Written by: ifeng.com
Posted on: September 21, 2017 | 
| 中文
Countless jars of Soy Sauce along the Chishui River in Xianshi (source: China Daily)
In today's fast-paced life, it is a luxury to come across vegetables which have been fully nourished by the sun and rain. But beyond vegetables, one rarely tastes the original flavors of any food. Therefore, it is understandable that traditional organic food has an increasing appeal for people. Let’s introduce you to some organic Chinese food items, which have a long history of being made through traditional methods and continue to be made to this day.
Soy sauce is an indispensable seasoning in Chinese cooking. Organic soy sauce oozes from the sauce billet fermented for years, so it is as precious as oil. Different from the soy sauce generated through a few hours of chemical reactions, organic soy sauce contains the essence of the natural changes which occur in a proper place and weather. It usually takes at least three to five years or even longer for organic soy sauce to form.
The organic soy sauce of Xianshi City of Sichuan Province is particularly known, for being a precious cultural heritage, and considered a living fossil of China's traditional way of making soy sauce. The pure air and sufficient sunshine in Xianshi City provides active natural bacteria, which gives the soy sauce its rich flavor.
As one of the three ancient wines in the world, rice wine originated from China and is unique to the country. The method of brewing Shaoxing rice wine in particular was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.
Piles of pottery jars can be seen everywhere in Shaoxing City, among which some jars have been used for dozens of years, and therefore emit the fragrance of wine. A certain level of fermentation has to be achieved, and determining this is a crucial step, which can only be measured by the old masters.
Winter in south China is wet, cold and long. The low temperature here provides enough time for natural fermentation, and makes the essence of grains gradually turn into rice wine. You need to wait for more than a hundred days to taste a bottle of such wine. Sipping it slowly, one can almost taste the winter in which it was made.
Traditional Chinese brown sugar has the appearance of chocolate, but is more modest in nature.
The ancient skill of making such sugar has a history of hundreds of years. The complex process of making brown sugar through traditional methods, involves a number of steps. The freshly collected sugarcanes are ground five times, filtered thrice, floated twice and precipitated once. The texture mainly depends on the boiling process. About ten to twelve hours later, the brown sugar juice is poured into molds and cooled into different shapes. ?
Traditional cheese is a kind of snack for Kazakhs and Mongolians in Xinjiang. It was originally the product of redundant milk, but eventually became a delicacy. The richly flavored organic cheese is made from high-quality milk.
There is a long journey undertaken by the liquid milk before it turns to solid cheese. The specific time period of production changes with the climate and temperature. The organic cheese is quite different from the mass-produced variety. Various weather conditions and bacteria affect the production under natural circumstances, so only high-quality fresh milk can guarantee the rich fragrance of traditional cheese.
Translated by Zhou Xiaoling
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