Yunnan's Bamboo Rice (lemang)

At the Yunnan Ethnic Minorities Cultural Village - there is this special food stall which sells lemang or bamboo rice in their dialect.
It is prepared in almost the same way as our Sarawak lemang. The girl preparing it is very lovely and she serves us in a very gracious way - we were like royalty. Each lemang is only 5RMB or 2.50 ringgit. Our group shared one tube.

My friend dividing the lemang with her chopsticks. I actually never thought of using chopsticks with lemang!! But this is the done thing here. Eating bamboo rice with chopsticks for centuries!!

The bamboo tubing is easily pried open..look how lovely the bamboo cooked rice is. It is a very convenient way of cooking rice while travelling in the mountains. Set up fire. find some bamboo. wash rice...and lo and behold..your evening meal is cooked in no time. Some times a fish or some meat is placed in the rice and cooked together...lovely to think of a meal like that in the open. I hope Anthony Bourdain would have another go coming to Borneo and taste better food in the jungle!!

Banana leave wrapped rice...this can come out of a bamoo and then wrapped in banana leaves for easy carrying in a back pack. Having travelled much in the jungles of Sarawak I find this a very natural way of dealing with our food. Sustanence is so traditional  and our ancestral ways are more than intelligent!! Tribal knowledge should be respected by all means.