Rob Hemp, Cistanche, Licorice, etc., the sheep will also eat the leaves of the poplar trees that have not died for thousands of years, so the 'world's mutton Is fragrant'." "Rob sheep is the main dominant breed of local sheep breeds, it is said that the disease resistance is strong, because the local soil salinity is large, sheep feed on alkaline plants, mutton contains alkaline amino acids much higher than mutton in other places, lean meat, less fat, no smell, so it was included in the national inventory of livestock and poultry genetic resources, and also won the national agricultural product geographical indication protection product registration protection protection."
Speaking of local breeds of famous sheep, when I was surveying the Gilland Ranch in Yumin County, Tacheng District, the local herdsmen told me the story of Bash worship sheep. This is a local sheep breed selected by the contemporary Kazakh historical figure Bashibai, and it is said that the breeding sheep brought back from the former Soviet Union were cross-bred in Yumin County.
However, the herders are telling a different version. Herders say Bashibai was playful when he was a young man. In the spring of the first year, his father gave him 100 sheep to graze on summer pastures in the Baluk Mountains. As a result, in the autumn, the sheep were lost. The next year he gave him 100 sheep and lost them again. In the third year, his father still handed him 100 sheep, but warned him in particular seriousness: "If the sheep are lost again this time, you should not come home!" He realized the seriousness of the problem and was worried about wanting to graze well. After entering the mountain, he saw a flock of sheep all over the mountain. These sheep are very special in appearance, larger than the average sheep, and some have four horns. The herders said it was because the two flocks of sheep from the previous two years had crossed with the wild big sheep in the mountains. It is also said that one autumn, two stout male sheep were mixed in with the flock of the Bashibai family. Bashbai did not alarm them when he found out. Two days later, the male pan sheep left. The following year, the ewes in the flock gave birth almost exclusively to double lambs, which were significantly larger than in previous years, and the newborn lambs were able to stand and walk in a few minutes. Maybe it really has the genes of wild sheep, and I not only saw this sheep in the Baruch Mountains as large, tolerant to rough feeding, and resistant to cold, but also appreciated the deliciousness of lamb meat.
Hand-grabbed meat is eaten in Kazakh herders' felt houses, usually sheep are slaughtered. Many times, after we arrived, the herders first went to pick a sheep from the flock, brought it back to the felt house, asked the guests to look over, and asked the oldest guests to do "bata", that is, prayer. In addition to the peace of the old and the young, the prosperity of the four animals (cattle, sheep and alpacas), the success of children, the health and happiness, the unity of the nationalities, and the harmony of society, "let the smoke of the felt house dome rise higher and higher" is a phrase that herders like to hear. Because it is usually the lamb of the year that year is selected, there will be a saying of "unmarried sheep dolls". Slaughter the sheep and cut the meat and put it directly into the pot. On the ranch, most of them are used to burn wood outside the felt house and cook meat in a large iron pot.
Sheep's head is a food of ceremonial significance for the steppe Kazakhs to receive distinguished guests. After the lamb is cooked, the sheep's head, Jiangbas (lamb crotch), leg of lamb, etc. are placed separately, and sometimes guests use several plates. The sheep's head is plated, and the sheep's nose is pointed at the guests, placed in front of the most honored guests, and the distinguished and elderly guests are invited to make "bata". After the prayer, the host will ask the distinguished guest to share the sheep's head meat, the guest will pick up the knife placed on the plate, hold the sheep's head with his left hand, hold the knife in his right hand, the blade is inward, first cut the first piece of meat from the left cheek, distribute it to the elderly around him, hope that he can have prestige and face on the pasture, and then distribute the lamb cheek meat to the adults present in turn; the meat on the jaw of the sheep is distributed to the young people present, hoping that the boys can speak the tao, and the girls sing sweetly; and finally cut off a sheep's ear for the children. The other one can be given to the youngest guests or the younger ones here, hoping that the children will listen to the elders more. Finally, the sheep's head is returned to the owner, who will open the sheep's skull and take the sheep's brain out and put it in a small plate for the most honorable guests to enjoy. Other parts of the lamb are also symbolic, such as the leg of lamb bone is usually given to young people who are thriving, hoping that they can run more errands and work more.
Stills from the movie "Eating Men and Women".
Hand-grabbed meat is delicious, but eating hand-grabbed meat is also a test for anthropologists. When the Kazakhs eat hand-grabbed meat, in order to express their enthusiasm, the host will cut the cooked sheep's tail oil into small pieces and place it on the right hand, like a boat-shaped plate filled with pieces of sheep's tail oil, and ask the guest to open his mouth and pour the full of sheep's tail oil into the guest's mouth. Cooked sheep's tail oil is very smooth, but it is difficult to put all this sheep's tail oil in your mouth. The trick to eating is to suck the sheep's tail oil with your mouth while sucking it into the esophagus, so that the soft and sticky sheep's tail oil slides into the stomach, and this full bunch of sheep's tail oil can be swallowed. Once, my good friend, an American anthropology professor who studies nomadic life, went to Zhaosu County, deep in the Tianshan Mountains, to do fieldwork. Although he was ultimately unable to fulfill his wish to do the fieldwork due to a misunderstanding of the border pass, he had an unforgettable and painful experience when he arrived on the night of his arrival. After two or three hours of chatting, everyone sat down on the clay kang in the herdsman's settlement house, laid out the menu, and brought the hot hand-grabbed meat to the table, and after doing bata, an old Kazakh man sitting on the other side of the American professor took the knife and ate the sheep's head meat first according to the rules. This American professor was a year older than me, and he had come from afar, so naturally he became the one who ate the first piece of sheep's head meat on the meat table that day. He was of course very happy to be warmly entertained by the hand-grabbed meat feast. However, I was secretly worried about what was going to happen next. Sure enough, the next show began – feeding the guests sheep's tail oil. I hurriedly explained to the master: "This friend can't eat fatty lamb." While the master was hesitating, one of our assistants in the investigation, a Kazakh female teacher, said to the American professor in Chinese: "This is the etiquette of the Kazakh people, you must eat it, otherwise you will fail the master's kindness." The master removed some of the pieces of sheep's tail oil in his hand and fed them to the mouth of the American professor. As I swallowed the small handful of sheep's tail oil that I had brought to my mouth, I glanced at my friend with the afterglow. I saw him bulging his mouth, tears rolling in his eyes. The sheep's tail oil was still in his mouth! I turned my face to look at him, and because his mouth was full of sheep's tail oil, he couldn't say a word, and could only ask me for help with tears in his eyes. I hurriedly said, "The professor wants to make it easier." The crowd hurried to give way to the space and let him go to the dry toilet in the courtyard. After spitting out all the sheep's tail oil, the American professor returned to the table, probably just took a small sip of broth, never ate again, and hardly spoke again. The social relations in the fields have become no longer smooth, and the harmonious atmosphere has just frozen and changed. Should there be a place for "food" in field ethnography techniques?
Since more than 30 years ago, in the process of completing projects such as "Transformation of The Nomadic Lifestyle" and "Kazakh Folk Art and Identity", I have been constantly reviewing its "cultural symbolism" every time I experience the delicious taste of hand-grabbed meat with my taste buds in a Kazakh felt house. I myself have eaten sheep's ears from the investigation team, and I have become an old man who has made "bata" and carried a knife to divide the sheep's head meat when he went into the felt room to eat hand-grabbed meat in recent years, and I also have a little more understanding of the relationship between hand-grabbed meat and field society.
Techniques, memories and experiences of eating chicken
Author 丨Yang Zhengwen (Southwest University for Nationalities)
As a person born in the early 1960s, the body grew up with a large collective era of lack of food and clothing, and meat was a scarce commodity. Cattle as a productive force owned collectively, and it is a crime to kill and eat meat. Although the family can raise pigs, they cannot be slaughtered at will, even if they have a new year's festival, with a reason to kill pigs for the New Year, they must hand over half to the supply and marketing cooperatives in the city and accept the low price of the state scissors difference, perhaps it is a kind of agricultural heavy tax. At that time, for me living in the remote countryside of Guizhou, beef and pork were a luxury, and only on the occasion of sacrifice did I have the opportunity to eat beef. Although it was illegal to worship ancestors and sweep villages during the Tibetan Festival at that time, people would still quietly kill cattle sacrifices on the day of the festival, following the ancestral habits of thousands of years, and no one dared to disobey them. In case of being discovered by government officials, everyone shouted in unison: "The cow itself was not careful, and fell to its death yesterday!" ”
Chickens are different from cattle and pigs, productivity is not counted as it, agricultural taxes do not seem to look at it, in short, in the southwest official language, whether roosters and hens are not counted as "chicken ping-pong" (GDP), so even in that era when the family's individual economy was illegal, there were green mountains and rivers of seedlings, and chickens had room for free growth. What's more, chickens are an indispensable sacrifice and food in Hmong society. Hmong ancestors have long placed edible poultry, domestic animals and heroic ancestors closely related to their living worlds into epic poems, in which the story of the rooster is entangled with the story of the sun shooting. Legend has it that when the twelve suns hung in the sky and roasted the earth day and night, and everything in the world could not survive, the heroic ancestors of the Miao people who had the courage of the Houyi people shot out eleven of the suns, and the remaining sun did not dare to come out again, and the world fell into darkness, everything could not grow, and human beings could not live. All things can only do everything to ask the sun to come out. The horses could not call out, the cows could not call out, the pigs could not call out, the ducks and geese could not come out, and finally the roosters went to bark, and the sun came out blushing. Since then, the universe has had life, and the rooster has also legally obtained the identity of Shi Ri, and every day it is it that calls to ask the sun to rise in the east and send the sun to set in the west. As a result, chickens have become an important sacrifice and food in the daily life of the Miao people. At funerals, during the New Year's Festival, building houses, weddings, and even performing healing ceremonies for the seriously ill, or even visiting relatives and friends who are physically injured, etc., all have the contribution of chickens. So much so that the national local logic of using chickens and eating chickens was born.
"Eight pieces of chicken and duck" is the chicken eating ethic that I have been disciplined since I was a child. The so-called "eight pieces" refers to a whole chicken cooked and cut to keep the complete eight pieces: chicken head, chicken legs, chicken wings, chicken feet and internal organs (heart and liver), each part corresponds to the person sitting around the table, the chicken head is the male host, the chicken liver, chicken heart to the oldest, chicken legs to the youngest, wings are for people who have been out or are about to fly high, feet are for people who can earn money or hope to make money. This is the logic of killing chickens for hospitality or eating chickens during New Year's celebrations. If you have been living in the Miaozhai of your hometown, a person will always be divided into certain parts of the chicken for a few years in his life, and he will definitely eat the technique and eat the experience. Of course, a person from eating chicken legs to eating chicken hearts and chicken livers is about to complete the journey of human life.
In my memory, until I left my hometown to go to college at the age of seventeen, most of the chickens were eaten on various occasions of sacrifice. I vaguely remember that it was around August 1975, when I was in junior high school, and I ate chicken very frequently. During that time, the rooster just after eight or nine o'clock in the night loudly chirped, the abnormal chirp caused panic among the villagers, according to local customs, the rooster that abnormally led the chirping was to be killed and sacrificed to the gods, and would wear its head with a bamboo stick and stick it into the high mountain, punish it for watching the sunrise and sunset well, knowing how it had made mistakes. The chickens that took the lead to chirping today were killed, and tomorrow there will be one who took the lead, and seven or eight roosters in my family were killed in this way, and most of the other families in the village were like this. I don't know how many days later, a smart villager reminded: "Is it the disaster caused by electric lights?" "It turned out that that time was the day when the small hydropower station in the village had just been built to generate electricity, and the villagers who used the electric lamp for the first time were elated, and most of them would not turn off the lights, and the house and outside the house were illuminated by the electric lights all night long, and the rooster could not tell whether it was just after dark or almost dawn, causing the chicken's biological clock disorder. In this way, a group of majestic roosters in my hometown gave their lives for the electric lights of the village, completing the days when we ate meat intensively. The only fortunate thing is that for whatever reason, there are more opportunities to eat chicken in the poor years, and the technology of eating chicken in poor days has been trained.
One of the driving forces of anthropology's claim to the origin of the discipline is that Western scholars look at themselves and reflect on their own cultures in the context of others. There is some truth to this, and no one will be surprised by the fact that after eating a chicken in the Miao village and not spitting out its bones. But in the eyes of people who grew up in other cultures, it is somewhat special. In the summer of 2004, I went to Korea for exchanges, and Professor Ahn of Dankook University accompanied me to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace, and at noon arranged to eat at a famous Korean ginseng chicken soup restaurant nearby, and after sitting down, the waiter put a variety of small plates of appetizers, followed by the main dish of Korean ginseng chicken soup. Two wooden trays were brought up, each with a black casserole dish on it, and in the boiling casserole was a complete chicken, which Professor An said was a white phoenix. The chicken is a pound and a half in size, and the belly of the chicken is stuffed with glutinous rice and a korean ginseng. After cooling down a little, we picked up chopsticks and ate. Since the chicken was not large, the stew was close to the separation of flesh and bone, and I went from head to body to legs, and in less than half an hour, the whole chicken and soup rice had bottomed out. Professor Ann looked at me and smiled, and I looked at him and smiled, and I had to explain that I had eaten a little fast since I was a child. He asked curiously, is he embarrassed to spit bones? I explained that I grew up in the habit of chewing bones and swallowing them at home. But that night my method of eating chicken became a legend. Of course, it is not that the people of Miaozhai eat chicken and do not spit bones, but I have developed the way of chewing chicken bones and fish bones since I was a child, and I was inadvertently copied when eating Korean ginseng chicken soup, which surprised Korean friends. One year, when Professor Hu Zemin of Fu Jen University in Taipei went with me to Qiandongnan, he used humor to criticize my poor way of chewing bones and so on, and he told the students and professors present at the time that he finally understood the reason why there were no dinosaur fossils in the Miao area, and it was futile to look for fossils in the Miao area.
In the early winter of 2005, Korean friends, including Professor Ahn, were taken to my hometown to participate in the Miao Nian festival, which was a return visit to Korea last year. Our group went to my elementary school teacher's house as a guest, and soon after entering the door, the teacher loudly instructed the teacher and mother: "Zhengwen brought guests from afar to the house as guests, there is nothing to entertain, you first kill a chicken for each person." I explained it to Professor Ann and others, and everyone was surprised and urged not to waste too much. Soon, each bowl served by the master and mother was filled with a poached egg and a sweet wine (called mashed egg in Sichuan dialect). I joked with my friends who were present, "My teacher entertained everyone with boneless chicken today, and I hope that you will not spit out your bones like when I go to Korea to eat Korean ginseng chicken." In the midst of laughter, the friendship increased by a few points.
The story of matsutake in the field
Zhinong Li (Yunnan University)
Good food is like me, before arriving at a place, I must first study its cuisine, and then try the local cuisine according to Tusoji. The cuisine of Tibetan areas in Yunnan includes Tibetan pork, which is thin but not chai, fragrant but not fat, which is stewed with a low flame, butter milk residue that is soaked with ghee and honey on the surface, and handmade water-brewed rice noodles with soft and sweet wheat noodles. Yes, these delicacies are certainly not to be missed, but what makes me most unforgettable and memorable is the story of the matsutake and the matsutake that I picked by my own hands.
Matsutake mushroom, scientific name Matsuguchi mushroom, belongs to a type of edible mushroom, because it grows in pine tree woodland and the shape of the buds is like deer antler velvet. In the Tibetan areas of Yunnan, before the Japanese began to buy a large number of matsutake mushrooms in China, matsutake mushrooms were called "cloth what" by the locals, "there is a smell of pine, not delicious" is the local people's general evaluation of what is cloth, so this fungus basically no one to pick up, only in the case of hunger is unbearable and really can not find food that can fill the hunger, the locals will pick up some cloth with water and salt to cook, occasionally take it to the market to sell, but only a few cents a pound. But no one thought that this cloth, which was evaluated by locals as "not delicious", became famous after World War II because it contained an anti-cancer substance called matsutake alcohol.
The japanese have been eating matsutake mushrooms for at least 1,000 years, but the admiration for their medicinal value begins with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima after World War II. On August 6, 1945, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, turning the bustling city of Hiroshima into ruins, and even the plants were not spared. However, the mushroom cloud dissipated, and people were surprised to find that matsutake was the first fungus to grow on the ruins, and the recovery rate exceeded that of all local plants, so the Japanese believed more in the food supplement value of matsutake mushrooms to resist radiation and anti-tumor, and was enshrined as a "sacred fungus" in Japan. And because matsutake resembles a male root, the Japanese consider it a symbol of vitality. Therefore, matsutake has a lofty status in Japan. Japan was originally the main producer of matsutake mushrooms, in the 1980s, due to the popularity of oil gas, lamp oil and other fuels in Japan, resulting in a decrease in the use of wood fuels, the original used as firewood with dead branches, leaves, wild grasses, etc. can not be cleaned up in time, a large number of miscellaneous trees and fallen leaves are not conducive to the growth of matsutake mushrooms, resulting in a sharp decline in local production of matsutake mushrooms in Japan. At this time, Japanese tourists discovered this "sacred mushroom" that is regarded as a top ingredient in Japan when they traveled to Shangri-La, and the price was only one-tenth of that of Japan. As a result, the Japanese began to buy a large number of matsutake mushrooms in Shangri-La and other places, and matsutake mushrooms have also jumped from the worthless mushrooms in the past to the hot "soft gold" of local Tibetans, and the highest price can be sold for 1500 to 2000 yuan a kilogram, and in recent years, it has also been 400 to 1000 yuan. Every year from June to October is the golden season for picking matsutake mushrooms, and the villagers often leave only the elderly and children to take care of their homes and livestock, and the young adults almost all come out of the nest. In the early years, around the end of August during the peak production period of matsutake mushrooms, some townships also put on "matsutake holidays", and even the cadres of township organs joined the army of matsutake picking.
Matsutake naturally grows in the natural hybrid forest of pine and oak trees at an altitude of 2000 to 4000 meters and above, belongs to the fungus that coexists with plants, and needs to coexist with the root system of the host tree in the natural environment to form mycorrhizae, hyphae and fungus ponds, and at the same time needs to rely on cypress, oak and other broad-leaved forests to provide nutritional support in order to form healthy fruiting bodies. Therefore, the growth environment of matsutake is extremely strict, which also determines that the picking of matsutake is very difficult.
Stills from the documentary "China on the Tip of the Tongue".
Traveling to and from Tibetan areas all year round, I am no longer fresh at eating matsutake mushrooms, but I am extremely eager to pick matsutake mushrooms by hand. On July 23, 2016, when I was leading a summer school fieldwork in Benzilan Village, Diqing Tibetan District, I received a call from Dawa Hereli, the grandson of Benzilan Shiyi Toast, whom I met 8 years ago during my research in Diqing Tibetan Area, and my old friend who had been missing for nearly 8 years was contacted by a picture of "Yunnan University Ethnology and Sociology College Field Summer School to Our Town to Investigate" in the circle of friends of government officials in Benzilan Town, and he warmly invited me to revisit Shiyi Village and revisit Shiyi Tusi Mansion.
The next morning, we drove to Benzilan Shiyi Village, which is surrounded by mountains, and now Shiyi Village is far from being as high and rugged and steep as when I first visited in 2008, and after driving for more than half an hour, along the babbling stream, several typical Tibetan watchtower-style houses scattered in the lush forest and mountain sky appeared in front of us, and the long-lost Shiyi Village arrived. After visiting the old site of shiyi tusiguan again and paying homage to the ruins of shiyi toast house, Dawa hereli proposed to take us to pick up matsutake mushrooms.
The woodland with matsutake mushrooms growing in Shiyi Village is far from the village, and after driving along the winding road for more than half an hour, we arrived at our destination. Armed with sticks, we scattered, stepping on the soft woodland, breathing in the air soaked in the pine forest, one foot high and one foot low to start the "pine hunting" journey. This woodland can be said to be the "old nest" of Dawa here, and Dawa here tells us that every year he comes here to pick up matsutake mushrooms, and every time he picks up matsutake mushrooms, he carefully backfills the root holes of the matsutake mushrooms with wooden pipes and soil in order, and finally covers the fallen leaves. The following year, there will be fungi growing near this pit. Even so, picking matsutake mushrooms is extremely difficult. The branches above our heads and in front of us forced us to lean forward, the drizzle of rain had soaked our coats, and the most difficult thing was to find matsutake mushrooms. Matsutake is only 2 to 3 cm from the ground arch, and the surface color is very similar to the color of the fallen leaves, even experienced veterans are difficult to find, and what is most needed to find matsutake is care, patience and concentration. In the sound of trampling on the fallen leaves, there was the cry of Dawa here, and his experience helped him find the first pine mushroom on the trip, and we also found two pine mushroom nests in succession. Although there were not many matsutake mushrooms, we were overjoyed, and we returned with a red plastic bag on the side of the road containing a few precious matsutake mushrooms and other edible mushrooms that we picked up by hand.
In Japan, the price of matsutake mushrooms is calculated on a per-piece or per-slice basis, and a small portion of beef rice can be multiplied by a few thin slices of matsutake mushrooms. In the Tibetan dietary lineage, matsutake mushrooms are by no means as valuable as they are in Japan. For Tibetans, a few scattered matsutake mushrooms, if they cannot be sold on the market, are not much different from the method of consumption and other miscellaneous mushrooms. Back in the old house in Dawa, Dawa's sister-in-law has been waiting at the door early, the Tibetan people have a tradition of being in charge of the family, and after the parents are old, the eldest in the family, both men and women, inherit all the family business and serve the parents, as well as take care of the brothers and sisters who are monks and minor siblings. Dawa's sister-in-law, a beautiful and robust Tibetan woman, took the bag in our hands, and in a short while a bowl of wild mushrooms mixed with tiger palm mushrooms, matsutake mushrooms, porcini mushrooms and several other unknown mushrooms was brought to us, as well as rice dumplings, butter tea, water-brewed rice dumplings and pipa meat, which gave us different taste stimulation and satisfaction.
Charcoal-grilled matsutake mushrooms, stills from the documentary "China on the Tip of the Tongue".
After eating this matsutake feast, I suddenly remembered a story told by a classmate who worked at Shangri-La, and a Japanese guest he had received was in tears after seeing the matsutake stewed chicken, freshly fried matsutake and chilled fresh matsutake on the table. The Japanese guest told him that in Japan, matsutake is as precious as life. Recalling the different perceptions of matsutake by the two peoples, I suddenly found that the same food contains very different histories and cultures for different ethnic groups.
The original authors are Wang Jianmin, Yang Zhengwen, Li Zhinong
Excerpt from Xiao Shuyan
Editor 丨 Zhang Ting
Introduction part proofreading 丨 Lucy