The markets.
From late June, the mushroom markets assemble: low tables under tarpaulins, baskets of damp forest, and a trade in everything from twenty-yuan scrub bags to single matsutake worth a week's wages. Kunming's markets are the theatre; the county-town markets are the trade. The pickers come down from the forests at dawn with the night's haul, and the prices move with the rain like a commodity exchange.
The names.
The province eats a wider mushroom list than anywhere on earth: the prized matseke (Termitomyces, the termite mushroom), porcini by the sackful, the chicken-fat mushroom that tastes improbably of what it is named for, the dried-layer ganba that perfumes a whole dish, and the matsutake that mostly leaves for Japan. Every family has its own identification folklore; the markets run on three centuries of accumulated, very local, very serious expertise.
The hotpot.
The season's table is the mushroom hotpot: a chicken-and-ham broth, a procession of species cooked in strict order — the tough first, the delicate last — and a kitchen that knows the difference between a delicacy and a hospital visit. Eat it where the kitchen cooks mushrooms daily for locals, never where the menu has an English translation of the word "exciting". The season is the province's best table, and it only lasts while the rain does.
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