Three Sours of Maonan Ethnic Group

As to diet, the Maonan nationality has the habit of “one hundred flavors with sour.” The most famous one is the Maonan “three sours”, namely “Nanxing”, “Wengwei”, “Suofa”(Maonan’s language transliteration).

“Nanxing” is pickled sour pork or beef. Cut meat into slices, and mix it thoroughly with fine salt, preserve it for two or three days. Steam and dry fragrant glutinous rice, mix it evenly with the salted meat, and pressurize it in a jar. It is edible three months later. When eating, first put “Nanxing” into a bowl, and steam it. The oil juice in the bowl overflows and dissolves into the rice, which will be more fragrant and sweet. Pickling “Nanxing” actually is to keep the meat available at any time. In the past, whether the family has “Nanxing” or not is a criterion for its wealth.

The processing method for “Suofa” is as followed: first boil and dissolve the salt with water, filter the salt into a jar after the salt is cooled down. Put Jiaotou (Chinese transliteration, an kind of allium) dunked with lime water and dried into the jar, add scores of raw soybean, and seal the jar. Jiaotou and soybean ferment to grow sour in the jar. The brine jar with the tart flavor is just what “Wengwei” exactly means. In a “Wengwei” jar, many melons and vegetables can be pickled, such as green pepper, turnip, fresh kidney beans, cucumber and ginger. When the tart flavor turns light, Jiaotou and soybean may be added; when water turns less, add some brine. The fat pork, pig’s head meat and pig’s tail can also be pickled into the jar. After being pickled, the meat becomes tart, crisp and fragrant, not oily any more. The meat is called “Nanqing” in Maonan language. The pickled pig’s head meat is a good feast to strengthen appetite and sober up.

“Suofa” is spiral shell soup with tart flavor. The spiral shell is the big oncomelania growing in the local small mountain streams. First, fry the clean oncomelania with lard; pour it into a jar when it is hot, cooked and fragrant enough. At the same time, put the baked fragrant pig tube bones (big bones of bone marrow) into the jar too. Add some polished glutinous rice and water, and then seal the jar. It is edible three months later. Do not take dregs when ladling out the soup, and the soup should be timely refilled with rice water. When eating the spiral shell soup, flavor with chopped scallion, fragrant-flowered garlic, tomato, green pepper and salt. The soup is nice to go with food and rice. In summer, it can be used to relieve summer heat and cure the acute diseases.