Duoduo Fen Hot-Pot

Duoduo fen is not an ordinary noodle but a clay-pot mini hot-pot with a secret sour-spicy broth, in which rice tofu, cold jelly, crisp pork, bean-curd rolls, cut noodles, meats and vegetables are simmered; because the food is slippery, diners fork it up with bamboo sticks, which gives the dish its name.

In Anshun dialect "duo" means "to fork," and since the slippery rice tofu and jelly resist chopsticks, diners skewer them with sticks; the word also carries the bustle of friends and family gathering around one pot.

Diners sit around the clay pot, each armed with bamboo sticks to fork up crisp pork, cut noodles and vegetables, dipping them in the sour-spicy broth, the most convivial hot-pot snack on Anshun's streets.

The sour-spicy clay-pot broth, the singular stick-forking way of eating and the communal bustle around the pot are the irreplaceable marks of duoduo fen.