Jingpo "Green Leaf Feast"

Jingpo "Green Leaf Feast"

　　The Green Leaf Feast is a unique and rustic yet wild culinary tradition of the Jingpo ethnic villages in Dehong, Yunnan. Featuring an abundance of local mountain vegetables and game, the dishes are prepared using traditional methods such as grilling, boiling, frying, and pickling. Meals are wrapped in large leaves or banana leaves, and soup is served in bowls and spoons ingeniously folded from leaves — hence the name, as the whole spread is lush green and no utensils are used.

　　Unwrap the "green packages" one by one: there’s fragrant sticky rice, tender heartleaf herb, bee pupa omelets, as well as fried flying ants pancakes, pounded grilled spotted doves, and Paigun pickled fish — making it hard to decide what to try first. Faced with a tableful of green hues and an array of delicacies, along with aromatic rice wine and homemade brews, plus the warm hospitality of the Jingpo people...

　　After experiencing the Jingpo "Green Leaf Feast," you’ll gain a whole new perspective on today’s popular notion of “all-natural, green food.” Seated at a Green Leaf Feast, there are no bowls, no spoons, no metal drinkware. The rice is cooked in bamboo tubes, the dishes are pounded in bamboo, the serving plates are made of fresh banana leaves, the soup spoons are folded from leaves, and even the cups are crafted from bamboo segments. From wild mountain greens to aromatic free-range chicken, in both form and content, from sight to taste, it’s a world away from modern dining — as if you’re enjoying an “feast of ethnic wisdom.”