A city where local culture is full of beans

By Miao Jie (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-16 13:48

While Anhui is known for Huangshan and Bagong mountains, and Huangmei Opera, it is the humble soybean that's the province's real cultural hero.

The area celebrated the marvels of these magic beans at the 16th Chinese Bean Curd Cultural Festival - the largest to date - in Huainan city last month.

It was in this city that tofu was invented 2,000 years ago by Emperor Liu An, the grandson of the first emperor of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), Liu Bang.

Liu An was then Huainan's king. He had originally lived on Bagong Mountain and, legend has it, spent his time pursing immortality through alchemy. He failed to secure everlasting life, but his name lives on through his serendipitous discovery of bean curd.

A city where local culture is full of beans

Visitiors to Huainan city,Anhui province, should try its famous tofu.

Commemorating his culinary innovation, the first Chinese Bean Curd Cultural Festivals were simultaneously staged in Beijing and Taipei in 1990.

At this inaugural celebration, organizers designated Sept 15 - Liu An's birthday - as the official day for the commemorative Bean Curd Cultural Festival.

Traditionally, local governmental officials and organizers host a bean curd banquet at every festival, much to guests' delight.

This year's event - steeped in ethnic traditions and displaying its host city's rich cultural heritage - proved a huge success, with representatives from the country's cultural, business and tourism sectors attending. The banquet was the celebration's centerpiece because it comprehensively showcased the art of tofu preparation and the many cultural traditions associated with it.

It also offered diners a chance to sample a variety of cooking methods, including steaming, pot-roasting, frying and boiling. One chef particularly impressed attendees with his ability to cook a wafer-thin sheet of tofu so that it was so tender a needle could easily pass through it.

The local government has also established a Bean Curd Industrial Park to boost this burgeoning industry. The park's management team has successfully attracted a slew of tofu-related businesses, including those involved in preparation, large-scale production, packaging, logistics, distribution and retail.

Huainan residents are proud to share a hometown with bean curd, head of Anhui's provincial tourism bureau Hu Xuefan says.

"We need to consolidate all of the resources at hand to make bean curd cultural tourism a must-have experience for visitors to Anhui," he says.