Ersi and Erkuai (Rice Cake Strands)

Erkuai is a Yunnan rice speciality made by washing and soaking rice, steaming it, pounding it in a stone mortar to a smooth paste and shaping it into blocks, then cutting it into fine strands (ersi) or slices (erkuai); its texture is soft yet springy and full of rice fragrance, a staple the people of Dali cannot do without at any meal.

Erkuai has a long lineage, its pounding method said to reach back to the rice-working traditions of ancient southern peoples; Yunnan has always taken rice as its staff of life, and pounding it into erkuai made it easy to carry, store and cook in many ways, a shared rice-craft wisdom of the Bai and the peoples of western Yunnan.

Ersi is mostly boiled for breakfast with fresh pork, pickled greens, pea shoots and rich broth, warming and savoury; erkuai can be stir-fried, grilled soft and rolled with fermented bean-curd sauce, or sliced into famed dishes such as "Great Rescue," the most common everyday taste in the streets and lanes of Dali.

Its soft-yet-springy pounded texture, its pure rice fragrance, and the many ways it can be fried, boiled or grilled are what root erkuai and ersi in the everyday life of Dali.