The Weishan morning market looks like poisonous mushrooms. (Sinking/Floating/Figure)
"When the rainy season comes, all the bacteria come out, and there is a smell of fungi in the air." The writer Mr. Wang Zengqi wrote this in "Taste in the World, Comfortable and Calm".
Every rainy season, the wild mushrooms in Yunnan begin to grow wildly, which is perhaps the most anticipated season for Yunnan people every year. The fungus appeared in the wet market and the table quickly, and it was also accompanied by the poisoning news like an urban legend.
Some people say that they see a little person in a green hat dancing on a table; some people say that they feel that they are sitting on the bottom of the deep sea, and the chandelier overhead has become seaweed; some people say that they feel that they have become a milkshake; some people say that they see that their home is full of colorful flowers, and there are elves dancing around him...
"Look at the villain" has become a joke about eating wild mushrooms, which sounds fantastic to even some romantic descriptions, which makes us in the provinces curious to try what kind of experience wild mushroom poisoning will be.
In fact, wild fungal poisoning is not something that can be joked at all.
Every May, the Yunnan Health and Construction Commission issues warnings of wild fungal poisoning and maps of common poisonous bacteria. According to the analysis report of wild fungal poisoning by the Yunnan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2011 to 2017, a total of 1789 cases of wild fungal poisoning were reported in Yunnan Province, with 7966 poisoned people and 219 deaths. A headline on the hot search in 2020 said that the number of deaths from wild mushroom poisoning in Yunnan exceeded the number of deaths from the new crown in Yunnan.
The symptoms of wild bacteria poisoning are divided into 6 types: the most common are actually vomiting, diarrhea gastrointestinal poisoning, in addition to hemolytic type, liver damage type, respiratory and circulatory failure type, photosensitive dermatitis type and the most heard "see the villain" neuro-psychiatric type.
Another serious name for "Looking at villains" is Villain's Vision Illusion, which is caused by an alkaloid similar to the hallucinogenic drug lsd (lysergic acid ethylenediamine). In the urban legend about wild mushroom poisoning, the fungus that can make you see the "little man" is Mizu qing, which is called Xiaomei Porcini mushroom, which is a member of the porcini family.
Frankly speaking, I was also summoned to Yunnan by the legend of the little man who saw the hand qing. Although I don't really want to experience the poisoning myself, I am still curious about seeing the villain, and what makes me more curious is how delicious the wild mushrooms in Yunnan, especially the green hands, are, so that people can know that it is 100% poisonous, and they still want to eat it.
Weishan Ancient City (Ups and Downs/Photos)
My journey to find bacteria in Yunnan began in Weishan. Weishan Mountain is located in the northern section of Ailao Mountain and Wuliang Mountain, adjacent to Dali City. It is a national historical and cultural city, the Nanzhao state originated here during the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, and in the Yuan Dynasty, the Dali Duan clan that we all heard about began to build Tucheng here. Today's Weishan Ancient City was founded in the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, with a history of more than 600 years, and is one of the best-preserved Ming and Qing ancient architectural complexes in China.
The travel guide will highly recommend Weishan's quaint "three squares and one wall", "four in five patios" civil structure characteristic buildings, as well as tie-dye, candied fruit, soy sauce manufacturing factories that inherit traditional crafts, as well as a variety of snacks that can be eaten from morning to night: Weishan one noodle noodle, baba meat bait, cold powder, green bean cake.
In the original plan, I would only stay in Weishan for one night, but I accidentally stayed for five days, and the reason was very simple.
On the evening when we first arrived at Weishan, we sat on a small bench on the patio of the restaurant to eat, and chef Kun said that we were lucky, and today we had freshly peeled walnuts and freshly marketed mushrooms. Busy clipped a chopstick fungus entrance, couldn't help squinting, hmm... This tender and silky texture, and this overflowing freshness...
Local friends said that there are two kinds of restaurants that can eat mushrooms, one is called "Master Kun", one is called "Other", the moment the mushrooms are introduced, I only took ten seconds to quickly decide, stay, cancel the subsequent trip, stay and eat for five days, otherwise I will definitely regret it when I leave.
I was so easily conquered by one bite, and even funnierally, I ate nothing more than chanterelles that day—in the Yunnan people's "wild mushroom contempt chain", chanterelles really have no status, and at most they are only a little better than those without names.
Sautéed chanterelles (sinking/floating/pictured)
Yes, in the hearts of Yunnan people, wild mushrooms have a chain of contempt. At the top of this chain of contempt are dried bacillus, chicken fir, matsutake mushroom, porcini mushroom, truffle, and the second layer is morel mushroom, tiger palm fungus, bamboo thorn, all of which are well-known, even foreigners like us have heard of it.
Then acting as the dividing line of the chain of contempt is the blue head fungus, which was once regarded as a poisonous fungus in the early years because of its turquoise color, and has only been recognized in recent decades as a delicious and common strain.
Matsutake thorn (sinking and floating./photo)
Stuffed morel mushrooms (sinking/floating/photo)
Below the blue head fungus is the so-called "miscellaneous bacteria", which have names, such as the chanterelles I ate on the first day, and then the red mushrooms that look very similar to the color, as well as the patina, milk sauce mushrooms, grain ripe mushrooms, etc., and then, there are the miscellaneous mushrooms that do not even have a name.
The next morning, after the rain washed away the old cobblestone road of Weishan Ancient City, it glowed with a beautiful blue luster, and I wore a raincoat and crowded into the crowd of people in the vegetable market to catch the early market. Cactus fruit, fig, dragon fruit, mango... The fruits of the Yunnan morning market are really bright and charming after the rain. But the only protagonist I want to look for is wild mushrooms.
I squeezed in front of a small stall, some stalls only scattered with not much messy fungus, it looks like the surrounding villagers themselves go up the mountain to pick, some stalls are much more professional, with beautiful and neat matsutake - I myself recognize, only matsutake mushrooms, but also the neatly arranged one.
I asked the stall owner one by one what it was, what it was, and the naked foreigners who didn't understand things and couldn't buy it looked like foreigners, and they didn't bother to answer one by one. I vowed to remember them all, but I almost forgot them all when I turned my head - so many dozens of kinds of mushrooms, looking so similar, the stall owners with a strong rural tone, I don't know how to write the names of those so-and-so bacteria, how can they really remember it.
Ikumi Tsubasa (Sinking /Floating/Photo)
On this day, the only thing I learned to recognize was the legendary Jian Zhi Qing. They are all dark red with a rust color, the inside of the umbrella cover is a bright yellow, and the umbrella cover and the handle are chubby and tender at first glance. Poke the inside of the umbrella cover with your finger, and the yellow part will instantly turn cyan, which is the origin of its name "See Hand Blue".
Naturally, I didn't have the good intention to poke the stall owner's hand to witness this change, and I didn't have the courage to buy back to the inn to do it myself, but I was secretly determined to eat it in these two days.
I didn't expect the fulfillment of this wish to come so quietly.
At noon that day, we went to eat wild mushroom hot pot. After boiling for several hours, the local chicken and various mushrooms added a highly saturated golden yellow color, and it was so rich that it was almost gelatinous and viscous.
We anxiously waited for it to grunt and tumble in the unbridled aroma of the chicken mushroom soup, did not dare to start in advance when the stew time was not enough, for fear of accidentally poisoning, this is simply torture, we can only find Master Kun to ask some of the distractions, for example, what can this soup add to be so golden, what kind of bacteria are there in it...
A whole pot of mushrooms was boiled to intertwine and lose its original appearance, master Kun sometimes said that this was already difficult to identify, patiently and carefully observed, he told us: this is matsutake mushrooms, that is the grain ripe fungus, and that piece is the green hand.
The rice friend who caught the hand green seemed to have won the lottery, screamed excitedly and hurriedly stuffed it into his mouth, and then triumphantly announced that it was delicious. It's really enviable—we've never seen the world's foreigners.
Native chicken wild mushroom hot pot (sinking/floating/photo)
I drank bowl after bowl of chicken and phalagmite soup, only to find that the taste was so delicious and rich that it was strongly aggressive, as if after drinking it, I could not remember any human taste I had ever tasted. I drank bowl after bowl until my stomach and taste buds were satisfied to the point where I couldn't sustain myself.
In the presence of this native chicken and pheasant soup, all restraint and self-discipline can be naturally dropped, leaving only the natural spontaneous sensory experience, enjoying the pleasure of the food itself without worry.
At the end of a meal, I don't know if I have eaten to see The Green Hands, I want to drink so many bowls, it is impossible to be unlucky enough not to eat a bite? But I still don't know what it tastes like.
The night before I left Weishan, I finally ate fried hand green, a plate of pure, simple, authentic fried hand green.
I saw that the hand green should have been cut thinly and fried in wide oil. In the plains, the boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of rapeseed oil is 335 degrees Celsius, and at the altitude where Weishan mountain is located, according to Chef Kun, he measured that the boiling point of water is about 90 degrees Celsius and the boiling point of rapeseed oil is 320 degrees Celsius.
Regardless of whether this measurement is accurate or not, one thing is certain, the boiling point of oil is much higher than that of water, and the high temperature can destroy the toxicity of the alkaloids contained in the green hand. Under the purpose of destroying toxicity, the time required for oil to fry the hand green is much shorter than that of boiling, so the crisp taste of the hand green is naturally better preserved - it is said that the hand green is delicious, and the delicious thing is that it is soft and crisp.
Fried to see the hand green (floating / photo)
When I was addicted to this taste, Master Kun told the story of a friend who was poisoned by a friend who did not have enough time to stir-fry in order to pursue the crispness of the hand. It is said that every Yunnan person has several friends who eat wild mushroom poisoning, which is really true.
Looking at my slightly changed face, Master Kun smiled and waved his hand and said, "It doesn't matter, my restaurant has been so many years old, no one has ever eaten mushroom poisoning, rest assured." What kind of fungus is poisonous and what is not poisonous, and how to do it to get rid of poison, I know very well. ”
And I also took the opportunity to ask about the question in the vegetable farm early in the morning before, obviously, whether the fungus is poisonous is not what I thought the color was bright and poisonous, simple and simple is not poisonous, so how can I tell if the fungus is poisonous?
Master Kun is a wonderful person, every time there is a problem, he is like opening the conversation box, often while saying that the practice of this dish is a secret can not tell you, while accidentally saying what secrets. And this time it was the turn of such a serious question, he went back to the kitchen to take out the fungus and began the on-site teaching.
I finally touched the hand green, witnessed the magical process of it turning blue immediately with a pinch of the hand, and also saw the real poisonous bacteria - a tourist bought a bag of mushrooms in the morning market, brought a chef to identify whether it is poisonous, coincidentally, that is the real poisonous mushroom, how to deal with the kind of toxicity that can not be eaten.
As for how to judge? I was taught all kinds of "what ifs", all kinds of standards, and I was ashamed to say that I hardly remembered one, and the only thing I remembered was one: if there were traces of insect bites on the fungus, then it was not poisonous, because if the worms ate it, we humans would be fine if they ate it. This is really a simple and crude standard, and in this dimension, bugs are really much smarter than us humans.
The wild mushrooms in the Weishan Morning Market vegetable market are dazzling. (Sinking/Floating/Figure)
After dinner, we decided to go to the reservoir outside the town, and it didn't take long to realize that we were leaving too late. Night suddenly fell, and a group of people and the dogs of the inn, the shadows were pulled obliquely under the dim street lamps. Gradually, there were no street lights, and the stars lit up. The darkness of the night always makes people feel lonely. But the path is mixed with dust, the smell of fresh fertilizer from the farmhouse, and the barking of the nursing dogs along the way. Each one is a reminder that we are not alone.
Sure enough, when I walked to the reservoir, I couldn't see anything, and even suddenly it started to rain. But even if you go to a reservoir that you know you can't see, just like you know what it is about clouds that you can't catch while chasing the sky.
Along the way, I walked with some strange excitement, full of psychedelic feelings, I don't know whether it was because I ate the legendary psychedelic Mitsuru at dinner, or because I knew that I had eaten Mizumi Qing and deliberately let myself be psychedelic. Whatever the conclusion, this trip to find bacteria, at this point, I can declare its consummation.
ups and downs