The Abundance of Mushrooms

The Mushrooms, Shangri-la, Yunnan, China.

All of my editing has reminded me to share more photos from China here. Despite the fact that I am Chinese, I had a hard time eating and getting a balanced diet in China. Most days I skipped meat and countless numbers of restaurants because they did not look sanitary in the way that I was used to. In Taiwan, where I grew up, I eat lots of street food and night markets are my favorite places to sample small eats. China is different, especially rural China. Running water is not a given. Neither is electricity. Or a restroom within the restaurant. Then there's the problem of soap. In China, I travel with plenty of tissue (not provided 99% of the time), soap, and water. Even after taking those precautions, I remained careful about choosing a restaurant that looked clean.

The only place where food was not a worry was in Dali, Yunnan (western China). Dali has a temperate climate and is warmer than locales north such a Lijiang and Shangri-la. There was a wonderful pay-as-you-wish veggie place that volunteer Buddhists ran that I frequented. And the best part was that mushroom season is during summertime in Yunnan. There was a gorgeous abundance of it everywhere as I sampled many wild varieties cooked up in all sorts of delicious ways. It was heaven eating mushrooms daily and having lots of vegetables. This batch of mushrooms drying was taken on the streets of Shangri-la.