Jingzhou carved candied fruit
Jingzhou Carved Candied Fruit
Dear friends:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to Jingzhou Miao and Dong Autonomous County in Huaihua City. Whenever you visit Jingzhou, you simply cannot miss tasting its specialty — candied fruit.
The candied fruit produced in Jingzhou has been renowned since ancient times and is a traditional arts-and-crafts food of Jingzhou. Among them, the carved candied fruit from Jingzhou is even more famous. Jingzhou carved candied fruit originated in the Five Dynasties period and has been passed down through generations. It has always been a tribute item presented to the imperial court by the people of Jingzhou. It is both a sweet and fragrant premium tea snack and an exquisite work of art as beautiful as jade carving — a crystallization of food and culture. It is not only a traditional gift for friends and guests among the people of Jingzhou, but also a traditional export product, selling well in Hong Kong SAR of China, Taiwan Province of China, Vietnam, and other places. Its distinguishing feature is that the patterns on the candied fruit are remarkably lifelike, all being traditional Chinese auspicious designs, and it tastes crisp, sweet, and fragrant. The traditional craft of Jingzhou candied fruit carving has been passed down through generations, and every household in Jingzhou knows how to make it. In particular, most women of all ethnic groups in Jingzhou are skilled at this craft!
According to the "Preface: Maps" in the Gazetteer of Jingzhou Zhili Prefecture, Jingzhou has been a materials distribution center for eighteen neighboring counties and cities since ancient times, hence the saying "Eight Banners Gather at Jingzhou." Jingzhou is home to 16 ethnic groups including the Miao, Dong, Hui, Tujia, Zhuang, Yi, Yao, Mongolian, Manchu, Bai, Shui, Li, Tibetan, Bouyei, She, and Han, with the Miao and Dong being the majority. The industrious and wise Miao and Dong people not only have their own beautiful languages and scripts, but also their own distinctive ethnic cultures. Carved candied fruit is a famous folk specialty of the Miao and Dong people in the Xiangxi region, and a unique ethnic minority specialty of China that combines art and cuisine in one.
Jingzhou carved candied fruit, also known as Ten-Thousand-Flower Tea, is made from small pomelo fruits, winter melon, cucumber, radish, watermelon rind, and the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits of vegetables as raw materials. Through creative design, it is carefully carved with small willow-leaf knives into traditional craft tea snacks, ornamental pieces, and health foods. Its craft designs include exotic flowers and rare herbs (spring flowers and autumn chrysanthemums, summer lotus and winter plum, etc.), birds and beasts (mandarin ducks playing in water, peacock spreading its tail, golden rooster crowing at dawn, etc.), figures and landscapes, fish and shrimp, dragons and phoenixes, vessels, and other patterns. The carving is divided into three types: flat carving, round carving, and relief carving, with strong three-dimensional modeling and remarkable lifelike quality. These carved semi-finished products are then refined through specific candying processes. Because of its exquisite workmanship, sweet and delicious taste, pure natural colors, and long shelf life, as well as its efficacy in relieving abdominal bloating and strengthening the spleen and stomach, long-term consumption is beneficial to health. Therefore, it is a fragrant, sweet, qi-regulating, phlegm-resolving, dryness-eliminating, and yin-nourishing tea snack and small food suitable for all ages and particularly loved by people. It is also a crafts piece as beautiful as jade carving with distinctive shapes and colors, embodying rich folk cultural art.
Jingzhou candied fruit is a purely handmade product. It uses unripe pomelos larger than a fist (such pomelos are mostly solid, with skin and flesh difficult to separate), which are sliced and soaked in thick sucrose water. After being thoroughly soaked, they are taken out and dried in the sun. Once the pomelo slices are dry and hard, young women with deft hands carve various patterns on them. Ordinary materials thus acquire extraordinary vividness. The women of Jingzhou mostly excel at carving candied fruit. Jingzhou candied fruit is a perfect combination of distinctive agricultural and sideline products and the ingenious handicraft of the Miao and Dong people.
Although people are accustomed to calling it pomelo candied fruit, it is more accurate to call it pomelo flower tea! Because since its birth in the late Five Dynasties period, it has been presented to the world as a form of tea. Initially, it was used by the Miao and Dong people to reward the three armies, and later it became a custom. When young people visit for the first time for a blind date, local Miao and Dong girls would carve pomelos, oranges, winter melons, and other fruits and melons into candied fruit imitating the shapes of flowers, grass, fish, and birds in the mountains, and use them to brew tea to entertain their prospective sweetheart on the first visit. Later, it gradually evolved into an essential sweet tea for entertaining distinguished guests during festivals and major celebratory occasions in Miao and Dong households.
Pomelo trees bloom in early March, begin to bear fruit in early April, and after about a month, when the pomelo fruit is the size of a rice bowl and has taken shape externally while the flesh is still only the size of a wine cup, it is ready to be picked. First, the young fruit is cut into round slices, the core is removed, and then a specially made lightweight willow-leaf knife is used to freely carve various patterns on the round slices: such as mandarin ducks playing in water, peacock spreading its tail, two dragons contending for a pearl, golden rooster crowing at dawn, two phoenixes facing the sun, spring orchids and autumn chrysanthemums, summer lotus and winter plum... Girls and young wives unleash their rich imagination to create, carving out all kinds of openwork patterns. Passed down through generations, most women of all ethnic groups in Jingzhou are skilled at this craft. Like magicians, they use small yet sharp candied fruit knives on the round pomelo slices — up and down, left and right, with a few cuts and carves, an exquisite pattern emerges vividly, seeming to come alive. This skill, which seems routine to them, never fails to astonish outsiders.
As the saying goes: grass has a hundred forms, trees have a hundred postures, flowers have a hundred colors, people have a hundred faces. Then, as for the flower tea carved by a hundred skillful hands, you absolutely cannot find two identical pieces — each one is a unique masterpiece. The willow-leaf knife for carving candied flower tea is like a brush in a painter's hand, like an embroidery needle in an embroiderer's hand, letting imagination take wing to carve out flowers of a thousand shapes and forms. Some are like lotus emerging from water, pure and flawless; some are like magpies in the forest carrying plum blossoms, silently conveying affection; some are like croaking frogs in the fields, some leaping, some glaring warily with big eyes; some are like clever monkeys stealing grapes; there are also lively and adorable little mice and kittens, waddling ducks, and beautiful auspicious goldfish — all popular patterns; some are like flower baskets that pure young maidens have gathered from the mountains, some are like peach blossoms floating on colorful clouds, some in bud, some in full bloom... No wonder many literary and art workers from home and abroad who come to Jingzhou and witness these rich and colorful patterns all praise them profusely.
Jingzhou's candied fruit, to some extent, shares a similar spirit with Jiangyong Nüshu — both are women's work, both are emotions forged with heart. You see, each one is so remarkably lifelike. This is a free and unrestrained folk art, and also the most perfect tea that combines human thought with nature and life. Only with a heart as calm as mist and as still as water can one carve such wonderful works. Flowers and people, flowers and tea, people and flowers — only those who have been bathed in the spirituality of green mountains and clear waters since childhood can create flower tea carved from pomelos — pairing white and pale green in colors closest to nature with seamless perfection, like a wisp of faint cloud drifting across a clear summer sky. Such a scene can only be seen in Jingzhou with its green mountains and clear waters. How wonderful it would be if the green here could replace the blue sky — the sky would become even more full of life and vitality; isn't our flower tea in the sky of food exactly what gives people this fresh and natural feeling? Pale green flower tea, magical candied fruit...
Therefore, the process of carving flower tea is a process of nature worship. Each flower, each blade of grass, each tree is a wish, a dream, a blessing, all carved into this single leaf of flower. As the sunlight slowly evaporates the moisture, the flower tea becomes increasingly crystalline and green, like a piece of jade — that elegant emerald hue drifting through it makes all dreams seem to come true, and one's heart is greatly satisfied. Irritability disappears, worries run away.
Every summer for the girls and young wives of Jingzhou is made up of days spent carving flower tea. Whenever you visit Jingzhou in summer, you can see such scenes: under the skylight in the courtyard, under the green shade outside the yard, every household is carving pomelo flower tea of a thousand shapes and forms. The girls and young wives speak little, all with heads bowed, holding willow-leaf knives and carving meticulously. From time to time, they briefly soak the evenly cut pomelo slices in clean water, then cover them with a damp towel to prevent moisture evaporation. One after another, the pomelo slices, under the flying willow-leaf knives, transform into exquisite crafts pieces. The most important part of carving candied fruit is "trimming the edges" (shaping), just as a leaf needs the contrast of branches, and a beautiful Miao garment needs colorful decorative borders — candied fruit is the same! It is a beauty felt in the senses, entirely dependent on your inspiration...
After the candied fruit is carved, it is only a semi-finished product; next comes further processing. It is unknown in what year or by whom this was invented, but after processing, the candied fruit can fully retain its original colors. Boiling candied fruit is the most fun part. Wherever candied fruit is being boiled, the whole courtyard is the liveliest, with everyone coming to join in, voluntarily bringing out old antique bronze locks, copper coins, and the like from home for use in boiling. First, the carved candied fruit is washed with water, then the pot and copper items are scrubbed until shiny. Then the copper items and clean water are boiled together. After the water comes to a boil, an appropriate amount of alum is added. Alum firms the flesh, while copper preserves its original colors: the surface turns green, the interior white, bright and translucent, with clear patterns — truly a marvel. After the alum dissolves, take a chopstick, place a drop of water on a fingernail; when the droplet neither spreads nor runs, the water-washed pomelo flowers can be put into the boiling water to cook for a while. When they take on a faint green hue, scoop them out one by one and place them in clean water. The cooked flowers look like aquatic plants in a mountain stream, extremely pleasing to the eye. At this moment, the fresh pomelo fragrance fills the entire courtyard... Then comes "rinsing the candied fruit," which means taking the pomelo flowers out of the clean water and squeezing out the bitter liquid from the candied fruit. This is repeated over and over, washing until there is no bitterness left, and soaking in clear water until the next morning. Then the water is squeezed out, and the candied fruit is placed in a basin and preserved with a ratio of one jin of candied fruit to one jin of white sugar. After the sugar dissolves, it can be placed in sunlight to dry. When slightly dry, it is put back into the sugar water, repeatedly letting the candied fruit absorb sugar water until fully saturated. After a few days, when the sugar water has dried, it is placed on bamboo trays to dry in the sun, and thus the candied flower tea is ready. It can be seen that turning a pomelo fruit into carved candied fruit requires a series of tedious and meticulous steps, with not the slightest room for carelessness.
Generally, exquisite foods emphasize color, aroma, taste, and appearance, and Jingzhou's carved candied fruit excels in all four. Before tasting, people are first drawn in by the delicate and interesting patterns, then captivated by the pomelo fragrance of the pale green tea and the tea's sweetness, and their appetite is greatly stimulated. Once you have seen Jingzhou carved candied fruit and tasted Jingzhou carved candied fruit, the candied fruit from other places can basically only be called preserved fruit. Smelling the clear, elegant, and slightly sugary fragrance of Jingzhou carved candied fruit tea in the cup, and looking at the jade-like carved candied fruit in the pale green tea within the cup, one truly cannot bear to open one's mouth and "waste such a heavenly gift," disturbing that elegant beauty.