Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Aug 10, 2019 17:45:13 GMT
www.saveur.com/harvesting-bamboo-china-sichuan-province/
In a maze of green, Xiao Zai Hui’s vivid red hair is a beacon. Her ebullient laugh is a guide through the dense, vertical foliage of 40-foot bamboo stalks. It’s been four years since she began a life of harvesting bamboo here—on a plot of land her husband’s family has owned for generations—and her skills are sharp. She stops and crouches at the base of a towering bamboo stalk, searching below the soil for a shoot that’s yet to break the surface.
Though the bamboo must be dug up from under the soil, Xiao begins by gazing upward. The key to finding the ripest, biggest shoots is identifying the plants with the leafiest tops.
The bamboo she finds here in China's Shunan Zhuhai National Park, in Sichuan province, will be the base for a variety of her favorite soups and stir-fries, many of which she will prepare for the touring guests she and her husband, Chun Wein, host in the spare rooms of their home. A hotel of sorts, catering to the quickly growing population of Chinese urbanites looking to escape the dense crowds of their home cities, this type of country home has its own special name: long jia le ("le" here means "happiness"). In the park, which encompasses Xiao's family's house, the 11,000 acres of preserved land filled with wild-growing bamboo is known colloquially as the Bamboo Sea. It was once an untouched paradise that only locals ventured into—20 years ago, Xiao and Chun would walk a narrow, mossy footpath along the unpaved roads to his family's ancestral home—but these days, tourists arrive by the busload, seeking seclusion and fresh air, and helping to create a new industry for bamboo gatherers like Xiao and her husband.