I Ate My Way Through China’s Ethnic Minority Cities. Here’s What You Should Order.

Chinese ethnic minority food is not on a menu. It is by the fire pit, in the night market, in the morning wet market, outside a tent on the grassland, between a mother’s palms. You have to go to the city, walk into the alley, sit down, and accept a bowl of steaming food to understand it. Flavor is how a people live with a piece of land.

Yunnan, Guizhou, and Gansu are three provinces you cannot avoid. Yunnan has the greatest number of ethnic groups in China: Derung, Jino, De’ang, Lisu, Lahu, Blang, Pumi, and more. Guizhou has Gelao, Sui, She, Maonan, Mulao. Sourness and spice are their common language. Gansu has Dongxiang, Yugur, Bonan. The nomadic flavors at the foot of the Qilian Mountains are hard to reproduce once you leave that grassland.

China’s ethnic food map is larger than these three provinces. From Yanji in the northeast to Mangshi in the southwest, from Kashgar in Xinjiang to Wuzhishan in Hainan, every city has its own world of flavor. What follows is a map you can follow.

1. Dehong, Yunnan: after a fish is tied up with lemongrass

The night market in Mangshi gets lively around eight. A vendor presses a tilapia onto the cutting board. The knife slides into the belly. Cilantro, ginger, garlic, chili, salt: handful by handful, stuffed inside. A stalk of lemongrass ties the belly tight. The charcoal fire has burned down to white ash. The fish goes on. Pork fat is brushed over it. It is turned. Brushed again. In ten minutes, the skin is charred and the lemongrass blackened. Cut it open. Steam rushes out.

The dipping sauce is another matter. Dehong’s pickled vegetable paste is fermented from rice and vegetables. The sourness is not sharp. It has a faint sweetness at the end. The fish dips into it. Sour and spicy wrap around the flesh. Lift a chopstick. The meat comes apart in garlic-like cloves.

If you stay in Mangshi for three days, you will eat three meals. The first is lemongrass grilled tilapia. The second is baoshao. Baoshao is universal: chicken, pork, ribs, beef, or mutton, marinated, wrapped tight in banana leaves, buried in charcoal. The banana leaves scorch. The meat inside cooks. Open the leaf. The meat is wet and fragrant with green leaf. The third meal can be sapie. The partly digested contents of a cow’s stomach are boiled into a liquid, mixed with raw beef paste, chives, cilantro, and small chili peppers. It is used to dip beef offal and rice noodles. Locals believe it cools the body and aids digestion. Outsiders need courage for the first bite. By the second, they start thinking about the third.

The Jingpo people’s Ghost Chicken and sour ants are also regulars at the night market. Ghost Chicken is cold-tossed shredded chicken with lime juice, small chili, and cilantro. Sour and hot, direct. Sour ants are ants from trees, alive, tossed into dishes. The sourness comes from the ants’ abdomens. When you eat them, you can feel them moving on your tongue.

Dehong Prefecture has twenty-one food streets. Mengbana West Food City, Dai Ancient Town: pick any one, walk from one end to the other, and eat without looking at a guide.

2. Kaili, Guizhou: the fermentation time of a pot of sour soup

Kaili’s sour soup comes in red and white. Red sour soup uses local tomatoes, garlic, salt, and rice wine, put into a large jar, sealed, and left for a year. After a year, the tomatoes have lost their shape and turned into a thick paste, ten times more intense than fresh tomatoes. White sour soup is simpler: rice water or water from washing rice, left for a few days until sour. Spicy sour soup is fresh chili ground into paste, with salt and rice wine, sealed.

Sour soup fish is Kaili’s trump card. The fish is a rice-field fish, raised in paddies, eating rice flowers. The sour soup comes to a boil. The whole fish goes in. It cooks until the eyes turn white and the flesh falls off the bone. The dipping sauce is roasted chili powder, litsea cubeba, and fish mint, with a ladle of sour soup poured over. Dip the fish once. Sour, spicy, fresh: three flavors at once.

Sour soup beef with skin is another card. The beef comes with skin. The skin is stewed until translucent. Bite down: gelatinous. The meat is soft. The sour soup removes the gamy smell, leaving only meat fragrance.

If you want something wilder, try niubie hotpot. The undigested grass juice from a cow’s stomach is squeezed out, filtered, and used as broth. It smells of green grass. It tastes slightly bitter and finishes sweet. Kaili people call it “hundred-herb soup.” The first sip takes adjustment. By the second, it starts to feel refreshing.

Dushan’s Three Sours are yansuan, shrimp sour, and stinky sour. Yansuan is fermented from green vegetables, cleanly sour. Shrimp sour is fermented from small river shrimp. Stinky sour is fermented from fish. When you open a jar of shrimp sour or stinky sour, the smell can fill an entire floor. As a hotpot base, it is stinky yet fragrant, the same logic as stinky tofu or luosifen. Dushan people eat stinky sour hotpot with a bowl of rice and sweat through it.

Southeast Guizhou also has Dong oil tea. Tea leaves are fried, then boiled with water, added to glutinous rice, peanuts, and soybeans. Bitter at first, sweet after. Pickled fish is a Dong courtesy to guests. Fish is pickled in a wooden barrel, one layer of fish, one layer of glutinous rice, pressed tight, left for months. When eaten, it is sour, spicy, salty, and fragrant, served with glutinous rice.

3. Zhangye, Gansu: shaokezi baked in sheep dung

The Yugur people herd sheep at the foot of the Qilian Mountains. The sheep are Tibetan sheep, raised for five years, firm meat. Fat-wrapped liver is the Yugur way of handling sheep offal. Sheep liver, lungs, and heart are chopped, sprinkled with spices, rolled in caul fat, tied tight with white cotton thread, and steamed. It is eaten without dipping sauce. The fragrance of the offal is locked in by the caul fat. Bite down. Juice spreads through the mouth. This dish cannot be eaten once you leave Zhangye.

Shaokezi is even more particular. Flour is fermented with yogurt, mixed with alkali, kneaded into dough, rolled into a flat cake, brushed with oil, sprinkled with fragrant bean powder, and rolled up along the edge. Then it is put into a pot called a kezi. Next comes the key step: dig a pit, bury some sheep dung, and put the kezi pot in. The sheep dung burns. The high heat makes the remaining plant fibers release a green grass fragrance. The shaokezi bakes in the kezi until golden brown, crisp outside and soft inside. One bite: the slight sourness of yogurt, the fragrance of fragrant beans, and an indescribable grassy note.

The Yugur have a song lyric: “A lifetime of herding, dark mornings and early nights; what I love most is strong liquor, what I love most is Yugur mountain songs.” Alcohol is a gift for guests. Drunkenness is not encouraged.

Linxia’s hand-grabbed mutton is boiled only in clear water, dipped in pepper salt or garlic paste. The mutton is cooked until it falls off the bone, the fat translucent, the lean meat pink. You eat it with your hands: a piece of meat, a bite of garlic, a bowl of covered-bowl tea. Hezhou buns are thin-skinned and generous with filling, mutton and scallion, juicy when bitten.

Gannan’s Tibetan buns are filled with yak beef, thick-skinned, steamed, and dipped in chili sauce. Butter tea is made from yak milk, brick tea, and salt. One sip warms you from throat to stomach.

4. Xining, Qinghai: morning on Xiananguan

Xining’s morning begins at Xiananguan. Salar buns are thin-skinned, filled with mutton and scallion, juicy when bitten. Aofan is mutton soup with potatoes, radish, and vermicelli. One bowl wakes the stomach. Hand-grabbed mutton is on Shouzhua Street in Chengdong District, one shop after another. The mutton is cooked and hung on hooks. You ask for as much as you want, and they cut it.

Yak bone soup is another matter. Yak bones are simmered all night. The soup is white and thick. Add a spoonful of chili oil. Take a flatbread, tear it apart, and soak it in. Tianpei is fermented highland barley, sweet and sour with a faint alcoholic note. Drink it iced in summer, warm in winter.

Xunhua’s line chili is long, thin, and red. The heat is not sharp. The fragrance is strong. Salar people stir-fry meat with line chili, make dipping sauces, and pickle vegetables.

5. Baise, Guangxi: grilled pig eyes and suan ye

In Baise’s night market, grilled pig eyes are the internet celebrity. Pig eyes are skewered and grilled until they burst. Bite down. The liquid explodes in your mouth. Some find it fragrant. Some find it frightening. Baise people have eaten them for decades.

Suan ye is Guangxi’s common language. Papaya, radish, mango, pineapple: soaked in sour water, fished out, sprinkled with chili powder. Sour, spicy, crisp, sweet: four flavors.

Debao pig blood sausage: pig blood mixed with glutinous rice, stuffed into casings, boiled, sliced, pan-fried until both sides are charred. Dip in sour chili sauce. Crisp outside, sticky inside.

Jingxi’s Zhuang colored glutinous rice stuffed chicken: glutinous rice dyed red, yellow, and black with plant juices, stuffed into a chicken’s belly, steamed. The chicken is tender, the rice fragrant, the colors bright.

Youjiang River fish hotpot: several kinds of fish caught from the Youjiang River are cooked together. The soup is white and fresh. Chengbi Lake big fish head: the head is bigger than a face, stewed into soup as thick as milk.

6. Wuzhishan, Hainan: the Li people’s fish tea and Shanlan wine

The Li people of Wuzhishan eat fish tea. Fish tea is not tea. It is pickled fish. Fish is cleaned, salted, mixed with rice, put into a jar, sealed, and fermented. After fermentation, the fish is sour, the rice is sour. It smells pungent, tastes fragrant. The Li eat fish tea with porridge, with rice, with Shanlan wine.

Shanlan wine is the Li people’s wine, fermented from Shanlan rice. Sweet, slightly sour, low in alcohol. You drink it from a bamboo tube, sip by sip. Bamboo tube rice is Shanlan rice with pork, stuffed into bamboo, roasted. Split the bamboo. The rice carries the fragrance of bamboo.

Miao three-color rice: red, yellow, and black, dyed with plant juices. Five-foot pig is a small pig raised by the Li, short-legged, firm meat, roasted until the skin is crisp and the meat tender.

7. Xiangxi, Hunan: blood cake duck and cured meat

Xiangxi’s blood cake duck: duck blood and glutinous rice are made into blood cake, sliced, pan-fried until both sides are charred. Duck meat is stir-fried dry with chili, ginger, and garlic. Then blood cake is added and stir-fried together. The blood cake is crisp outside and sticky inside. The duck meat is spicy and fragrant.

Xiangxi cured meat: pork is salted and smoked until black. When eaten, it is sliced and steamed. The fat is translucent, the lean meat red. Serve with rice, with rice tofu.

Miao fish is the Miao way of cooking fish: fish is boiled in sour soup with litsea cubeba, chili, and fish mint. Sour, spicy, fresh.

Zhijiang duck: firm duck meat, fresh and spicy chili. One bite, and your forehead sweats.

Huaihua’s Dong pickled fish is sour, spicy, salty, and fragrant. Oil tea is bitter at first, sweet after, served with glutinous rice.

8. Enshi, Hubei: Tujia hezha

Enshi’s Tujia hezha: soybeans are ground into pulp, boiled with the residue, added to greens and chili. Simple, good with rice. Baiyang dried tofu: thin, chewy, braised, fragrant. Enshi doupi: rice milk spread into sheets, cut into strips, boiled or stir-fried. Youxiang is fried: dough wrapped around meat filling, fried golden.

Lichuan’s water shield is slippery, tender, used in soup. Gege are small steamers: steamed mutton, steamed ribs, one bite each.

9. Xichang, Sichuan: fire basin BBQ and tuotuo meat

Xichang’s fire basin BBQ: charcoal is placed in the middle of the table, skewers are grilled over it. Tuotuo meat is the Yi way: pork or mutton cut into large chunks, boiled, mixed with salt and chili. Eaten by hand, bold.

Yi meals include sour vegetable soup, buckwheat cakes, and roast suckling pig. Qionghai drunken shrimp: shrimp are alive, soaked in liquor, still moving when served. Dip in mustard soy sauce. Fresh.

10. Kashgar, Xinjiang: the night market starts at ten

Kashgar’s night market does not get lively until ten. Meat skewers, threaded on red willow branches, large chunks, alternating fat and lean. Baked buns, crisp skin, juicy mutton filling. Pilaf, yellow radish, mutton, rice, glistening. Gangzi meat, mutton stewed in an enamel mug, clear and sweet. Laghman, chewy noodles, mixed with mutton, tomato, and chili.

Yining’s Six-Star Street is home to thirteen ethnic groups. Uyghur baked buns, Kazakh milk tea, Russian kvass, ice cream. Every courtyard has its own flavor.

Hotan night market’s grilled eggs: chicken eggs, goose eggs, pigeon eggs, cracked into a bowl, added honey and saffron, grilled. Red willow skewers: large chunks, charcoal-grilled.

11. Yanji, Jilin: morning at the water market

Yanji’s water market opens at six in the morning. Tteok: glutinous rice pounded, cut into pieces, dipped in bean powder. Blood sausage: pig blood and glutinous rice, stuffed into casings, sliced. Kimchi: sour, spicy, crisp. Rice wine: sweet and sour, low in alcohol. Cold noodles: buckwheat noodles, iced, sweet and sour. Glutinous rice chicken: glutinous rice stuffed into a chicken, steamed.

The West Market is another option. Kimchi, rice cakes, blood sausage, rice wine: all in one place.

12. Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia: hand-grabbed meat and Buryat buns

Hulunbuir’s hand-grabbed meat: mutton boiled until it falls off the bone, dipped in chive flower sauce. Buryat buns: thin skin, mutton and onion filling, juicy when bitten. Milk tea is salty, with roasted rice and milk tofu. Milk skin is thick and fragrant. Cheese is sour and hard.

Xilinhot’s hand-grabbed meat, roast lamb leg, milk foods. Mongolian “white food” is dairy. “Red food” is meat.

13. Wuzhong, Ningxia: morning tea and hand-grabbed mutton

Wuzhong’s morning tea is not the Cantonese kind. Eight-treasure tea with rock sugar, goji berries, red dates, and longan. Served with beef noodles, hand-grabbed mutton, and side dishes. As rich as a proper meal.

Hand-grabbed mutton: mutton boiled until it falls off the bone, dipped in pepper salt. Mutton offal soup: tripe, liver, lungs, boiled into soup. Mutton soup with broken bread: bread torn apart, soaked in mutton soup.

14. Lhasa, Tibet: morning at the sweet tea house

Lhasa’s sweet tea houses open in the morning. Sweet tea is black tea with milk and sugar, poured cup by cup. Tibetan noodles are thick, in yak bone broth. Yak beef is boiled, roasted, stir-fried. Butter tea is made from yak milk, brick tea, and salt.

At Guangming Gangqiong Sweet Tea House, pour a cup of sweet tea, eat a bowl of Tibetan noodles, and watch the pilgrims circling outside the window.

Each city and each food has its own logic. The Dai sour and spicy. The Miao sour soup. The Yugur sheep-dung baking. The Li fermented fish tea. Go to Mangshi and walk the night market. Go to Kaili and find a sour soup restaurant. Go to Zhangye and taste fat-wrapped liver. Go to Yanji and hurry to the water market. Go to Kashgar and soak in the night market. Go to Wuzhong and eat morning tea. Order what the next table orders. Ask what it is. Then eat it.