Allegra McEvedy's food guide to China's Yunnan province(4)
To burn off all that grease we hiked down (and back up again) the 1,000 steps into the infamous, churning Tiger Leaping Gorge, the most impressive point on the Yangtze river and reportedly the deepest in the world. It was well worth it to look at nature's giant, swirling milkshake.
Then on to what was until recently called Zhongdian (and before that Gyalthang in Tibetan), but was renamed Shangri-la in 2001. The authorities decided this remote Tibetan place, in the foothills of the Himalayas, was the mythical location recounted in James Hilton's cult 1933 book, Lost Horizon, and renamed it to attract tourists. It worked: a friend told me that when she visited Zhongdian in 1995, there was one guesthouse and you had to order your hot water a week in advance; now there's a population of 50,000, a good few hotels – all with running water – and you even get a full signal on your mobile. The centre felt slightly touristy, but we also felt a sense of achievement for having reached such an isolated spot.
Foodwise, Shangri-la is all about meat and preparation for the harsh winter that lasts nearly six months. The main crops are barley (for the humans) and grass (for the animals), and equal importance is attached to both. Turnips are thrown over huge wooden structures to dry in the sunlight, but essentially all fruit and veg is imported; not much grows up here. Interestingly we encountered dairy for the first time in China – of the yak variety of course: yak cheeses of various kinds, yak milk in our tea and yak butter on our toast.
Quni, our local guide, spoke with pride about how the local pigs have hair as jet black as his, so they too can absorb the heat when the sun shines, and proudly explained rhubarb was originally found in this region, before being shared with the rest of the world.
The dish to eat up here is Tibetan hotpot, made from a bubbling stock of pigs' knuckles, pork ribs, chunks of ham, dried mushrooms and, said our chef, "local medicinal herbs" the most famous being goji berry. You are then presented with plates of ingredients: meat (chicken, pork, and the ubiquitous yak), seafood (scallops, prawns and fishballs) and lots of veggies like cabbages, mushrooms and lettuce, to drop into the fire-fuelled clay pot "at your leisure" (a key phrase in the hotpot experience). You then make a dipping sauce by mixing three little pots to your liking: chopped chillies, minced garlic and fine matchsticks of ginger with soy sauce. After a day doing whatever they do up here at this extreme height and in unfiltered light, this is exactly what I'd want to sit down to eat too – especially if rounded off with some local barley wine.
