Longsheng, famous for its amazing natural beauty and ethnic culture, has some local traditional dishes that you won't forget once you tasted them. In many local farmers' home, you will have the chance to taste the sweet rice wine, fragrant rice in a bamboo tube, and wind-dried fish among other local dishes.
When staying among the rice terraces, simple stir-fries using local vegetables and meat may also be prepared to suit customers' tastes.
Wind-Dried Cobble Fish
Streams outside the village are really transparent coming out from remote mountains. As there are many cobbles in the streams, the small fishes are also called cobble fish. They are very easy to catch. The fish are first wind dried and preserved. Then the last step is to sauté the fish with capsicum and garlic shoots.
The fish tastes hot and sour with a fragrant flavor - an appetizing dish with rice, so say the locals, though maybe not to your taste.
Bamboo Tube Rice (竹筒饭)
Bamboo tube riceBamboo is cut into sections of around 35 cm long, and filled with streamed glutinous rice, together with wind-dried meat, peanuts, pickled bamboo shoots, and some other ingredients through a small hole. The hole is sealed with sweet potato, and then the bamboo tube is roasted on a small fire. After 30 to 40 minutes, the rice is ready with a faint fragrance of bamboo.
Many of our customers have enjoyed this dish.
Smoked Pork (腊肉) and Smoked Sausages (香肠)
Every household on the terraces smokes their own meat as a way of preserving it
Many of our customers have enjoyed the local "Chinese bacon" and "Chinese sausages".
Rice Wine (糯米酒)
Rice wine is a kind of sweet alcohol brewed from glutinous rice. Nearly every household in ethnic villages makes rice wine.
Fermented glutinous rice and water are put into a wooden bowl, and then heated on a fire. The wine streams down from the bamboo inserted in the middle of the wooden bowl. When a pot is filled with the clear alcoholic liquid, you can smell the dense aroma of the wine.
The water for brewing the wine is drawn from mountain streams, so the wine has a gentle floral fragrance. It is reputed to drive away the cold and dampness in the human body.
Rice wine is often offered to arriving guests as a local custom. You don't need to have it if you don't want to, though many of our clients have enjoyed it so much that they have bought bottles of it to drink in their hotels and as souvenirs.
