What Delicious Cuisine Can You Taste on Tianzhu Mountain?

Most local snacks of Tianzhu Mountain are homemade by villagers, while small fast-food shops and hotels also serve them regularly. Common offerings include:

Tianzhu Mountain stone mushroom is a rare mountain delicacy, also commonly called "stone skin", a unique local specialty of Tianzhu Mountain. It is a medicinal wild vegetable and a top-grade dish in Huizhou cuisine. Similar in shape to wood ear mushrooms, each stone mushroom measures 10 to 20 centimeters in diameter, several times larger than ordinary wood ears. Its front side is jet-black covered with tiny fine hairs, while the back is coated with a light green moss-like film, with a stem at the center attaching it to the rock it grows on. Stone mushrooms grow in damp crevices on steep, shaded cliff faces and take six to seven years to fully mature. Supplement to the Compendium of Materia Medica, written in the Qing Dynasty, records that stone mushrooms "make the finest soup to treat guests". Braising stone mushrooms with pork or stewing them with chicken yields an incredibly delicious broth, long praised by diners.

This soup is cooked with a whole free-range native chicken, pork marrow bones, wood ear mushrooms and green vegetable leaves. First, the whole chicken, pork bones and wood ear mushrooms are placed into a large clay pot, then simmered slowly over charcoal fire until the soup turns milky white. The chicken chunks are rich and savory, the pork bones fragrant without greasiness, and the wood ear mushrooms smooth and tender on the palate. The wonderful blend of varied textures creates an unforgettable taste experience.