Qingyuan Mushroom Banquet 庆元百菇宴

Qingyuan Mushroom Banquet (庆元百菇宴) is a meal in Qingyuan County (庆元县), Lishui (丽水), in which a whole table of dishes is made from different kinds of mushrooms. People's Daily's Zhejiang channel describes the food as light and health-minded, and names the banquet first among what to eat in the county.

How it is eaten

The banquet is a spread of many dishes rather than a single plate. Zhejiang Online, describing Qingyuan's best-known mushroom feast (香菇宴), lists set-piece dishes with auspicious names such as "Rich as a Whole Region" (富甲一方), "Mushroom Fragrance Draws the Phoenix" (菇香引凤) and "A Hundred Mushrooms Vie in Beauty" (百菇争艳). All of them use edible fungi as the main ingredient and are prepared with attention to colour, aroma, taste, meaning, shape and nourishment.

Where it comes from

Among the titles People's Daily lists for Qingyuan is "source of the world's shiitake". More than 800 years ago Wu Sangong (吴三公), a farmer of Longyan village (龙岩村) in Baishanzu town (百山祖镇), invented the log-notching method (剁花法), which People's Daily credits as the start of artificial shiitake cultivation. In November 2022 the Zhejiang Qingyuan forest-mushroom co-culture system became a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, the first for edible fungi. Qingyuan shiitake draw nutrients from many kinds of trees and have a strong mushroom aroma.