Live Your Best Lives
The mountain road twists and turns, and the villages are lined up side by side...
Nuodeng, this mountain village made famous in China by the TV series "A Bite of China," shocked me at first sight with how difficult the road was to get to.
The innkeeper came to help carry the luggage, otherwise we would have had to stay at a farmhouse at the foot of the mountain.
From time to time, livestock would block the road.
No wonder, this was originally a horse road. No, to be more precise, it was called the Ancient Salt and Horse Road, an ancient national highway.
The mountain path isn't all tiring; one can clearly feel it:
Ancient path, west wind, thin horse...
A sparse hedge, a deep path...
...
Alas, "There is a true meaning here, but I've forgotten the words to express it"!
The road into the village, which is painful for the joints, is also quite refreshing.
Mule- and horse-carrying salt crisscrossed the rock-paved road, connecting Tengchong, Baoshan, Myanmar, Dali, Tibet, and so on—hence the name "Ancient Salt and Horse Road."
Salt, a necessity, accounted for a significant portion of national tax revenue and, until ten years ago, was a state monopoly.
A friend on WeChat said he hadn't seen any ham. After asking the villagers, they learned that the curing season was over, and the few hams hanging in every household were a sales pitch, selling for 100 yuan per pound.
Boiling salt used to require cutting down trees for firewood, creating a smoky atmosphere. Production ceased over twenty years ago. Now, only a single well and stove at the village entrance provide demonstration production, satisfying local salting needs and selling to shops. In fact, villagers often buy iodized salt from outside.
When it comes to ham, Shanghainese only knew about Jinhua, Zhejiang, and Xuanwei, Yunnan. Nuodeng was unheard of. But it was the delicious taste that propelled Nuodeng ham to the forefront.
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