YichangReisebudget-Guide

A Yichang noodle house opened in 1983, its bowl of chilli-oil noodles accompanying three generations of local mornings, a living sample of the city's breakfast culture.

The standard Yichang breakfast—springy noodles bathed in fragrant chilli oil, a hot, spicy, savoury bowl that is the soul of the city's mornings.

A Yichang summer cooler of rice batter pressed into shrimp-like strands over brown-sugar syrup and served ice-cold—shrimp in name only, and a childhood memory for generations of locals.

Yichang's most classic fried street snack—shredded radish bound in rice batter and fried golden and crisp, crackly outside and tender within, a taste of the city's autumn streets.

An old-fashioned Yichang street cake steamed in small bamboo tubes, soft and sweet with a hint of rice wine, a nostalgic childhood treat for locals.

Another Yichang summer classic—ice jelly hand-rubbed from chihua seeds, glossy and cool, dressed with brown sugar and nuts.

The Dragon Boat customs of Zigui, birthplace of Qu Yuan, kept alive for over two thousand years with "three festivals," dragon-boat racing and the Saotan poets' gathering; a first-batch national ICH item from 2006 and a core part of the Dragon Boat Festival inscribed by UNESCO in 2009.

A vast store of orally transmitted folk tales from Xiabaoping township in Yichang's Yiling District, with many tellers and an astonishing repertoire; a first-batch national ICH item from 2006 under folk literature.

A distinctive folksong tradition of Xingshan county, famed for its ancient "third-and-a-half" scale, regarded as a living fossil of archaic Chu music; a first-batch national ICH item from 2006.

The "fine music" of Yichang's Yiling District, an instrumental tradition unique to the city built on silk strings and bamboo winds, transmitted for nearly two centuries; a first-batch national ICH item from 2006.

A unique Tujia funeral rite of the Qing River valley in which the dead are sent off with song and dance—"a death is everyone's mourning, and mourning becomes group song and dance"; a first-batch national ICH item from 2006 under traditional dance.