Hakka medicated food is available for tourists to try at the Liangye Mountain Nature Reserve, Wuping county, Fujian province. [File photo from Wuping tourism Bureau]

Wuping county, in Fujian province, is promoting local medicated food as a new tourism product in Yancai village, based in the Liangye Mountain Nature Reserve.

The Local gourmet association has compiled a collection of medicated recipes and functions which are classified them into six categories. First of all, many herbs can be drunk as tea, such as glossy ganoderma and selfheal.

Chinese herbal medicines, immerged into distilled spirit, such as waxberry spirit and taxus chinensis spirit, are beneficial to health.

Ban, a traditional food in Hakka regions, is a bun made of rice. Adding medicated ingredients into ban is another way blending traditional food with medical culture.

Candies and desserts can also be made into delicious and nutritious food by mixing fruits, nuts and cereals in the flour.

Pickles, including the soused peels of oranges and pomelos, can often work as side dishes in Hakka meals.

Formulated medical dishes are the most delicate part in the Hakka medicated food culture. There are fixed recipe for such dishes. For example, mesona stewed with duck and angelica braised with beef.

Hakka people who lived in barren landscapes with severe climates, used to add mountain herbs into their bald meals, which gradually evolved into today’s Hakka medicated food.

By Zhai Song and edited by Jacob Hooson