Weed Scene | Picking Mushrooms in the Mountains 2024

January 13, 2025

In early July 2024, I bid farewell to Cangshan Mountain and started my mushroom picking experience in the mountains.

The night before the event, I will cook chicken soup, prepare pots and pans, and cut the bacon for the stir-fried mushrooms. The bacon is sent by my mom from her hometown. It is Hunan bacon with a smoky flavor and is very suitable for stir-frying Yunnan mushrooms. It is delicious, but it is very hard and difficult to cut. I don’t like to cut it. In order to avoid being in a hurry when cooking the next day, it is best to cut it at home in advance. I will save the garlic and green peppers for the next day and let the guests cut them together, otherwise I don’t know what tasks to assign to everyone.

After arriving by car the next day, each person will get a basket, which is twice as big as the regular mushroom-picking basket. We each carried a basket and went into the woods. If you are a novice, the probability of picking a lot of delicious mushrooms is not high, and the sensitivity of the eyes to mushrooms needs practice. At this time, I have to try my best, because the experience in the deep mountains is not like the regular experience. In the regular experience, we only need to collect enough samples, and the mushrooms for lunch are picked by the sisters. But the mushrooms eaten in the deep mountains have to be picked by ourselves. I need to quickly shuttle through the jungle and take a general look at the mushrooms on the hilltop before I can get the confidence.

After we had collected almost all the mushrooms, I sorted the mushrooms in everyone's baskets into edible ones and inedible ones. The edible ones were further divided into those suitable for making soup and those suitable for stir-frying.

The mushrooms I pick are not always certain, but there are some particularities when it comes to mushrooms for chicken soup. So on the way up the mountain, if I have the chance to meet villagers picking mushrooms, I will first buy some of the blue-headed mushrooms, orange-yellow amanita, or several kinds of mushrooms from the green hand that can be stewed to produce delicious flavors.

It is best to use only one type of mushroom in the soup. If you use different types, you must understand whether their textures and flavors are suitable. If they are not well matched, the mushroom soup will be messy and not pure. If you don't know the mushrooms you have, it is better to use only one type.

Mushrooms that we can pick for soup include: blue-headed mushroom, white onion boletus, brown-hole corrugated boletus, chanterelles, several species of orange-yellow Amanita, morels, hairy-headed coprinus, gray-fleshed red mushroom, red juice milk mushroom, wax mushroom, nail mushroom...

Generally speaking, mushrooms suitable for making soup can also be fried, and the type of fried mushrooms is quite random. In addition, there are also mushrooms suitable for tempura. At present, I think the thin and small ones like purple wax mushrooms and wine red wax mushrooms are suitable.

The mushroom soup is ready. First, serve a bowl to each person. After tasting the pure mushroom soup, you can put the noodles into the soup.

At this time, the fried mushrooms are almost ready. Unlike mushroom chicken soup, I like to cook several kinds of mushrooms together when I stir-fry mushrooms. For example: the tough porcini and the tender blue and yellow red mushrooms, plus the small wax mushrooms are stir-fried together. The blue and yellow red mushrooms have rich gills and soft meat, combined with the thick meat slices of the porcini, and the small wax mushrooms are like ingredients, mixed in. Add the sautéed bacon, dried chili and garlic, and the soup is very delicious and suitable for toppings.

After the noodles are cooked, take them out and cover them with the fried mushrooms as a topping and mix them. In this way, we can drink pure mushroom soup and eat the mixed mushroom noodles. Occasionally I will fry some tempura, but not every time. Because after a few activities, I found that my two hands are not enough. To wrap the noodles, I have to watch the mushrooms in the pan and take them out at the most appropriate time. After a busy meal, the chicken soup on the other side may be boiling, and I have to go to stir-fry.

I have always dreamed of becoming a chef one day, so this experience can be considered part of my dream come true, right? Although it feels more like playing house.

This summer, I went mushroom hunting in the mountains 14 times. Every time I sent the following message to the guests who booked the activity:

"Picking mushrooms in the mountains is more like an exploration and an uncertain journey with many unknowns. Maybe we are lucky enough to pick enough mushrooms for a full meal, then we can wash them and cook them right in the mountains. If we are unlucky and don't pick enough mushrooms, then we can only cook some instant noodles to fill our stomachs."

In fact, I won’t really let you eat instant noodles. This is just a clever trick I use to test your relaxation level.

What makes me happy is that most of the guests passed the relaxation test. Later, it was proved that no matter it was windy and rainy or the tire was stuck in a ditch, everyone really relaxed through it. This is probably part of the spiritual value that this experience brought me.

I think I have achieved my goal: I have stolen some relaxing and happy time during the summer vacation peak season which should have been stressful. ✌️Thank you☺️See you next year.

The first episode of mushroom picking in the mountains:

My old mushroom friend Mo and her friends went all the way from Shanghai to Chuxiong to pick mushrooms, and then from Chuxiong to Dali to pick mushrooms. This is Mo's fourth year in Dali to pick mushrooms. I have to say: I am touched by mushrooms.

Also participating is our new mushroom friend Xiaoxue.

Mo (from Mo's circle of friends):

Arrived at the home of the God of Boletus.

This is my fourth year of mushroom picking in Cangshan. Sitting in the passenger seat of Xiaojing, holding Haha, I can see walnut trees everywhere. The smell of the forest gradually becomes stronger, and I keep thinking back to Luo Anqing's preface to "The End of Matsutake": "What will you do when your world starts to fall apart?"
She said that when you take a walk, you might unexpectedly come across mushrooms, which will remind you how lucky you are to be here at this moment - "even though you are in the fear brought by uncertainty, there is still fun to be found." I agree with her.
Finding mushrooms is the opposite of certainty: understanding the preferences of various mushrooms, identifying the types of tree orders, and learning the symbiotic relationship between mushrooms and plants and animals are certainly helpful, but they do not mean guarantees. After all, mushrooms grow freely and do not depend on people's expectations and imaginations. Walking quietly in the woods, I often hear the voices calculating the unpredictable rate of effort and return - if you don't just climb over the mountains and cross the ridges, you will get something, so why bother running? Applying this purpose-based framework to mushroom picking should often feel frustrated, but the beating heartbeat and the excitement that fills my body remind me that it is not just that.
We, mushrooms, trees and mountains can all be integrated into a larger perspective. Here, we focus on the process itself. We may feel the red mushroom buried under the oak leaves, smell the fragrance and walk towards the chicken, or locate the white beef liver with the sound of mosquitoes flapping their wings. We may see it, or we may not see it. This is a song composed of fate, with chance and surprise as motivation. The audience who enter the venue will be forced to listen until they learn to appreciate uncertainty with curiosity and leave with satisfaction.
Being constantly called into the woods filled with uncertainty, perhaps this is the lesson I need to learn.

Issue 2 - Issue 14 (one issue has lost its image):