Yongzhou Heluo River Snails 永州喝螺

Yongzhou Heluo River Snails (永州喝螺) are a classic local snack of Yongzhou (永州) in Hunan: small live snails known locally as tieluo (铁螺, "iron snails"), cooked in their shells with a fierce chilli heat. The Yongzhou culture and tourism bureau (永州市文化旅游广电体育局) describes the dish as snails whose shell tips are chopped off and which are blanched in boiling water before being cooked with seasonings. The name heluo, "drinking snails", comes from the way they are eaten.

How it is made

The snails are normally tieluo that grow in the clear streams around Yongzhou. They are small, but the bureau describes their flesh as good, crisp and flavourful. Before cooking, the live snails are kept in clean water for two to three days with a few drops of camellia oil so that they expel their dirt; the tips of the shells are then clipped off and the snails go on the fire.

Flavour and texture

The bureau lists the dish's features as fresh, tender snail meat and a fierce, sharp chilli heat, with a strong aroma. Hunan University of Science and Engineering (湖南科技学院), in a feature for the rednet (红网) Yongzhou station, adds that the snails are fragrant, crisp and tender, with a savoury broth.

How it is eaten

Yongzhou Heluo River Snails are eaten from the shell, and the bureau notes that visitors from elsewhere who do not know the technique struggle with them. First the snail's lid, the operculum, is picked off. Then the eater holds their breath, presses the lips tight against the opening and draws the meat out, drinking and sucking at once but mostly sucking, "like a baby nursing", with the effort in the lips rather than the throat: too hard and you choke, too soft and nothing comes out. Experts quoted by the Sanxiang City Daily (三湘都市报) explain heluo as taking off the tail of the snail and sucking out the juices.

Where it comes from

A local legend credits He Xiangu (何仙姑), one of the Eight Immortals, who claimed that the autumn moon at Danyan (淡岩) in her home town of Yongzhou outshone the fairyland of Penglai (蓬莱). The immortals travelled by the Yangtze, Dongting Lake and the Xiang River (湘江) to Yongzhou to see for themselves; when Han Xiangzi (韩湘子) tried to paint them a carp to eat, drops of his ink fell to the ground and turned into snails, which He Xiangu stir-fried. In December 2024 a heluo culture month opened in Yongzhou under the title "source of Hunan cuisine", with snail-sucking contests for visitors and residents, and experts cited finds from Yuchanyan (玉蟾岩) in Dao County (道县) as evidence that people in Yongzhou already knew heluo 14,000 years ago.