The “Old and Deep” Vinegar of Chinese Northern Province ShanXi

ShanXi province is located in the mid-northern part of China, where the land is featured as continuous hills and mountains. Relatively arid in the mid-terrain, the dominant corps are wheat and sorghum (a kind of thick-fiber grain). And the vinegar is a prominent part of life in ShanXi province and is considered to be the symbol of ShanXi’s cuisine. As the statistic shown, averagely, every ShanXier has 18 kilogram vinegar every year, which ranks the first around China.

Notably, the ShanXi vinegar is not the ordinary one, and the native people call it the “ old and deep” vinegar(LaoChenCu). The designation is not only based on the deep brown color and the strong smell of the liquid but also the profound and deep-rooted history of vinegar in their history.

The “old and deep” vinegar is distilled from the fermentation of the mixture of sorghum, wheat bran, grain chaff, barley and pea for several months. Without any coloring ingredient, the “old and deep” vinegar is colored by special smoke. And the longer the vinegar is fermented and smoked, the more delicious and valuable the vinegar is.

Furthermore, the “old and deep” vinegar really has an old and deep history in ShanXi province. It could date back to the 800 A.D when the first recorded vinegar shop opened in ShanXi. I think maybe because ShanXi has huge reserves of coal, the carbon oxide in the air is relatively high; and the vinegar has the function of eliminate the coal gas, Shanxiers love to have vinegar. Another reason I guess is that, in the light of the hard water in Shanxi, people need the vinegar to soften their water and food and to help digest. But those reasons were conjectures for thousands years before; nowadays, the “old and deep” vinegar is all about the tradition or even gene among the Shanxier. For me, my mom came from Shanxi, and I was grown up in my grandma’s special vinegar cooking and the old vinegar-making stories in her former village in Shanxi. For my grandma, the “old and deep” vinegar is not only her favorite flavoring which she must go back and buy some back from thousands miles away every year, but also her thread that links to her homeland and old memories. I think so do the other Shanxier, the “old and deep” vinegar is inveterate to their life.

-By Yuting Ma