From the Gaoshan Yao to “Chosen” Mushroom Pickers: Termite Mushrooms Spark a Foraging Frenzy
A Note from Foodthink
This article was supported by the Foodthink Lianhe Creative Project and was written in the summer of 2024. The “Guoshan Yao” series aims to explore how, amidst modern migration, Yao communities and their foodways have become drawn into urbanisation and market economies. Taking the Yao-Hakka market in Ruyuan County, Shaoguan City as a new starting point, the author reconnects with local smallholder farmers, returns to Yao villages, and shares intimate stories of the bond between those rooted to the mountains and fields, and the food they gather.
“It’s just been Dragon Boat Festival. Are they appearing so early this year?”
Heavily pregnant and resting at home, Qiaoyun called in a panic, worried we would miss the peak foraging season of 2024. She urgently invited us to the county town in northern Guangdong—Ruyuan County, Shaoguan City, Guangdong Province—to harvest Termitomyces mushrooms, known locally as “Summer Solstice Mushrooms”.
Ruyuan is an autonomous county for the Yao people. The plains are predominantly inhabited by indigenous communities, while the mountainous regions are dotted with Hakka and Yao villages. Among them is the “Guoshan Yao”, a subgroup known for their traditional annual migrations between remote mountain villages. Since the 1990s, driven by poverty alleviation initiatives and reservoir construction, Hakka and Yao settlements have gradually relocated to the plains, creating a mixed Yao-Hakka living environment.
We are “Chunchao Springflut”, an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural creative studio. Our connection with the Guoshan Yao began through a participatory art project in a Yao village community. Over the past three years, as our fieldwork has deepened, we have travelled back and forth between remote mountain villages and the lowland county town alongside our Yao friends. Regardless of how the landscape changes, our conversations have always revolved around the Guoshan Yao’s dining table and their relationship with food. This has become the foundation of our bond with the Yao community, after all, sharing a meal is serious business. The story of the “Summer Solstice Mushroom” unfolded quite by chance.
Unlike wild winter mushrooms that grow in the deep mountains of Yao villages, “Summer Solstice Mushrooms” are found in the alluvial plains and hills along the Beijiang tributary of the Pearl River system, close to Shaoguan Danxia Airport. Freshly picked mushrooms are dispatched via express delivery or cold-chain logistics, reaching farmhouse restaurants, fine dining establishments, and wet markets in the Pearl River Delta cities within hours, before finally landing on consumers’ tables. They are most often simmered in chicken soup or simply stir-fried, prized by diners for their rich, savoury flavour. Local prices in Ruyuan fluctuate daily, typically ranging between 120 and 500 yuan per kilogram.
The market demand for this seasonal delicacy keeps the nerves of the foraging crowd in this northern Guangdong county town on edge. Every summer, the trading boom surrounding these mushrooms ignites a foraging craze across northern Guangdong—eucalyptus groves and bamboo forests are illuminated by the beams of powerful torches, as foragers work through the night to secure their harvest.
Even as they find themselves swept up in the broader discourse surrounding urban–rural migration and rural revitalisation, the Guoshanyao maintain an open and receptive approach to life. Their wisdom—fluid, adaptable, and resilient—continues to be quietly passed down within the community. The following story of the Guoshanyao and the “summer solstice mushroom” serves as a microcosm of their “philosophy of movement”.
I. From “Is it edible?” to “It sells well”
The discovery of “winter mushrooms” in the Yao village had already shattered our stereotype of remote mountain settlements as barren and lacking in local produce. The “summer solstice mushroom,” meanwhile, offered us a window into how Qiaoyun’s family adapted to their migratory journey from the mountains down to the plains.
Qiaoyun’s father was formerly a hunter, while her mother worked as both a farmer and an embroiderer. In the 1990s, the family left the Nanling mountain region in northern Guangdong—over 20 kilometres away—putting an end to generations of the traditional “Guoshan” shifting-cultivation lifestyle to settle on the plains near Shaoguan Danxia Airport. They had to learn farming anew on this flat terrain and built their house, brick by brick, with their own hands.
She was only in primary school at the time. Looking back, she remembers this as the period she left her childhood friends in the remote Yao village, made new Han Chinese classmates at a new school, and it was during one of these walks home from school that she first brought “summer solstice mushrooms” to her parents.
“When I was at primary school, I walked home with my Han Chinese classmates and saw loads of mushrooms growing by the roadside. They suggested digging them up to take home and eat. I thought it sounded like fun, so I did too. My father flatly refused to eat them, saying he’d never seen them in the mountains and was worried they might be poisonous. I told him the Han families all ate them, but he wouldn’t believe it and just threw them out. On another occasion, I filled a whole winnowing basket. He gave them straight to a friend. I remember that person even took the basket with them and never brought it back.”
Having spent much of their lives working the mountains, Qiaoyun’s parents were understandably wary of these unfamiliar “summer solstice mushrooms” and initially unsure whether they were safe to eat. It was only after neighbours in the newly settled Yao village began eating them that they finally allowed the rest of the family to try.
It was not until around 2016 that “summer solstice mushrooms” started appearing at the markets near Qiaoyun’s home. Before that, “we would just pick a few for ourselves. They grew everywhere, rotting in the fields and by the roadside while nobody paid them any mind. Occasionally, we’d take some to relatives and friends in the county town, since few places knew they grew nearby. We were among the first to spot them in this area.”
The Pearl River Delta’s craving for fresh, seasonal ingredients has unlocked the potential of the wild mushroom market. From the “lychee mushrooms” in Zengcheng’s orchards to the “summer solstice mushrooms” in Shaoguan’s mountainous regions, mushroom dealers have steadily expanded their procurement networks. Compared with termite mushrooms from Yunnan, in-province transport is faster, the fungi are fresher, and they offer better value to consumers. As a type of wild termite mushroom, “summer solstice mushrooms” do not feature in the edible mushroom categories of northern Guangdong’s agricultural wholesale markets, nor are they part of the national “vegetable basket” scheme. This has instead pushed them into their own informal market. Within these peripheral trading circles, foragers, buyers, and consumers constantly negotiate supply and demand, sparking a year-on-year “mushroom fever”.
Meanwhile, foraging for Summer Solstice mushrooms has become a new livelihood choice for villagers in the Yao-Hakka regions of northern Guangdong.
II. The Summer Mushroom-Picking Pop-Up Army
Inherently seasonal, the harvest cannot support a year-round livelihood. Nevertheless, its climbing profit margins continue to attract large numbers of “gig workers” from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds.
In 2024, Qiaoyun was expecting and unable to venture far into the hills and wilds. Out for a walk near her front door, she stumbled across a patch of summer solstice mushrooms. “They were growing right in the grass, separated from the airport by nothing more than a fence, and looked wonderfully plump.” Meanwhile, Qiaoyun’s mother found several more patches beneath a banana tree at home. Mother and daughter both swiftly sold their finds to a local buyer.
That buyer was none other than Qiaoyun’s closest friend, Xiuping. The two were born and raised together in a remote Yao village in the mountains, later relocated to the plains, and have remained neighbours even after starting their own families. Xiuping and her husband began as mere pickers in the seasonal rush, and this now marks their third year operating as buyers.
They know the summer solstice mushroom inside out. Xiuping has a sharp eye for its growth patterns: “The mushrooms track the traditional solar terms. They crop in waves during four key windows: Grain Buds, Grain in Ear, Summer Solstice, and Minor Heat.” Her experience tells her, however, that the solar terms are merely a signal; the mushrooms do not always turn up on cue. In 2024, for example, they only appeared well after Grain in Ear.
She times her buying strategy to enter the market at the precise moment, working for “roughly a month from start to finish.” Once the run ends, everyone scatters to find other work. With the mushroom season concluded, Xiuping and her husband are preparing to head back to the mountains to open a small convenience shop, capitalising on the fact that “so many visitors flock there to cool off during the summer holidays.”
Not everyone is willing to shoulder the extra risk and initial outlay of becoming a buyer to chase higher returns, as the couple has done. Most people, like Qiaoyun, treat foraging as a temporary side job outside their main employment, earning a bit of extra cash to supplement household expenses, given that picking is both backbreaking and unreliable.
At fifty-five, Afeng is a local smallholder who sells her own homegrown vegetables every market day. During the solstice season, her stall features an extra offering: summer solstice mushrooms tucked into red plastic bags. The vivid hue acts as a silent announcement to passing trade that the season’s finest, best-selling produce has arrived.
Afeng is one of the “amateur foragers”. When summer arrives, she adds mushroom hunting to her roster of jobs, pushing herself day and night. “I head out at 2 a.m. and forage until dawn, only to fill this small bag—less than 250 grams. I go home, pack my own vegetables, and come here to set up my stall.” After that, she still has to spend the following day harvesting tobacco.
On the village tracks at night, we also encountered plenty of “recreational” amateur foragers. Groups of young men on motorbikes would tear past, deftly sweeping their searchlights across the tree line as they sped by. For the successive waves of pickers flooding the woods, hunting for summer solstice mushrooms feels less like a chore and more like a seasonal pastime—a casual test of luck not unlike joining a group of night hikers. They spend the journey joking and laughing, with little concern for their final tally.
Only a small minority follow the seasonal rhythm to become professional foragers. Each summer, they put their regular employment on hold to devote themselves entirely to the harvest; some migrant labourers even quit their jobs to join the rush. For these individuals, the summer solstice mushroom is the sole source of income during these months. Resting by day and hunting by night, they prioritise efficiency, typically working alone or in pairs.
For some, a single day’s foraging stretches over ten hours, and pulling all-nighters is commonplace. This is no casual hobby. While amateurs rely on chance, these professionals draw on over a decade of field experience. They move through the woods with bated breath and intense focus, quietly harvesting more than five kilograms in a single night—a yield that would take an amateur an entire summer to match.
The latest flush of summer solstice mushrooms had only just broken ground when 61-year-old Hakka forager Ping Xiu notched up an impressive score: more than five kilograms of pristine half-open caps and tight buttons, all gathered in a single night. “I set off at 4 a.m. and reached the market just after 8,” she says. Because that day’s yield was particularly low, the buying price was actually higher. Scarcity commands a premium, and barely had she arrived when a familiar dealer had already reserved her stock.
This professional forager not only maintains her own picking schedule but has also found every way to sharpen her efficiency. “I spent a whole year visiting the neighbouring village just to learn the proper technique for gathering summer solstice mushrooms,” she explains. As we chat, she carefully scrapes soil from the mushroom stems with a razor blade, her Mandarin peppered with Hakka phrases.
Once the brief mushroom season concludes, the termite nests that coexist with these mushrooms must recuperate or relocate over short distances, nurturing the crop for the following year. The mushroom-picking army, composed of a diverse array of casual labourers, quickly disperses at summer’s end to head to their next gigs, only to rally once more when the following summer arrives.
Among them, however, is a group that does not cease learning when the season ends. Instead, they share and exchange insights within their community, organically turning local knowledge about these mushrooms into oral tradition. They continuously refine and pass it on, surpassing the locals in expertise. This group is the Sheganyao, to which Qiaoyun belongs.
III.The “Chosen” Mushroom Pickers
“It’s not just about knowing how to pick; you also need to be adept at climbing. The Yao are quite formidable; they scale the hills incredibly fast, and you simply cannot keep up.” A professional mushroom picker from the Hakka community described the Yao pickers to us with deep admiration. We accompanied Qiaoyun as she scouted the slopes, and climbed up to the Yao village alongside her elderly Yao companions. We quickly recognised their agility; even with our youthful strength, we found it hard to match their pace. It piqued our curiosity to see how skills honed in the deep mountains thrive in the plains, and how generations of accumulated ecological knowledge allow the Sheganyao to distinguish themselves amidst the wider mushroom-picking workforce.
With Qiaoyun nudging us along, we finally arrived in Ruyuan, Shaoguan, on the day of the summer solstice. “The real peak season is around the Dragon Boat Festival. You’ve missed it. At this solstice, you can only hope for luck.” Timing is everything in foraging; catch the right moment, and you’re halfway there. Evidently, we had missed the mark. Feeling sorry for us, Qiaoyun opened a short-video app to give us a crash course on summer solstice mushrooms.
“That account belongs to a classmate from my junior high days. He now runs several large cold-storage facilities and deals in summer solstice mushrooms wholesale. He’s always posting videos to let everyone know the moment they start popping up, so people can head out and harvest.” The clips Qiaoyun showed us were filmed in the dead of night. Under the harsh beam of a spotlight, a faint glimmer appeared beneath dead branches. A middle-aged, slightly portly man lay on the grass, speaking in the Yao language with exaggerated expressions, almost as if broadcasting to the world that a fresh batch of mushrooms had arrived. Lying on his side, he gently pushed aside the dry leaves next to him, and dozens of summer solstice mushrooms came into view. “Naturally, they aren’t that easy to find. He’s mostly trying to get people out there, and to hype up the market. But it does serve as a good signal for when to start foraging.”
Much like in other county towns, short videos in Ruyuan are a key platform for locals to unwind, socialise, shop, and share community news. Qiaoyun showed us how to use the ‘nearby’ location feature to quickly find updates on local foraging trips. “With so many people posting videos today, a new flush of mushrooms must be coming in. You could give it a go tonight. They might be tricky to spot just as they emerge, but treat the first attempt as practice.”
With that, Qiaoyun took us next door to Xiuping’s place to see the mushrooms up close. Xiuping’s ‘home storage’ turned out to be a set of chest freezers, their glass doors wrapped in thermal film to maintain a steady temperature for the fungi. “Summer solstice mushrooms are usually graded as bullet-shaped, unopened, half-opened, or fully opened, with prices dropping accordingly.” Xiuping carefully showed us the sorted batches, neatly arranged in red plastic basins. “Mushrooms from bamboo groves tend to be paler, while those from eucalyptus forests are yellower or darker. We usually eat the bamboo grove ones, since unlike eucalyptus plantations, bamboo forests aren’t fertilised.”
When it came to harvesting techniques, Qiaoyun produced a small trowel and a spade, both worn smooth and shiny from use. “You need tools to dig out summer solstice mushrooms because part of them grows underground. But you have to be extremely careful. Dig too deep and you’ll damage the termite nest below, meaning nothing will grow there next year. Dig too shallow, and you’ll snap the stems.” She also advised us to bring searchlights, noting that white lights are supposedly more effective than yellow ones.
“It’s too hot during the day, and you’re more likely to cross paths with snakes. Some people head out at dusk, but most wait until nightfall. It’s cooler, and the mushrooms are easier to spot—the searchlight catches a glint on them, which usually means you’ve found a patch. A few folks don’t even go until the early hours, pulling an all-nighter, but you need nerves of steel for that; it’s pitch black out there. Once, my mum and I accidentally ended up foraging right next to a grave. We were absolutely terrified.”
After absorbing Qiaoyun’s verbal lessons, we hopped on a motorcycle to head for a nearby bamboo grove. The bike is far more nimble than a car, allowing us to squeeze into more secluded tracks. After scouring five different groves, we only managed to spot two wild mushrooms. They looked highly suspicious, so we had to snap a photo and send it to Qiaoyun for identification. “Both of those are poisonous. Leave them alone. Summer solstice mushrooms always grow in clumps of dozens. If it’s just a solitary one, it’s definitely not one.”
Better equipped with the knowledge that these mushrooms favour company, we decided to venture into a newly ‘trending’ eucalyptus plantation. Qiaoyun mentioned that the place had been absolutely teeming with summer solstice mushrooms in 2023, drawing crowds of foragers, so we might as well test our luck.
While Yao buyers disseminate knowledge about these mushrooms and shape market rules through commercial logic, foragers like Qiaoyun convey a different wisdom through lived experience: if your livelihood depends on nature, you must first understand the rhythms of both sky and soil.
In Qiaoyun’s mind, a detailed map of where summer solstice mushrooms grow gradually takes shape, much like the mental charts Yao villagers hold for wild herbs and greens. This knowledge is not read from books but earned through years of walking the land and refined through the steady exchange of information within the community.
Rather than labelling the Yao as “chosen” mushroom pickers, it is more accurate to say their seemingly extraordinary foraging skills stem from an intimate, hard-won familiarity with the mountains and the soil. The Gaoshan Yao have lived as migratory communities for generations, carving out villages on the steep slopes of the Dayao Mountains and clearing terraces on rugged inclines for crops and Chinese fir plantations. Living off the land and interacting with it across generations has honed their sensitivity to the soil, forests, and shifting weather, allowing them to accumulate a distinct body of ecological knowledge. Rather than fearing or fighting the mountains and woods, they seek to know and understand them. Their relationship with the natural world mirrors the symbiotic bond between the summer solstice mushroom and the termites that sustain it.
To the Gaoshan Yao, the rolling plains and hills, along with these mushrooms, simply represent a new environment and a new species of wild fungus to adapt to. Grounded in a lifestyle historically built around shifting cultivation and migratory living, the Gaoshan Yao have also proven remarkably adept at navigating modern urbanisation. Acutely aware of the inherent fragility of both human societies and the natural world, they feel less compelled to dominate it. Instead, they approach the land with grounded pragmatism, seeking harmonious ways to coexist. This perspective enables them to quickly and thoroughly decode the habits of the summer solstice mushroom, while also helping them forge new ways to relate to nature within an increasingly urbanised world.
IV. The Cost of Living Off Nature
By contrast, for Qiaoyun, gathering summer solstice mushrooms serves more as a form of compensation for a lost mountain way of life. The specific mushroom, or indeed any wild fungus, is less important than the pretext it provides to keep returning to the Yao mountains, or to wander across the gentler hills, following memory in search of seasonal wild greens and fruits. This practice stirs up childhood recollections of the Yao highlands—a deeply moving emotional current that nourishes Qiaoyun. As these sentiments are swept along by the modern narrative of urban–rural migration, what can be held onto is ultimately food, or perhaps a way of cooking, a particular flavour.
To the Guoshan Yao, the summer solstice mushroom serves as a vital link between their new surroundings and the world they knew before. In the Yao new village where Qiaoyun resides, many young people leave work in the evenings and head out in small groups to pick mushrooms across the nearby low hills. “It’s just like picking wild fruit in the mountains back when we were kids,” Qiaoyun recalls, reflecting on her childhood in a remote Yao settlement.
“When we first moved out, the airport was still lying idle. We used to take our cattle to graze there, and there was an abundance of wild fruit in the area. Later, once we learned about the summer solstice mushrooms, we would regularly visit the small mounds nearby to gather them; they were plentiful, so there was no need to travel far. Eventually, the airport was reopened, transitioning from military to civilian use, and the more distant hills were leased for eucalyptus plantations or Ficus hirta crops. By 2024, the mushrooms near our homes had become scarce, and we were forced to venture further out.”
Qiaoyun’s home sits a mere fifty metres from the airport, where the regular thumps of bird-scaring cannons are a constant backdrop. Drawing on her experience of foraging for mushrooms and wild fruit, she is acutely aware of how the surrounding natural landscape is being squeezed. As the airport expands, this Yao new village is bracing for yet another round of relocation.
The Guoshan Yao ancestors once trekked over ridge after ridge in search of fresh land for shifting cultivation. Qiaoyun’s generation now searches for summer solstice mushrooms between bamboo groves and eucalyptus plantations, pursuing new livelihoods while also nostalgically seeking out pockets of nature within the margins of urbanisation. Qiaoyun’s father, having learned carpentry and building through a life of frequent relocation, transitioned from hunter and farmer to construction foreman and craftsman. In his spare time, he is constantly riding his motorbike, scouting out new spots to fish.
Qiaoyun’s mother remains a farmer, cultivating rice, vegetables, and fruit for the family across both mountain terraces and flatlands, occasionally venturing into the wild to gather herbs for traditional Yao medicinal baths.
For her part, Qiaoyun not only grows chillies and leafy greens in the village garden plots but also forages for seasonal wild vegetables and fruits in the nearby woods and along the streams. “I sometimes go back to the remote Yao villages too. Certain wild greens and fruits only grow there, and they just taste better.” Through their respective ways of life, they give tangible form to their emotional ties and memories of the Yao villages and mountains.
As urbanisation gathers pace, the Yao settlements grow quiet. The Guoshan Yao people scatter with each relocation. For Qiaoyun and her kin, lost emotional anchors can only be found in new surroundings and new foods, prompting an intermittent return to a life lived off the land. The foodways of the highland Yao hamlets remain vividly etched in their taste buds.
Where most regions simmer Termitomyces in chicken broth, Qiaoyun favours pig’s cheeks. She needs only ginger and salt, simmering gently until the broth turns milky and the pig’s gums and scalp become pleasantly crisp. The resulting broth is aromatic but unencumbered by heavy fats, allowing the delicate sweetness of the Termitomyces to take centre stage. In a way, the dish honours the pig’s head more than the Summer Solstice mushroom itself. The cheeks are a prized cut, carefully prepared for the annual slaughter feast, reflecting a tradition where no part of the animal goes to waste.
V. Extra: Summer Solstice Mushrooms, Too, Cross the Mountains
Qiaoyun welcomed a new life at the close of the summer solstice mushroom season. By late summer, construction in the local airport expansion zone was advancing at an astonishing pace; commercial precincts sprang up, and rumours spoke of new industrial estates. Whether any idle woodland will remain in 2025 for the summer solstice mushrooms to thrive, or how many people will choose foraging as a livelihood, remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that as the airport zone, suburban industrial areas, and commercial hubs take shape, the local economy will gradually transform. Alongside it, the way of life for the Yao, Hakka, and other indigenous communities will shift too.
For this year’s foraging season, Qiaoyun has promised to take us back to her secret mushroom-picking grounds.
A single summer solstice mushroom shapes the livelihoods of those who live nearby and draws the Guoshan Yao into a new era of migration. No one can dictate where the mushroom will grow, for the termites have a will of their own. Much like the Guoshan Yao, the termites’ migration is driven by wisdom and courage, forging new paths through collective effort. In this process, new species bring new foods, and with them come new livelihoods and new ways of living.
The summer solstice mushroom, the termite, and the Guoshan Yao people are engaged in a cross-species exchange of care. They nurture new life—human and non-human alike—equally fragile and interdependent, learning to embrace more diverse environments and ways of surviving within constant flux. This is the insight into life offered by Qiaoyun and her Guoshan Yao kin, just as it is by the summer solstice mushroom and the termites.
Following multiple interview rounds with a panel of six judges, 18 creative projects were selected for support under the programme. Four have been published so far:
‘Ame the Cleaner Wants a Proper Meal | The Worker’s Table’
‘In Malaysia, Chinese Traders Only Want Grade A Durian’
‘“Fake Meat” Ousts the Real Thing: Herders, Dinner Tables, and the Amazon’
‘Guaranteed Sweet Watermelons, Guaranteed Hardship for Growers’
Editor: Xu Youyou