Phoenix Beans

Phoenix Beans

　　Phoenix Beans have a mythical origin. Legend has it that in ancient times, an old farmer went up Phoenix Mountain to gather firewood. As he was gathering, suddenly, a fiery red bird that looked like a chicken but wasn’t flew out from the bushes. After a flash of rosy light, it disappeared into the boundless sky. The farmer walked over to the bushes where the bird had taken off and saw several snow-white beans lying on the ground. The farmer picked up these beans, carefully took them home, and planted them in the field. In no time, bean sprouts emerged, bloomed, and bore fruit. The farmer couldn’t bear to eat them and instead replanted the new beans. This cycle repeated, and gradually the beans took root and thrived all around the foot of Phoenix Mountain. Because they grew on Phoenix Mountain, locals named them Phoenix Beans. These beans are large, white, and highly nutritious, and their commercial name is white kidney beans. Jinding Township in Lanping Bai and Pumi Autonomous County has a long history of cultivating white kidney beans. Currently, due to export demands, the cool mountainous areas across the county have widely adopted their cultivation, providing hundreds of thousands of pounds of commercial beans for foreign trade each year, which are exported all over the world.　( Nujiang )