Politics aside (uhhh Tibetan food a subset of Chinese food?), so many foodways to explore thanks to the work these guys have put into this map and writeup

Politics aside (uhhh Tibetan food a subset of Chinese food?), so many foodways to explore thanks to the work these guys have put into this map and writeup
https://chinesecookingdemystified.substack.com/p/63-chinese-cuisines-the-complete

Spent a year teaching English in Kunming so this bit delicious to read.

"It’s probably fair to say that Yunnan has the most culinary diversity of any province in China.[...] But really, when it comes to sheer density of distinct dishes? This is it. What Papua New Guinea is to language, Yunnan is to food.

"The cause of the diversity is no mystery. Yunnan, historically, was (1) reasonably agriculturally productive, but at the same time (2) insanely difficult to traverse. It’s rocky all over, certainly, but doing a lot of the heavy lifting was the notoriously treacherous Hengduan Mountains - a range which historically cut Yunnan into three distinct trading networks.

🔭🔎 scouting near and far :: thought follower

"West Yunnan traded just as much with Upper Burma and the Shan hills as they did with Kunming. Pu’er-Sipsongpanna had a similar relationship to the south, to Lanna in Thailand (Honghe is a bit of a hodgepodge of ethnic groups and is hard to categorize). The Kunming plateau was solidly within the Chinese trading network, and so Han Yunnan shows a number of similarities with Guizhou and Sichuan. Up in Dali and Lijiang, however, you’re really starting to see the influence of the Tibetan plateau (and a bit of influence from Tibetan traders as well).

"And slicing through them all was the Hui Muslim caravans, which bridged the province not just internally, but also out to Burma, Thailand, and, of course, China proper."

nom nom nom guò qiáo mǐ xiàn 过桥米线