Written by Jing (guide of Forest Picking & Gathering Team )
The first place where I practiced picking mushrooms was Wuwei Temple Mountain. I heard that this is where the most white mushrooms grow. But because white mushrooms are delicious and expensive, this mountain also has the most villagers picking mushrooms.
They started climbing the mountain at dawn every day. Everyone had trained their "mushroom eyes" to be very good . When mushrooms popped out of the soil, they would often be covered by fallen leaves from the pine trees. One needed a pair of good "mushroom eyes" to find the hidden little mushrooms.
As a beginner, it was a bit unrealistic for me to compete with so many experts to pick white mushrooms. Sure enough, on the first day of climbing the mountain, I only picked the two poor little mushrooms below.
I didn’t pick any green mushrooms, so I could only buy the big green mushrooms picked by a lady who was picking mushrooms near me and take them home to make soup. I felt unconvinced in my heart because we were all picking mushrooms on the same mountain , so why couldn’t I see any mushrooms?
Although the first day's mushroom picking was not satisfactory, the mushroom picking thing seemed to have fascinated me. After two days, I was still thinking about picking mushrooms.
This time I picked the first white angelica in my life as I wished. It was hiding under the roots of a clump of grass, and suddenly I saw it accidentally. The feeling of finding it was very special.
Later I understood that the way to practice mushroom eyes is to remember again and again the feeling of discovering mushrooms in the grass at a glance. The more times your eyes have that feeling, the better you can practice mushroom eyes. I think I will never forget this place where the green mushroom grows in my next life. In the days that followed, every time I passed by here, I couldn't help but flip through the grass.
I remember that day, I picked three mushrooms in total, one white mushroom, one blue-headed mushroom, and one boletus mushroom whose poison was unknown. I was so excited that I took them home and fried them for food. At that time, I didn’t think about anything else except being happy.
Looking back now, I am a little scared because my knowledge of mushrooms was very limited at the time. Like many people, I actually thought that all porcini were edible .
It was also from that summer that I started to take people on mushroom picking experiences. However, when I take guests on this experience, I never cook and eat the mushrooms casually, haha.
This experience was actually given to me by Jason because he went to Wuwei Temple to pick mushrooms many times. Every time he was very serious, but he never picked any mushrooms . Haha. Just when he was frustrated and ready to give up this activity, I fell in love with picking mushrooms 😄.
In 2021, there were very few guests who came to book mushroom picking experiences. I often brought one or two people up the mountain. As a result, I saw many sunrises. We entered the forest with the early morning sunlight, and then everyone silently looked for mushrooms. That scene is still very clear to me.
I am not good at socializing, and part of the reason I like picking mushrooms is because I think it is something that does not require talking but requires more concentration and quietness.
Looking in the forest, my head is full of mushrooms, and then suddenly I see a mushroom. This is a great moment for me.
Maybe because we all had some quiet time, during the tea break, I seemed to be able to chat with the guests naturally.
Looking back, I am quite grateful to the guests who came to participate in the mushroom picking experience in the first year. It is not so much that I took them to participate in the experience, but it would be more accurate to say that they came to accompany me to pick mushrooms . Not only did they play, but sometimes they also had to learn with me.
Sister Songmei was my mentor in learning mushroom picking. In order to prevent guests from getting sick from the food when I was leading the experience, I would buy the white mushrooms that Sister picked in the mountains and take them home to cook.
When I buy mushrooms, I will also ask her to identify the mushrooms I picked, but because they know very little, they can only tell me "they eat it here" or "don't eat it" . But for me at the time, it was already very helpful. Therefore, Sister Songmei and her family later became important partners in our mushroom picking experience .
With gradual practice, we can also collect a lot of white beef liver.
When I was lucky, I got to pick three consecutive white lobsters!
Later, because of Covid-19, there were no customers left.
However, it also gave me the opportunity to explore mushrooms in more mountains. Thanks to my mushroom picking partner Jason. He himself doesn't like mushroom picking very much, but in order to support my mushroom hobby, he will always accompany me to explore whenever there is a place I want to go but dare not go.
Once, when Jason drove me to Cangshan Mountain to pick mushrooms in his old van, I picked a green mushroom through his shaking car window. Another time, he drove me, Mao Jie and Wang Shuo to Shaxi to pick mushrooms, and I picked a super-large yellow tiger palm mushroom through the car window. These are important memories of my mushroom picking journey, and they are also the results of my "mushroom eye" practice that I want to show off😏.
However, also because I didn't have enough respect for mushrooms, three years ago when we were picking mushrooms in Shaxi, we unfortunately cooked and ate a big poisonous mushroom, Allium sibiricum. After eating it, I realized belatedly that it was not a real poisonous mushroom. From that moment on, the pleasant atmosphere in the air became extremely cold. We stuffed the tent into the car and drove to the town of Shaxi, waiting for the poison to take effect. In the end, there was no reaction even though we waited for a whole night.
From that night on, I decided to never eat mushrooms carelessly again. What if what we ate that day was not shallots but a poisonous mushroom? Not only would it kill me, but it would also kill Jason and my dog (who also drank the soup).
As time went by, we collected more and more types of mushrooms , many of which we had never seen before. My eldest sister only knew about the mushrooms in the Wuwei Temple area, so we had to start learning on our own by reading materials and looking up information in books.
Looking back now, that feeling of wanting to understand, not because of internal competition or exam pressure, is so beautiful.
Now three years have passed, and mushroom picking has become my profession without me noticing. I have my own picking team called “ Mushroom Elves”.
Pick mushrooms together and explore together. Partners also change from Jason to mushroom elves : Yang Mi, Li Zhenhao, Wanwan, and Yan Zi.
With them, I feel freer, because there is no mountain that the five of us would not dare to go to together 😄.
Our mushroom picking experience has also been adjusted. After we go up the mountain, we will help everyone find mushroom samples . We will no longer just distinguish between "edible" and "inedible". We have added a mushroom explanation session during the tea break. Even so, we don't want everyone to think that this is a "rigid" course. I think it is unrealistic to learn about mushrooms in just three hours. We will try our best to combine practice and output some easy-to-remember points, but more of it is to enjoy the fun of the mushroom picking process .
I often miss the time when I used to pick mushrooms quietly with my guests.
