Tujia Festival Rice

She fan ('society rice') is a seasonal rice dish in which glutinous rice — often mixed with regular rice — is steamed together with wormwood greens, cured meat and wild onion, so that each grain carries the fragrance of the herb and the cured pork.

She fan is tied to the ancient 'she ri' (festival of the land god). Around that time in western Hunan, people gather tender wormwood, combine it with cured meats and steam it into rice — shared by the family after honoring the gods, carrying a sense of spring prayer and the turning of the seasons.

As a seasonal food it is eaten around the festival, best served warm — the clean, faintly bitter herb playing against the salty cured meat. For locals it marks the season and carries quiet feeling.

It folds the scent of wild spring greens into rice for a taste that is hard to forget; a mouthful of she fan is a mouthful of western Hunan's spring and its festival customs.