What a Mushroom Lives For by Michael J. Hathaway

Author:Michael J. Hathaway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

The Fruits of Matsutake: “We Are Building a Yi Economy”

One afternoon when Yang Xueqing and I stopped in to see how Li Laoban operated his sales office, he invited us to dinner. Li Laoban expanded on last week’s point that matsutake picking was important because people could make a decent living while speaking their own language. More broadly, he said, he and other local laoban were using matsutake funds to help build a Yi economy. We walked down the street, and he pointed out an example, a relatively new restaurant selling Yi food, which turned out to be one of his investments. The restaurant offers a number of Yi specialties that don’t commonly appear in Han-run establishments, such as goat meat, a kind of fried goat-milk cheese (called rubing), and some wickedly strong and locally distilled liquor, as well as some famous brands of maotai. On the walls, calendars from local companies display Yi scenes, such as Yi dance festivals, with Yi maidens in spotless and elaborate regalia (fig. 5.4).

FIGURE 5.4. Yi maidens dancing in spotless regalia at a large festival. Photo by Imaginechina/Alamy.

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