Vegan Tours: Plant-Based Eating in Yunnan Looks Like This

Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

Zero Plastic Vegan Tours is a small sustainability-conscious tour company based in Yunnan that currently offers two itineraries in Kunming: a morning wet market visit and a night market visit for street eats. The basis for both experiences is to introduce the region's distinctive food culture through a "plant-based and plastic-free" framework.

 

Some important notes: Zero Plastic Vegan Tours strives to be as waste- and plastic-free as possible, so don’t forget to pack reusable bags and Tupperware for take-home purchases. Leo will provide reusable containers for the snacks eaten during the tour. Those who don't like to see butchers at work or meat for consumption on display should also be mentally prepared to see these sights during the tour. It is a traditional wet market, after all. In some instances, during the eating portion of the tour, cross-contamination may be possible due to some vendors utilizing the same cooking equipment for both meat and non-meat dishes.

The Host: Leo Ling

Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

Leo hails from Anhui Province and worked in Shanghai for most of the past decade, where he was most recently manager of the popular cafe Egg. In the past couple of years, he felt compelled by the need to change his lifestyle habits to reduce his carbon footprint: He went vegan, began incorporating minimalist, zero-waste practices into his daily life, and in late 2019, relocated to Kunming to funnel his entrepreneurial energy into projects that could promote these ideals. Through his business Green Solutions, Leo sources and sells eco-friendly home and personal care products (with plastic-free packaging, of course) and hosts events for community engagement and building awareness on environmental issues. An offshoot of that company is Zero Plastic Vegan Tours. 

The Market Experience

Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

Guests must arrive at Zhuanxin Market at 9.30am. The group is typically limited to eight participants. Leo is fully bilingual in Mandarin and English and speaks the local Kunming dialect too. He has a route mapped out in his head, which he usually adapts to any special requests for food that the day's visitors may want to see, taste or buy to take home.

Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

If you've got a fetish for fiery foods, for instance, he will direct you to the vendors who specialize in that. You’ll find different types of dried whole chilis, ground chili powders and chili sauces ranging from the cooking variety (doubanjiang, marinating sauces and other fermented chili pastes) to ready-to-eat dipping sauces of varying heat and pungency – there's a lot to sample.

Images courtesy of Cindy Kuan

 

The vendors are friendly about allowing visitors to sample bits and pieces of their wares, be it leafy greens and gnarly root vegetables or herbs and pickles. Leo has established a good rapport with a number of them, so they're used to him snipping off some produce here and there for a little taste test. The exception would be top-shelf produce such as rare mushrooms or the Buddha's Hand fruit (pictured below).

Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

 

Even long-time China residents, including veterans of the food and beverage business, are bound to encounter new ingredients on the tour. The variety of greens and mushrooms is jaw-dropping – the latter are only in season from summer to early autumn, but you can sample and purchase ready-made mushroom products all year. Take this intensely flavorful condiment wherein a particular species of fungi is submerged in oil and slowly cooked until succulent –  a wild mushroom confit, essentially. Use it as an umami-rich topping for noodles, soups, salads, rice dishes, or tuck it into sandwiches, wraps, or simply eaten on toast.

Images courtesy of Cindy Kuan

In addition, there are loads of fresh vegetables, fruits, herbs and other aromatics like edible flowers, both fresh and dried. There's an array of regionally produced raw sugar: pure brown sugar pressed into small, dense squares, rock sugar crystals and blocks of brown sugar fused with natural flavorings such as jujubes or rose petals. There are even huge ceramic jars filled with moonshine.

Images courtesy of Cindy Kuan

If your spoken Chinese isn't quite there yet, Leo can help you dig deeper here. Beyond helping you figure out which products are vegan, he can help you engage with the food producers and sellers at Zhuanxin. Where was this grown? How was it made? How can I take this home and use it? It's a great chance to practice your Chinese while getting to know the origins and highlights of the food in front of you. 

The Vegan Eating Experience

Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

Zhuanxin market isn't just a destination for ingredients, of course. The tour is just as much about experiencing Yunnan's food culture by eating your way through it. In addition to the careful vetting of every dish, each one is entirely vegan, delicious and representative of Yunnan cuisine.

 

While visitors are winding their way through the sizable sprawl of Zhuanxin, surveying the fresh ingredients described above, Leo will point out the best vegan food stalls and their must-try offerings. Expect to eat around five to six handheld street snacks while walking and two to three larger, meal-sized dishes in a sit-down setting on top of that.

 

Getting too detailed about the dishes included in the tour feels like giving away some serious spoilers to a movie; instead, here's a look at a handful of the vegan eats covered in the market tour.

Buckwheat pancakes. Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

Crispy, ultra-savory deep-fried lotus root balls. Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

Charcoal-grilled rice cakes seasoned with fermented broad bean sauce, chili sauce, chili and sesame-infused oil. Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan. 

Douhua mixian, or Yunnan rice noodles with douhua – the soft, custard-like tofu type that is often translated in English as "tofu pudding" – mixed with minced pickled mustard greens, savory gravy, chives, and chili sauce. Image courtesy of Cindy Kuan

The Zhuanxin morning wet market tour typically begins at 9.30am, lasts approximately three hours and costs RMB200 per person for the guided tour and all food and drink. The night market tour is RMB225 per person.

Tours can be booked through Zero Plastic Vegan Tour's Airbnb Experiences page (https://www.airbnb.com/experiences/1403610) or by contacting Leo directly through the QR code below.

Cindy Kuan 

Cindy Kuan is a writer who has been covering food, travel, design and cultural trends in Greater China for nearly a decade. Her background spans editorship roles at independent media publications in Shanghai and Singapore, writing for a well-known travel guide series, producing trend forecasting reports, and copywriting for creative agencies. If she isn't writing, she's probably cooking something, geeking out over how to cook something, or hunting down some ingredient or kitchen tool she has convinced herself she needs to have.