A Thread of Milk Fragrance
Rushan (milk-curd "fans") is a signature delicacy of Eryuan. With its uniquely fresh fragrance of cow's milk it never tires the natives who grew up on it, and visitors from home and abroad to Dali remember its taste long after. Eryuan has long deserved its name as the "homeland of dairy cattle" - above all Dengchuan Town, whose moist climate, abundant rainfall, and rich pasture suit animal husbandry perfectly. Historically almost every household there kept dairy cows and the fragrance of milk wafted from door to door. This ample milk supply provided abundant material for milk products, and Dengchuan rushan - with its pure, mellow flavor - is famed far and wide. The Dengchuan scholar Yang Qiong recorded in his early-Republican Ji Dian Suo Ji ("Notes on Central Yunnan"): "Dengchuan has Deyuan Ridge, whose grass suits cattle; cattle pastured here yield twice the milk of other places."
A Thousand-Year-Old "Milk Thread"
Dengchuan rushan was historically called "ruxian" (milk thread); tracing it back, it has a history of more than a thousand years. The Nanzhao Yeshi ("Unofficial History of Nanzhao") contains the line "Suhua ruxian floats green in the cup." At the end of the Ming, in the Chongzhen reign, the local scholar Ai Zixiu listed it among the locality's products, still under the name "ruxian"; only in the Xianfeng reign of the Qing was it called rushan. In 1940, Chen Dingheng of the Beijing Zoological Research Institute investigated Dengchuan and published "Proposals for Developing the Dengchuan Dairy Industry" in vol. 9 of Xinan Bianjiang ("Southwestern Frontier"). He noted: "In Dengchuan more than half of all households in the county are engaged in [making] rushan, so it is a major item of export," adding that it "supports not only the livelihood of one county, but on its trade and transport countless others indirectly depend - not limited to the county's own people." A paper by the native scholar Professor Wang Yun, "The Importance of the Dengchuan Milk-Curd Trade to Peasant Livelihood," records that in 1944 alone Dengchuan County sold about 110,000 kilograms of rushan in a year. Evidence shows that in the late Qing and Republican eras Dengchuan rushan was not only shipped to all parts of the province but far abroad to Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries.
Making and Uses
Dengchuan rushan is made with great care: sour whey is first heated in a pot, fresh milk is poured in, and bamboo chopsticks gently stir and rock it as the milk's proteins and fats gradually curdle; the curd is then spread with the chopsticks into thin sheets to cool on bamboo racks, producing rushan that is white with a touch of yellow, clean and lustrous, as thin as a paper fan. The Dengchuan Zhou Zhi ("Dengchuan Prefecture Gazetteer") of the Xianfeng reign describes it: "Rushan is made by heating about a cupful of milk in a pot, adding sour liquor, and gently stirring with two round chopsticks until it gradually forms a cake; lifting it out, spread it with the fingers, then roll and re-roll it with the two chopsticks and lay it on a bamboo rack, where it dries into sheets of a fine, dry white." Analysis shows Dengchuan rushan holds about 49.3% fat, 35% protein, 6.8% lactose, and other substances; as a rule it takes 10 jin of milk to make one jin of rushan. Beyond its distinctive flavor and rich nourishment - protein, amino acids, and other substances the body needs - rushan harmonizes energy and blood, comforts the heart and quiets the spirit, and strengthens the stomach and restores the weak: it is a fine food for building up the constitution and improving health. It can be cooked in many ways - pan-fried, steamed, roasted, scalded, braised, deep-fried, or simmered - and paired with other meats and vegetables to make a whole series of novel rushan dishes. It can even be eaten raw: in the old days, when the western Yunnan mountains had no highways and goods moved by mule-train, the muleteers carried rushan and brown sugar to stave off hunger when they tired. Today's convenient transport and express-delivery services let many more people taste this delicacy of the tongue.
