After everything was packed up, the wind picked up a bit more, though it still hadn’t started to rain.
Looking at the sky, Gu Yu felt that the rain wouldn’t come anytime soon. He decided to head out to look for wild yams after all—but only in the nearby area, without going too far.
Judging by how many they had seen along the way the day before, there should be quite a few on this mountain, and likely some not far from here.
Gu Yu originally planned to go alone, but Tang Jiao wasn’t at ease. Since it wasn’t far, the two of them went together.
They followed the same route as the day before. Back then, when they didn’t know those vines were yam vines, they hadn’t paid much attention. Now that they were looking closely, they realized there were indeed plenty of wild yams on this mountain.
After walking for about twenty minutes, they came upon a patch.
Gu Yu cut the vines at the base, then started digging with his entrenching shovel. Tang Jiao, meanwhile, pulled down the yam bulbils above and gathered them.
Yam bulbils—also called aerial yams or yam beads—aren’t seeds, but small tubers that grow along the vine.
They taste great too. Yam-bulbil tanghulu, in particular, is especially delicious! Tang Jiao planned to take them home to make tanghulu for An’an.
Tang Jiao was happily picking the bulbils, but on the other side, Gu Yu was having a much harder time digging up the yams.
Wild yams grow straight down and can reach up to a meter deep, so they have to be dug very carefully. If the soil is loose, digging that deep isn’t too difficult.
However, although the soil on the hillside was soft, it was full of stones. Some yams had even grown into gaps between rocks, making excavation much more challenging.
Worried about breaking them—which would make storage difficult—Gu Yu started digging slowly from a spot some distance away from the root. An’an also grabbed a small stick and dug beside him with great enthusiasm, soon covered in dirt from head to toe.
After Tang Jiao finished picking all the bulbils in that area, she snapped off a tree branch, shaped it into a slanted edge, and joined in to help dig.
The three of them worked hard for over half an hour just to dig up one yam plant. That single plant produced two tubers. They managed to extract one intact, but just as the second was about to come out whole, its last section got stuck between two rocks. With one careless moment, it snapped. Tang Jiao couldn’t help but feel deeply regretful.
She took out one of the intact yams and saw that the yellowish tuber was covered in fine root hairs and speckles.
Unlike the straight, long cylindrical yams commonly seen in supermarkets, wild yams grow in all sorts of irregular shapes, more like twisted tree roots. Probably because of the many stones in the soil, they had grown around obstacles, resulting in their uneven forms.
The remaining short section of yam was still wedged tightly between rocks and wasn’t easy to dig out. Continuing would have required far more effort than it was worth, so Gu Yu gave up on it. He filled the pit back in with the soil and stones he had dug out, then moved on to the next plant.
There were three or four wild yam plants in this small patch. It took the three of them nearly two hours to finish digging them all up, yielding around eighty to ninety jin of wild yams, along with a small bag of yam bulbils.
These yams had likely been growing for many years. With the rich nutrients from decayed leaves and soil in the mountains, each plant produced an abundant harvest. Though the family was exhausted, returning home fully loaded filled them with excitement.
After finishing this patch, they didn’t go on to search for another. By then, the wind had grown much stronger and the sky darker, so the family decided to head home first.
They got home a little after five, but with the sky so overcast, it already felt like dusk. Gu Yu quickly lit the fire pit to provide light and warmth, while Tang Jiao washed her hands and began preparing dinner.
Since they had “unlocked” wild yams today, dinner was millet porridge with wild yam and red dates. On a cold evening, a hot bowl was both comforting and nourishing—warming the body, the heart, and the stomach, while also being easy to digest and unlikely to cause heaviness.
Tang Jiao put on disposable gloves and started peeling the yams. She chose the broken pieces first, since those don’t store well and spoil easily, so it was better to eat them right away.
Once the yam skin is broken, it secretes a sticky sap containing a plant alkaloid called saponin. When it comes into contact with human skin, it can cause irritation and itching. Tang Jiao had experienced this firsthand before, so she made sure to wear gloves early on.
She first washed and cut the yams, then put them into the steamer with water to cook. On the upper steamer rack, she also steamed pumpkin and chestnuts.
After the pumpkin and chestnuts were steamed, she added millet and red dates and let everything simmer gently over low heat. The longer it cooked, the thicker and more fragrant the porridge became. By the end, the yams had almost melted away—once in the mouth, they dissolved with a light press of the tongue, leaving only their aroma.
For dinner, they had the remaining half of the fish from lunch, still braised in the iron pot. Even so, they didn’t finish it and saved what was left to reheat for breakfast the next morning.
After dinner, An’an played for a while as usual, then listened to a bedtime story and went to sleep. Gu Yu continued organizing his spare carrying poles, while Tang Jiao set about processing some of the chestnuts into chestnut flour for storage.
Chestnuts don’t keep for long. Before too much time passes, you’ll start seeing one—or even several—wormholes in each nut.
That’s because insects may have already laid eggs inside the chestnuts before they were harvested. To prevent the chestnuts they had worked so hard to haul back from being wasted, Tang Jiao needed to process them as soon as possible.
Back when they were at home, they would usually boil the chestnuts and freeze them, but with their current limited conditions, she had to find another method. Turning them into chestnut flour was one such option.
Tang Jiao had never made chestnut flour before. She only remembered the method from something she had looked up while researching how to store chestnuts. Now she decided to try making a small batch first as an experiment.
She began by washing the chestnuts, then used a knife to cut a cross into the top of each one, making it easier to peel after cooking.
She put an appropriate amount of water into a pot, added the chestnuts while the water was still cold, and tossed in a little salt. Supposedly, this helped with sterilization and also made the chestnuts sweeter. After bringing the water to a boil over high heat, she let them cook for a few more minutes. Once the cross cuts at the top had clearly split open, they were basically done.
Chestnuts need to be peeled while hot. If the heat is an issue, kitchen gloves help. With a gentle pull at the cross-cut opening, the shell and the thin brown inner skin came off easily together, revealing chestnut meat that was smooth and intact.
Tang Jiao didn’t need whole chestnuts, though. She put the peeled chestnuts into the largest zip-top bag she had and crushed them by hand, then placed the bag on the chopping board and rolled over it repeatedly with a beer bottle until the chestnuts were ground into a very fine mash.
Next, she took out a sheet of oven parchment paper and spread the chestnut paste evenly over it in a thin layer. She then brought over a large, thin stone slab they had previously hauled back from the riverbank and set it over a small fire pit Gu Yu had just built.
There were no strong flames in the small fire pit—only glowing charcoal taken from the main fire pit, slowly heating the stone slab.
Tang Jiao placed the parchment paper covered with chestnut mash onto the warm stone slab and gently dried it over low heat.
As long as the heat was kept low and the mash was turned over from time to time, the chestnut bits would dry thoroughly.
As the chestnuts heated, their fragrance slowly spread through the air, making Tang Jiao swallow again and again in anticipation.