Wuyishan Cuisine

Wuyi Mountain is occupied by kinds of flora and fauna and the dishes cooked with legal wild animals are very famous here, snakes, hare, goat, muntjac, etc. are all popular on tables. Other frequently used food materials include pork, fresh fish, domestic animals, eggs, beans, mushrooms, russula, bamboo shoots and vegetables. With fresh material, Wuyishan dishes use any of all Chinese cooking ways, quick-fry, stir-fry, braise, stew, bake, roast, steam… and pay a lot attention to nutrition. Local specialties of Wuyishan include Mashed Chicken with Winter Bamboo Shoots, Shredded Snake Meat with Orchid, Grass Carp with Chrysanthemum, Stewed Mud Fish with Silk Noodles, etc.

Except wild animal meat, Wuyishan food culture is rich also in its various flavor feasts, which are outstanding in tastes, shapes and types. There are Wengong feast, wild animal meat feast, farm feast…Manting Feast is a kind of feast for "immortals" with some legendary colors, the Eight Diagrams feast has been being in vogue for 800 years, snake feast is tasty with various patterns, and the like.

Wuyishan’ liquors are also well-known; there are Wuyi Qinquan, Chrysanthemum Wine, Long-noded Pit Viper Liquor, Rice Wine made in October.

Local snacks worth a try, too. The famous are ficus pumila jelly and affine cudweed.

Ficus Pumila Jelly (薜荔冻)
It is a cool and refreshing snack particularly suitable in summer. To dry the Ficus pumila under the sun, make it to be a semi-caky beverage, and then enjoy it after mixing with honey and cane sugar.

Affine Cudweed (鼠曲果)
To steam the fresh and tender affine cudweed and rice milk separately and then mixed them together with mushroom, shredded pork, shredded bamboo shoot, pickles, and then stuffed into a dumpling. It is a kind of snack with rural features and exclusive to Tomb-sweeping Festival on April.4th or 5th.