Only Beyond the Reach of Food Delivery Can You Truly Eat Well
A Note from Foodthink
China’s dining tables are sustained by the countryside, yet rural meals rarely capture our attention. We hope this piece offers some inspiration for those heading to the countryside for the Qingming holiday, and we welcome your own experiences and observations of rural dining.
I. Dining in the Village
On 8 February, we set off from Wenzhou. After a day of flights, high-speed trains, and transfers, we finally arrived back at the old family house in the Sichuan village at 9 pm. My father-in-law brought out a massive basin of pig’s ears and head meat, along with a bowl of “chili paste”. Shuer and I were so hungry we ate straight from our hands.
This is likely one of the few remaining places in China untouched by fast food, delivery services, and instant meals. Its remote location means courier deliveries still cannot reach here. Apps like Didi and Dingdong show the location as Wannianfen, but drivers and delivery riders will not take orders. Fortunately, apart from the children, no one craves cola or fried chicken, so the family’s meals are hardly disrupted.
I also briefly broke my caffeine dependence. As a heavy coffee drinker, in Wenzhou I survive on near-expired milk and cheap lattes made with slightly rancid coffee beans from convenience stores at 7.9 yuan a cup. These days during the festival, if I wanted a freshly brewed coffee, I’d have to walk 40 minutes down a mountain road, catch a bus that runs only once an hour, and ride for another hour to Weiyuan County’s Wanda Plaza. The round trip would take at least three and a half hours. Miss the return bus, and a taxi would cost at least 80 yuan.
Beyond coffee, sourcing other ingredients in the countryside is surprisingly difficult. My parents-in-law’s village has had a declining population for five years. It’s mostly elderly residents now; the young no longer farm. The elders eat vegetables and tangerines they grow themselves. For other fruits or pork, they must head to the town market. Villagers also raise chickens and ducks, but only slaughter them for festivals and guests. Even the eggs they eat come from their own hens, but they only consume unfertilised ones. If an egg is fertilised, the elders would rather save it and exchange it at a poultry farm for money.
During our 18 days in the village, we frequently tried to visit the town market, but often overslept and missed it. The elders set off before dawn at around 6 am. By 10 am, the market has packed up. The stalls feature live chickens, ducks, and rabbits rarely seen in city markets, along with live pig slaughtering. The elderly shoppers all carry bamboo baskets on their backs. The grandmothers wear purplish-red knit caps and bright red floral padded coats, while the grandfathers sport padded winter caps, military coats, or navy-blue Zhongshan suits—it’s a scene straight out of a Jia Zhangke film.
Some ingredients require a trip to the city market. During these past couple of weeks, the most memorable meal was a hotpot gathering for three families. We drove for an hour, crossing mountains, to the bustling old-town market in Rong County to gather supplies. The town market doesn’t sell what you need for hotpot: sheep soup with offal, tripe, cattle aorta, tripe, lamb rolls, or beef slices.
My brother-in-law brought out the “family treasure”: a bronze hotpot. Watching my niece use tongs to shove coal into the stove, a wave of nostalgia washed over me, transporting me back to the 1980s and 90s when we burned coal at home to cook lamb hotpot. The broth was spicy beef tallow, enriched with 500g of sheep soup. It was the first time I’d stuffed myself on proper hotpot staples like sheep stomach, intestines, tripe, and cattle aorta. My eldest brother even served two bowls of preserved chicken blood left over from slaughtering a bird; left to sit, it had set into a deep purple-red jelly.
In Sichuan, you generally don’t blanch vegetables in hotpot, as the leaves soak up too much oil. If you do eat them, it’s usually at the very end. As the hotpot meal draws to a close, everyone starts adding Chinese cabbage, celery leaves, chard, and pea shoots. The vegetables were either grown by my father-in-law or picked from a neighbour’s field. In the village, it’s perfectly acceptable for neighbours to pick vegetables from each other’s plots.
Aside from the hotpot, Fifth Aunt also cooked a stir-fry of rabbit stomachs (the rabbit’s crop/stomach). I ate nearly half a plate of the celery and spiral chilli stir-fry; it was so good I couldn’t put my chopsticks down. This dish takes considerable effort. First, the rabbit stomachs are cleaned of any gaminess using salt, vinegar, and rapeseed oil, then sliced into strips or chunks and briefly boiled. Dry chillies, young ginger, green peppers, millet peppers, pickled chillies, Sichuan peppercorns, and garlic are all cut into small pieces. The rabbit stomachs are stir-fried in rapeseed oil, followed by the prepared aromatics and chosen vegetables. Salt and cooking wine are added to taste while tossing. To properly mask the gamey flavour, plenty of pickled chillies are essential.
“Aunt and Uncle (the Sichuan terms for aunt and uncle) owe you one. Thanks to you coming back, I get to treat myself to a proper feast and upgrade my meals too, hehe,” my niece whispered to me as she swirled the tripe in the pot.
II. Crafting a Good Fish Dish, Starting with Fishing
Five years ago, every household in the village was connected to the natural gas grid, yet my father-in-law still insists on cooking with a wood-fired stove. The rice is washed, drained, and parboiled until about two-thirds cooked (or half for those who prefer it firm). A wooden steamer basket is placed inside a larger wooden bucket, lined with gauze, and the rice is poured in. Several holes are poked with chopsticks to ensure it stays fluffy and breathable. A fire is lit under the stove, water is boiled in a large iron wok, and the wooden bucket is lowered in. Once the lid is on and steam begins to escape, it steams for another 15 minutes. The result is far more fragrant and sticky than rice cooked in an electric cooker. Even without premium Wuchang rice, the aroma is unmistakable.
The spicy local crucian carp prepared by the men is also absolutely outstanding. Preparing twenty or thirty fish at once, they scrape the scales, slit the bellies, and remove the innards, keeping the swim bladders and roe intact. Each fish is fried until golden, then simmered in a pot of chilli-infused water flavoured with Pixian doubanjiang (preserved bean paste). Pre-chopped ginger, garlic, chillies, star anise, and other spices are added. The fried fish cooks in the broth for a while before fresh coriander and spring onions, pulled straight from the ground, are scattered on top. The dish is then ladled into a serving basin. Yet, to enjoy this simple spicy carp, it takes five hours from fishing to table. Behind the relaxed pleasure of tender fish lies a demand for considerable patience and hard work.
In truth, it’s hard to find fish in Sichuan townships. You can only buy crucian carp at the town market during the New Year, and even ordinary carp goes for over ten yuan per 500g—nearly half again as much as in Wenzhou markets. If you want to eat everyday river fare like fish, prawns, or shellfish on a regular basis, you have to go to the county town. For river crabs or mantis shrimp, you’re practically limited to hotels. Eating fish has become a deeply ritualistic part of the New Year celebrations.
During the festival, relatives love heading down to the fish pond to cast a line. My husband, his eldest brother, and his cousin form the unshakeable fishing trio. The three of them will often spend three or four hours hauling in forty or fifty fish. Honestly, I never quite grasp the appeal of fishing; my mind keeps wandering to the sheer convenience of pumping the pond dry and casting a wide net to catch them all at once. But the men have the patience to sit on the field embankment by the pond until dusk. They dig a few earthworms from the soil, bait the hooks, cast their floats out to the deeper water, and keep a sharp eye on them. The moment a bite sends the bobber dipping, the rod comes up instantly.
Ever since Fifth Uncle started aquaculture, villagers from two or three nearby hamlets have regularly come to his pond for their daily fish. They find out in advance when he plans to harvest, agree on a time, and show up together to buy in bulk. Instead of commercial feed, the fish are given a mash of coarse grains like sweet potatoes and corn, which gives them a better flavour. They are also cheaper than in the township: while fish usually go for 12 to 15 yuan per 500g in the market, Fifth Uncle sells them for 10 yuan per 500g.
Towards the end of last year, both Fifth Uncle and Fifth Aunt went to work in the town’s restaurants to help out in the kitchen, leaving the pond untended for nearly a month. This year has been a warm winter with large day-night temperature swings. On top of that, Fifth Uncle bought a batch of cheap fingerlings that already had scratches on their scales. As a result, a good number of fish perished in February.
When we first arrived back in the village, dozens of small dead fish were floating belly-up on the surface. Unlike the dark crucian carp sold at fish stalls in Wenzhou, native Sichuan crucian carp are white. My husband scooped out all the dead ones, turned on an aerator to oxygenate the water, and pumped fresh water in from a lower dip to flush the pond. Gradually, he managed to catch a few small live crucian carp.
Now in his sixties, Fifth Uncle has no intention of going out to work again. This year, he plans to stay home, till the fields, grow vegetables, and raise fish and pigs.
In fact, Fifth Uncle and his wife only returned to the village at ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve. After spending the first day of the lunar new year playing cards, Fifth Uncle was up early on the second day, pushing a wheelbarrow from house to house to collect discarded precast concrete slabs demolished from old houses. He was using them to renovate the fish pond. First, he mixed cement in the courtyard, cut the slabs to the right size, plastered cement over them, and laid them along the inner edges of the pond bed. This was to stop water from leaking away due to holes dug by crayfish and eels at the bottom. Because the pond had fallen into disrepair over the years, the entire refurbishment project is expected to take half a year to complete. During the Spring Festival, Fifth Uncle laid about 50 metres of slabs, completing just one-fiftieth of the work.
So by next year’s Spring Festival, Fifth Uncle will be able to suit up in waterproof overalls and knee-high rubber boots, wade into the pond, and surely wade out carrying several lively silver and grass carp. And we city folk returning home will finally get to enjoy more sophisticated dishes like boiled fish and sizzling fish.
Three: Pea Shoots Tenderer Than the City’s
She absolutely adores them. Under her expert guidance, we stripped nearly half a mu of the pea field completely bare. “What a treat for the tastebuds, my bowels are turning green with it.” By late February, the pea vines started to toughen and began producing thin, flat pods.
In recent years, pea shoots have become a highly coveted premium vegetable online. On Dingdong, they consistently sell for around 10 yuan for 200g, but the ones you get are often quite woody and tough to chew if your teeth aren’t up to it. In the town market, they usually go for 4 to 5 yuan per 500g, jumping to 10 yuan per 500g during the New Year. This Spring Festival, thanks to the village’s pea patches, we finally achieved “pea shoot freedom”.
I checked the official website of Weiyuan County, where a news report stated: “Wutong Village cultivates over 600 mu of peas, with an output value of 3,000 to 4,000 yuan per mu. Growing pea shoots is highly profitable with a short cycle; the harvest window lasts from October each year to February the following year, allowing for eight to ten pickings per season. More than 200 households in the village are currently growing peas. At present, Wutong Village sells its harvested pea shoots to cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing at 9 yuan per kilogram.”
In a village of fewer than 3,000 permanent residents, where every household has less than two mu of arable land, villagers are vying to plant peas. Many young people, spotting the lucrative potential of pea shoots, have deliberately returned to their hometown to lease seven or eight mu of land, becoming large-scale growers.
There are three substantial main dishes for the New Year feast, all revolving around pork: braised pork belly (Sichuan-style), meatball soup, and crispy pork soup. Yet none of them can be made without pea shoots.
For the braised pork belly, only the fatty layers of skin-on pork belly are selected. They are slit in the middle, stuffed with a filling of red beans and black sesame seeds, and the skin is glazed with dark soy sauce. The meat is then placed on top of sticky rice and steamed. When you pick up a slice of fei gan er (pork fat, in the local Sichuan dialect), it melts on the tongue—silky, sweet, and never cloying.
The meatball soup is light and tender. Take pork that is 30 per cent fat and 70 per cent lean, add spring onions, ginger, salt, pepper, and light soy sauce, then mince it into a paste, stirring constantly until completely smooth and granule-free. Mix in sweet potato starch and egg white, beating until uniform. Poach the meat into balls and boil them through. Finally, add cabbage and pea shoots to the broth; after just 30 seconds, the dish is ready. But in the countryside, the meatballs are actually square: the minced meat is frozen into a block and then sliced, making it far easier to cook.
The crispy pork soup uses pork ribs or pork belly. The meat or ribs are marinated in salt, minced ginger, cooking wine, sugar, and crushed Sichuan peppercorns. A batter is made from sweet potato starch and eggs (crucially, no water must be added). The meat is evenly coated in this batter and deep-fried in rapeseed oil until golden. The fried pork is then simmered in a broth until tender and falling apart. Finally, cabbage and pea shoots are blanched in the soup, following the same finishing step as the meatball soup.
IV. Eating Meat in the Countryside
Pork remains the go-to protein for everyday home cooking. Prices vary depending on the cut. The most basic cut, pure back fat, sells for 8 yuan a 500g; pork belly for 15; ribs for 22; and marrow bones for 30. Cold-tossed pig ears and head meat are priced at 25 yuan a 500g. Not many households in our village raise pigs. If a family hosts a New Year banquet, they usually invite a butcher to come and slaughter it on site. Others wait until their piglets grow to around 150 kg, then drive a tractor to transport them to a nearby slaughterhouse. Even though the pork eaten in the countryside is bought, pork belly boiled at home has a springy, tender texture. It tastes far better than the tough, discount cuts bought at budget supermarkets in the city.
In rural Sichuan, the elderly stick to a traditional agrarian rhythm—rising with the sun and resting at dusk—making the perception of time rather fluid. Shuer and I spend our days at a leisurely pace, wandering aimlessly through the fields. On the day we climbed up to visit my husband’s youngest uncle, I watched several men hoist a pig onto a scale, then guide it into the back of a light truck, ready to take it to the township butcher.
Doing a quick mental tally, during our twenty days in the countryside from 8 February to 3 March, our family of three, along with visiting relatives, consumed a tenth of a pig (including ears, head meat, snout, and belly), dozens of white crucian carp, made eighteen trips to the township morning market, and admired the rapeseed flowers for nineteen days straight. This trip to the village also cured Shuer of her fear of dogs. She spends her days squatting by the coop, waiting for glossy black hens to lay eggs, then carefully collecting the fresh eggs still marked with droppings. All the while, she’s counting down the days until her cousin from the county seat returns to the grandfather’s old house in the village to take her out to play.
This year has been a mild winter; by mid-February, the chirping and murmuring of swallows could already be heard in the courtyard. There’s a local saying that swallows building a nest under one’s own eaves brings good fortune. On the day we headed back to warmer climes, we slipped out quietly, careful not to startle the swallows. The rapeseed flowers swayed in the breeze, turning every hill and valley a brilliant golden yellow. Until next year, the rustic tastes of Sichuan.
All images in this article are provided by the author.
Editor: Xiaodan