Searching for... yummy snow?!?

Today Hailing invited me along to go and explore a rural market, about an hour south from Lijiang. All in the search of... snow! On the local version of TikTok, she had found out that there is snow being carried down from a local sacred mountain, and served on a local market together with some homemade syrups and pickled fruit and veg. So off we went in her car!

I hadn't really had any breakfast yet, so the first thing we did when we arrived was to look for breakfast. We ended up settling on something new for me, some sort of bean or chickpea jelly. It was prepared in big metal bowls, cut into wobbly bits, and either served raw or after frying it up briefly to get some crispy edges. It was served with spring onions, and a concoction made up of six (6!) different sauces, and a lot of peanuts. It was tasty, though the jelly texture for breakfast was a bit strange.

We didn't really know how to go about finding the snow, so Hailing asked the vendor of our bean jelly, and she just pointed to a stall some 20m down the road without saying anything. And indeed, there it was! We had found it. So right after breakfast we went to grab some snow. For the avoidance of doubt, this is actual snow. The snow was collected from the mountain, carried down in insulated baskets, and served on the market.

This was a local specialty only served on three days per year, yesterday, today, and tomorrow 👌It was topped with fermented green papaya, pickled carrots in syrup, and some sort of berries in juice that nobody could translate well for me. It was quite sweet from all the syrups, but overall a refreshing snack on a warm day.Read more