Agriculture Is So Advanced—Why Do People Still Eat Wild Edibles?
Shangri-La sits at the junction of Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet, with varied terrain, well-developed farming and herding, abundant mountain and forest resources, and a bustling market all year round. Because of the dramatic drop in altitude, spring does not arrive simultaneously across Shangri-La; apart from Benzilan Township in Deqin County, the earliest spring belongs to Tacheng Township in Weixi County.
The stories of wild foraging that make Shangri-La’s spring what it is for me begin in Tacheng.
I. The Botanist’s Enigma: Why Do We Still Eat Wild Edibles?
By then, the Michelia blossoms at the Songtsam Tacheng Mountain Lodge were already in full bloom, the hum of bees tangled in their perfume. Yet when we hiked up to Damu Cave, it snowed on us, and on the descent we were hot enough to strip down to thin jackets. This is Shangri-La’s spring.
Teacher Shen talked us through one plant after another: the wild suxin jasmine growing in these mountains like a garden cultivar, the pine pollen releasing billions of grains into the air, the spiny-leaved Liangmianzhen, the Prinsepia utilis dotted with tiny white blossoms…
When we reached the forest park, he grew even more animated: “This is an alpine Daphne still in bud, that’s a purple dwarf primrose just opening, and there the vivid crimson rhododendron.” But my attention was drawn to a few bright-green ferns at my feet. They were growing from a clump of old black stalks, with a crisp, tender freshness that made you want to take a bite.
I asked Teacher Shen what they were. He glanced over and answered: ‘A type of ostrich fern.’
My next question was: ‘Are they edible?’ He was brisk: ‘No.’
After the hike, back at the hotel, our hostess brought out a plate piled high with vivid green studded with lean strips of deep red ham, and announced: ‘Stir-fried ma fern with ham.’
‘Huh? These look so familiar.’ I turned to Teacher Shen: ‘Isn’t this the same thing we saw in the mountains earlier? Didn’t you say it wasn’t edible?’
Teacher Shen had no choice but to put down his chopsticks and explain why bracken fern is a carcinogen. He hadn’t finished before I’d already polished off a bowl of rice with the fern. The texture was crisp and tender—completely different from the slippery, fibrous purple bracken I grew up eating back home.
Teacher Shen hadn’t touched a single bite. Watching us eat with such gusto, he sighed and said: ‘With agriculture this advanced, why do people still eat wild edibles?’ The unsaid half of his sentence: especially ones that might be toxic.
Teacher Shen, who adores the natural world, lives in Dali with his own small courtyard. I was envious: ‘Then you could grow vegetables!’ He looked at me as though I’d suggested something absurd: ‘Who grows vegetables in their yard? You go to the market to buy them. A courtyard is for flowers—flowers no one else can find!’
I admire the scientific rigour and discipline that come with being a botanist, but when it comes to eating wild edibles, he isn’t necessarily more qualified to have an opinion than the locals.
Of course, Teacher Shen doesn’t refuse every wild edible.
The next stop was Nixi Village in Shangri-La. Nixi free-range chicken is celebrated far and wide, and it must be cooked in a black clay pot. The secret to the pot’s exceptional aroma? Don’t scrub it too clean.
The vegetable to pair with the chicken pot is dandelion, freshly dug from the earth. Shangri-La’s soil is generous, and the dandelion roots are especially plump. Beside the pot sits a plate of freshly fried Nixi chilli—Nixi’s third most renowned produce, famous for its extraordinary heat and fragrance.
Teacher Shen clearly underestimated these petite orange chillies. He picked one up, bit in, and immediately flushed crimson, covering his face as tears streamed down. Only a furious chewing of dandelion brought relief. So it turns out: only wild edibles with scientifically confirmed medicinal value are worthy of a botanist.
II. The Joy of Wild Edibles: Only Those Who’ve Foraged Truly Understand
The mountain folk of Shangri-La, who have always lived off what the hills provide, probably never gave a thought to this question raised by a botanist. Eating wild edibles in spring is as deeply etched into Yunnanese genes as foraging for wild mushrooms in the rainy season—it is a tradition written into their very DNA.
In Shangri-La, no matter how frantic and exhausting the workday, the grind of office life is always softened by the charms of the wild. Li Yun, a young woman from Tacheng in Weixi, is the most wholehearted lover of life I have ever met. Her office vases are always overflowing with flowers she brings in—plum blossoms, peach blossoms, crabapple blossoms, and wildflowers of every unnamed kind…
It was the spring of 2022. After lunch, strolling through the village, Li Yun spotted a calf tucked protectively behind its mother and called us over: ‘Look how tiny that calf is!’
She noticed a great mound of cow dung piled beside one of the houses and exclaimed with delight: ‘Oh, what glorious dark, glossy dung! What an enormous heap—where on earth did all this come from!’
On the way back to the office, she spotted a patch of tall grass and her face lit up again: ‘Look at this grass! So tall, so tender, so soft—oh, I wish I were a little calf!’
Of course, Li Yun’s passion for life showed most clearly when it came to food.
One day she told me the golden sparrow flowers by the office back door had started to bloom, and urged me to come pick them with her. ‘Now’s the perfect time,’ she said. ‘Once the flowers are fully open, they’ll be too old and lose their flavour.’
So in the afternoon, we made our way to the golden sparrow flower bushes beneath the willows, where a stream ran through.
“Golden sparrow flower” is the folk name; its scientific name, Caragana, sounds if anything more like a village name than the folk name does. Like the black locust blossom that northerners adore in spring, it belongs to the Fabaceae family and is one of the rare wild flowers that can be washed and eaten raw. At the market it fetches over a hundred yuan a kilogram.
The branches are bristling with sharp thorns, and one careless grab means a sting. Li Yun demonstrated the proper technique: pinch the tip of a flowering shoot with your left hand and draw it gently out from the thicket, while your right hand nimbly plucks the unopened buds from side to side—efficient and prickle-free.
I popped one in my mouth. Sure enough, it was sweet in the same way as black locust blossom.
Li Yun picked a broad leaf by the stream, snapped off a small twig, and threaded it like a needle through the two ends to fix them, shaping the leaf into an ice-cream cone. She handed it to me to hold, and I piled our foraged blossoms inside. Before long, we had a generous armful.
Then she used another twig to curl and pin the leaf tip shut, wrapping the blossoms inside so they wouldn’t spill or dry out. In the end, the four of us had gathered three generous packets—enough for a meal.
Just when I thought we could head home laden, Li Yun spotted shepherd’s purse growing beside the Caragana: ‘Look how lovely this shepherd’s purse is! Pick some back home and I’m sure it’ll make wonderful dumplings!’
She produced a pair of flower scissors and began digging up the shepherd’s purse. She actually carried flower scissors everywhere! No wonder she could conjure up such an abundance of blooms!
Magically, although Shangri-La sits high on the plateau, the shepherd’s purse growing here is even more succulent than the stuff in the Jiangnan lowlands. The leaves are impossibly soft and tender, and nestled in a patch of green grass they are far from eye-catching—yet Li Yun spotted them all the same. With the help of Li Yun and the two children, we soon had a good handful.
Back at the office, Li Yun swept into the kitchen and transformed into General Li the Strategist: in a few brisk swishes she washed the shepherd’s purse, minced it together with pork she’d brought from her village a few days earlier, and wrapped it all into dumplings.
For the Caragana blossoms, the most classic method: wash them clean, crack in a few free-range eggs, mix everything together, and pan-fry into a frittata. This is almost the most fail-safe destination for any wild edible.
She had also bought a bunch of zhuyecai from the market. This wild vegetable is another spring-only find in Shangri-La, with an extraordinarily brief season. It is said to taste best only when it grows above 3,000 metres—the higher the altitude, the less the bitterness, and the sweeter and more delicate it becomes.
Li Yun took out a chunk of skin-on cured ham, added water, and simmered it in the pot. Once done, she sliced the lean meat into ruby-red ham slices and stir-fried them with the zhuyecai, while the skin and fatty portions she cut into generous chunks, plated directly, and sent straight to the table. Then she poured the ham broth back into the pot, added the handful of shepherd’s purse she had set aside earlier, and ladled out a soup of extraordinary savoury depth.
Amid all this feverish activity, Li Yun somehow also fried up a batch of potato, tossing it with lemon, bird’s eye chilli, coriander, and spring onion. I took a bite and my eyes went wide: this fried potato was transcendent. The shatteringly crisp shell carried the fragrance of lemon, the sour-spicy punch hit me in one single bite, and out burst the sweet, starchy warmth that only high-altitude potatoes can deliver.
Li Yun beamed: ‘My daughter says my dressed potato wins first prize.’
In the end, this table—blossoms and potatoes, mountain wild edibles and village-reared pork—was a bounty from a boundlessly generous nature, made richer still by the self-directed, self-restrained labour of the people who tend this land. Without question, it was the best meal of my year.
III. Eating Wild Edibles Is a Human Instinct
And so, back to the botanist’s enigma: why do people still eat wild edibles when agriculture has advanced so far?
I think, in truth, we do not need to answer that question. Because eating wild edibles is a human instinct.
Today, agriculture and science together have enriched our tables enormously, yet they can still never replace what nature bestows upon us. Those wild edibles that ask for nothing but sunshine, earth, and rain—however neglected—thrive just the same, for growth is a plant’s instinct too. And those who willingly draw near to nature may receive this “gift of the wild harvest” with a clear conscience.
Unless otherwise stated, all photographs in this article were taken by the author.
Editor: Ze’en