From the misty, matsutake-rich mountains of Ma Pin Guan to the hidden Bai enclaves of ancient Silk Road towns, this is a journey through China’s most varied province, a biodiversity hotspot home to more ethnic groups than any other. Yunnan: land of mushrooms, birthplace of tea. Here in the country’s mineral-dense, subtropical southwest bordered by Szechuan, Tibet, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, a phenomenal cuisine reflects Yunnan’s dazzling diversity—rich in flavor and wild ingredients, spicy and sour, multiethnic and complex.
Led by the Chinese writer Jane Yang and Roads & Kingdoms co-founder Nathan Thornburgh, we begin in Shanghai and end in Dali, traversing four ancient towns that ring the storied Lake of Erhai. We will meet Daoist tea-readers and Kung Fu doctors, masters of sour fish and bao, of rice noodle and hotpot, royal-descended defenders of ancient intellectual traditions and big-city transplants reimagining the countryside—all culminating in an extraordinary multi-course dinner in a secret restaurant for Chinese chefs.
