Mountains Offer Both Resources and Inspiration for Food

In Guizhou, mountains once meant isolation. Difficult terrain made travel and communication challenging, contributing to the province becoming one of the less developed regions in China.

But people here learned long ago how to live with the landscape rather than against it. For many ethnic minority communities, gathering seasonal herbs and growing hardy crops in the mountains has long been part of everyday life.

During spring, our local guide Huahua, who is Miao, showed us how people in the mountains identify and use different wild herbs. Some are eaten cold in salads, some go into sour soups, some are valued for medicinal purposes, and others are ingredients mainly eaten within their own communities.

People here know their land. They know what grows after the rain, what to pick in spring, and what tastes best in different dishes. Over time, they turned what was available into food that people now travel across Guizhou to eat.