Lijiang Baba (Stuffed Flatbread)

Lijiang baba is the city's most iconic traditional flatbread, made from finely milled local wheat dough kneaded at length, filled with white or brown sugar for the sweet version or ham and scallion for the savoury, rolled thin and pan-fried and baked until golden and layered, the crust crackling crisp and the centre soft and filled.

The rise of Lijiang baba is inseparable from the Tea-Horse Road: sitting on the Yunnan-Tibet corridor, Lijiang saw mule caravans set out for days or weeks at a time, and the baba, lasting and slow to spoil, became their most reliable ration, Naxi women kneading their worry for travelling kin into the dough. Its making was listed as a Lijiang municipal heritage item in 2005 and rose to provincial-level heritage in Yunnan in 2017.

Fried to order and best eaten hot, with sweet and savoury versions to each taste; locals often pair it with a bowl of butter tea or chicken-pea jelly for breakfast, while travellers eat it dry on the road, the most everyday taste of Lijiang's lanes and markets.

The golden layered oil-crisp crust, the firm keeping-quality that made it caravan food, and its ties to the Tea-Horse Road are the unmistakable marks of Lijiang baba.