day 358: 呼图壁 (Hutubi) = 0km

I woke up feeling terrible. Maybe the cold had finally caught up with me?

So here I am talking about food.

There’s a typical dish in the Northwest of China, it’s called 兰州拉面 (lanzhou lamian – Lanzhou noodles), or just 牛肉面 (niuroumian – beef noodles):

I have mentioned that I really like this dish before, only at that time I didn’t tell you anything about 蓬灰 (penghui).

蓬灰 is something that cooks put it into 拉面 to make the noodles more stretchy. Some people don’t eat this dish, because they are afraid of suspected harmful effects of 蓬灰.

Just what exactly is this 蓬灰?

As the title suggests, the English translations that I found online were just as useless as they were funny.

So, let’s look at the characters: “灰” can stand for ashes, or dust.

The character “蓬” is far less common, but it eventually points to a plant called 小蓬草 (xiaopengcao), which goes by the English name of horseweed.

So in conclusion, this 蓬灰 is apparently a powder derived from horseweed.

Does this mean that there can be a harmful effect for the human body?

Hard to say. While a lot of my friends try to stay away from it (for said reason), online communities tend to say that consumption of 蓬灰 is okay.

I asked a restaurant owner once, and here is his answer:

“吃兰州拉面对身体有害吗?? 兰州人他妈吃好几百年都没事!!” (“Eating Lanzhou Noodles is bad for your health?? People from Lanzhou have been eating this for hundreds of years without a fucking problem!!”

He might have a point there.

Soundtrack: All – “Until Then”
—total: 4723,8km