The Local Food of Dai, the Southwestern Minority of China

Although I'm not a member of the minority Dai, their tradtions and foods are what I really interested in. So let me introduce some of them.

Dai is a Chinese minority that is mostly located in the southwestern province Yunnan in China, where it is covered by vast rainforest. The Dai's villages are always surrounded by patches of bamboos. So the bamboos are only used as the construction materials but also ideal tools for cooking and a main source of food.

Dai people cook their everyday meal with bamboos. Most frequently, they cut a part of bamboo for about 40cm in length and 3cm thickness in the sides as the container, and pour some polished glutinous rice in it with water and some spices. Then they use some big leaves such as the banana's leave to stuff the container tightly and then put it on the fire until there is a small of bamboo. The Dai will cut it half to half or peel the bamboo's bark just like peeling banana and eat the rice inside. The bamboo rice tastes very nice with the fresh and delicate fragrance from bamboo. And the farmers would like to bring some when they are out for cropping for they are quite convenient to carry. Furthermore, the Dai also cook the soup, fish , chicken and pork with the bamboo container.

What the Dai eat about bamboo is the bamboo shoot, which emerges out after raining just aside the old bamboo. For the sake that in the area of Dai it is raining for half a year every year, the bamboo shoots are main source of food for the Dai. Cooking with vegetables, chickens, mushrooms, and even insects, the bamboo shoots, which are more than 100 varities, are delicious and nutritious, and especially good for resisting the humidity in the rainforest for the Dai people. And they also have incredible value as tradtional medicine.

The bamboo foods are no more special to the Dai than to the other parts of the world dependng on its special geographic characteristics. The Dai are living with bamboo.

-By Yuting Ma