Banjiu photography

Bitter Chinese herbal medicine. Graphics/network

In the distribution of taste buds,

It's spicy and sweet on the tip of the tongue.

Acid is at both ends of the middle part of the tongue,

But the pain is at the base of the tongue.

Just like the once popular XX on the tip of the tongue,

People like to taste sweetness,

Disdain to think about bitter taste buds,

Although it is the largest member of the taste buds.

But if you can't taste the bitterness,

At the beginning of human origin, perhaps like Shennong, human beings were poisoned by Herba Lysimachiae.

Eating or not is a problem.

Whether to eat or not is more of a problem.

Bitterness is equally important in Bitterness and Bitterness.

It is a popular saying that people in Hunan suffer from hardships, being bullied and being bored. But if the "hardship" is returned to the taste itself, how bitter Hunan people can eat and what kind of suffering they can eat.

Some people like to eat sour food, while others are addicted to sugar. The same is broccoli, some people hate its bitter taste, and some people eat it with relish. Scientists tell us that taste differences are very common among people all over the world.

According to statistics, about a quarter of people don't realize the unique bitterness of broccoli or spore cabbage when they eat it, while others are very sensitive to bitterness.

Spore Chinese cabbage map/network

Whether you can bear hardships is related to different tastes. Its root lies in the screening of genes by the environment.

In the tradition of homology of medicine and food, people in Hunan eat very hard.

Whether Hunan people can bear hardships, we might as well consider first, and eat whatever they can.

Several herbs are often added to soup. Graphics/network

The Bitter Story of Hunan

In the saying that "spring is sour, summer is bitter, autumn is spicy and winter is salty". Natsuna's suffering, first of all, is bitter gourd.

Bitter gourd originated in eastern India and was introduced to China in the early Ming Dynasty. According to Fei Xin's book Xing Cha Sheng Lan, Zheng He brought back many rare species that most people in China had never heard of at that time. "There is a first-class melon as big as litchi", which is the bitter gourd we eat every day today.

Bitter gourd, also known as grape, litchi, cold melon, red sheep and so on. There are more than 40 varieties. There are strange wrinkles on the surface of the fruit, and the fruit contains momordicin, which has a special bitter taste.

Hunan bitter gourd is famous for its blue mountain and white bitter gourd. It is a hybrid of local eel bitter gourd as male parent and carp bitter gourd as female parent. This is the "King of Bitter Melon" with the longest melon strips, whitest appearance, highest yield and best quality in China. Generally, the weight of a single melon is 1.5 kg, and the maximum weight is 4 kg, which is exported to all parts of the country.

Bitter gourd in the blue mountains of Hunan Province. Graphics/network

For ordinary people, bitter gourd is planted before and after the house, and there is no need for a variety, just three or four plants. Among different ways of eating, such as stir-frying and cold salad, bitter gourd stuffed with meat is the most meaningful.

What do we know about bitterness except bitter gourd?

Bitter gourd stuffed meat is salty, fresh and crisp. Graphics/network

Bitter vegetables: "Peony tofu" sounds gorgeous and tastes bitter.

This is a kind of dwarf tree, the scientific name is Tofu Chai, which grows by the stream ditch. The locals call it tofu leaf. "Peony Tofu" made of tofu leaves is formed by filtering the juice from the leaves and adding alkali and brine. "Peony Tofu" has a gorgeous name, but it tastes full of earthy flavor and bitterness.

In fact, this kind of tofu made of leaves is very popular in Xiangxi. For example, in some villages in Shan Ye Town, Longshan, the difference is that it is called Turtledove Tofu locally. According to Hu Rongchun, stationmaster of Liye Town Cultural Station, the turtledove tofu that my son often eats is made of leaves called turtledove tofu leaves. "It's simple. Just mash the juice and add some plant ash."

These green leaves are the raw materials for villagers to make "hibiscus tofu" by hand. Figure/Lu Qixing

In addition to bitter gourd and tofu leaves, there are more common bitter bamboo shoots, kale and dandelion. They are all bitter vegetables.

Bitter bamboo shoots. Graphics/network

Bitter fruit: a mouthful of lotus heart tea is full of bitterness.

Silkworm chestnut is a kind of tree widely grown in eastern Hunan, southern Hunan and western Hunan, with bitter fruit, also known as bitter chestnut. In many places, including Zhuzhou and Chenzhou, people will go to the mountains to collect bitter chestnuts when they are short of food, and then make tofu or dry them for dinner.

Bitter chestnut map/network

Bitter fruit, in addition to bitter chestnut in Hunan, there is also a widely distributed lotus seed. Mature lotus plumule contains a lot of organic alkali, and the seedless lotus plumule has bitter taste.

In Huashi Town, 10,000 mu of lotus flowers in Xiang Lian are in full bloom, a large number of egrets soar in the sky, and the eighteen arhats in Danxia landform echo each other from afar, forming a beautiful picture. Figure/Lu Qixing

Xiangtan County is the most famous lotus seed in Hunan. The lotus seeds produced by Baishipu, Huashi and Jinshi in this county are called "three lotus seeds in one inch", and the three lotus seeds are arranged together, just one inch, hence the name.

The famous handmade white lotus in Huashi Town, also known as Village Sanlian, is the best among lotus flowers. The picture shows the white lotus. Figure/Lu Qixing

"Cunsanlian" is cooked, and top-grade white rock sugar is added to make "rock sugar lotus seed soup", which is milky white, sweet and delicious, and becomes a famous banquet dish in central Hunan.

"Crystal sugar lotus seed soup", which is flat and sweet in nature, has the effects of lowering blood pressure, strengthening spleen and stomach, nourishing brain and tranquilizing mind, nourishing essence, moistening lung and clearing heart-fire, removing annoyance and diuresis, and complements big fish and big meat, adding to the fun of the banquet. Lotus plumule can be made into lotus plumule tea. In addition to the bitter taste of ordinary tea drinks, lotus plumule tea has a unique bitter taste, which is directed at people's hearts through the root of the tongue.

Crystal sugar tremella lotus seed soup. Graphics/network

Lily in Longshan County also has bitter taste. According to the introduction of Lily Industry Office in Longshan County, several towns with Shipai Town as the center have a lily planting area of 85,000 mu. Its variety is Lilium lancifolium.

The planting area of this lily in China is about 6.5438+0.5 million mu. Lily is a perennial herb, which generally eats fleshy scales at the roots.

A wild lily on Hino Mountain. Figure/Lu Qixing

The characteristic of Lilium lancifolium is that it must be dug within one year, otherwise it will rot. In mid-July every year, Longshan Lily enters the peak season of harvest and sales. By August and September, 200 tons of fresh lilies will be shipped out from here every day. Some of them were sold to Changsha.

Lily tastes bitter because it contains many alkaloids. This bitter ingredient, whether fried, cold or stewed, has become a summer dish.

The bigger the fresh lily, the better. The largest is 72 1. Fresh lilies are mainly sold in Shanghai and Guangdong. Figure/Lu Qixing

Bitter grain: King Ge has several hundred catties, and the largest one has several hundred catties.

Compared with bitter gourd and lotus seeds, bitter buckwheat provides food, even life-saving rations. Buckwheat can be harvested in 80 days and planted twice a year. Buckwheat blooms at midnight, so it is also called "midnight flower". It belongs to a dicotyledonous plant of Polygonaceae, commonly known as buckwheat, and its scientific name is buckwheat Tatar. Tartary buckwheat likes to be cool and barren, and it grows mostly in alpine mountainous areas, and its seeds are edible.

Tartary buckwheat map/network

Like it, there is pueraria lobata. Digging pueraria lobata was once a rural landscape in Jishou, western Hunan. Every year at the end of summer, during the slack season, people go to the deep forest with hoes and firewood knives. Many times, they have to climb the cliff, hook the trees on the edge of the cliff with hoes, climb halfway up the mountain and start looking for kudzu vine on the steep hillside.

Digging kudzu is for Ge Fen. There is a sweet potato, which is short and thick in the middle, and its tiny roots are rich in starch and bitter. It's called pueraria lobata. Fresh kudzu roots should be washed after being dug home. Pueraria lobata with high powder content should be leveled on a stone and broken repeatedly until the pulp of Pueraria lobata oozes out, washed with clear water, and the juice should be screened into a jar with a sieve. After starch is precipitated and made into kudzuvine root cake, some water is dried first, then wrapped with gauze or paper, hung and dried, and finally dried, which is the best Ge Fen.

Pueraria lobata powder map/network

Bitter wine: Bitter wine means waiting for your husband to come back.

Bitterness exists not only in our vegetables, fruits and grains, but also in our drinks. Although most of the daily tea is bitter, in Jianghua, there are still teas that deliberately play the banner of bitter tea. Jianghua bitter tea is a typical bitter tea. The content of polyphenols in fresh leaves of summer tea is as high as 40%, so it is more bitter than ordinary tea.

Bitter drinks include tea and bitter gourd wine. In western Hunan, northern Hunan and other places, this is a very special wine. It pays attention to "the melon is in the bottle and the bottle is on the shelf", fixing the bottle on the bitter gourd shelf and letting the bitter gourd grow up in the bottle. After the bitter gourd grows into a turquoise peel in the bottle, the bottle is filled with high-alcohol and soaked for nearly two months. When the bitter gourd strips in the bottle turn yellow and soak, the wine can be turbid and drunk, and it will have a bitter taste and be refreshing.

Bitter gourd map/network

In the southwest of Hunan, there is also a bitter wine. Every year, local people mix steamed glutinous rice with folk secret liquor koji, ferment for several days, and then add mountain spring water to make wine with alcohol content above 10, which tastes bitter and sweet. Another source of the expression "bitter wine" is that there was once a couple, a famous bitter mother, who steamed an altar of water wine every year in order to wait for her husband to come back. But I didn't wait until my husband came back until I died. Later, people found dozens of jars of wine brewed by bitter mother for her husband, which was called bitter wine.

Bitter wine map/network

The newly brewed bitter wine is milky white in color, thick as silk, and sweet and slightly bitter. The top grade is bitter wine brewed on the ninth day of September, called chong yang wine, which can be put into the Spring Festival, so it is also called old wine. At that time, the color was bright, and it was silky, strong and bitter when poured out. This wine has a low alcohol content and is suitable for drinking in large quantities. Drinking in summer can quench thirst, and drinking in winter can dispel cold. It is an excellent drink for the Dong people to entertain guests. There is a saying that "don't drink bitter wine from Dongxiang, don't go to Dongjia". However, it should be noted that bitter wine has great stamina, and once it is overdone, it is difficult to wake up, even for several days.

Bitter medicine: "Good medicine tastes bitter"

About bitterness, the most intuitive taste is "good medicine tastes bitter". Today, we still have the custom of taking medicine as food. In Hunan, such as Anren's herbal stewed pig's feet, Liling's roadside well fried chicken and so on. Under the traditional concept of homology of medicine and food, Hunan people have a large number of medicinal ingredients.

Stewed trotters with Anren herbal medicine. Figure/Jin Lin

According to statistics, there are more than 4,500 species of medicinal resources in Lingnan area, accounting for 36% of the national medicinal resources, including about 4,000 species of plants. The mountains in eastern Hunan and western Hunan can be called the eastern and western walls of Hunan, both of which are suitable for the growth of medicinal materials, forming a huge drug storehouse.

For example, Atractylodes macrocephala has a production history of 400 years in Xiapingjiang, Luo Xiao Mountain. There are more than 2,000 plant species in the whole mountain range, including more than 800 Chinese herbal medicine resources/kloc-0. Comparatively speaking, the mountainous areas in western Hunan are wider and the herbal resources are worse.

Ping Jianghe in the Luo Xiao Mountains. Graphics/network

As early as the 1960s, the results of the first general survey of traditional Chinese medicine resources showed that there were 1.624 species of wild medicinal materials in the province, with a reserve of 1.5 million tons. According to the statistics of relevant departments, Hunan has always been the second largest province of Chinese herbal medicines in China. Among them, all previous dynasties herbal records:

Eucommia ulmoides Oliv Is rich in Huguang, and Hunan is good; Polyporus umbellatus and Ampelopsis were born in Heng Valley; Ligustrum lucidum was born in Wuling Valley; Atractylodes macrocephala is thin and yellow, and it is produced in Mufu Mountain.

Atractylodes macrocephala map/network

By the middle of Qing Dynasty, Xiangtan had become the national medicinal materials trading center. There are many local medicine shops with official positions 10. "All provincial drug dealers have to go to Xiangtan to get what they need." There used to be a saying that "medicine can't reach Xiangtan, and medicine can't reach Xiangtan." Xiangtan's medical status has been firmly established. By 1849, the purchase and sale of medicinal materials will reach 8 million yuan, and the pharmaceutical industry will become an important economic pillar of Xiangtan.

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Breathe with natural time series

Wenzouboke

Photography Lu Qixing

Editor Tang Bingbing Yang Yuan (intern)