Public Zone 公開區 > Travelogues 遊記相薄

The Kingdom of Bhutan 不丹王国 (Spring 2013)

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chin:
I am still travelling in Bhutan now. I will post pictures here after I return home. I have taken so far >2500 pictures, and most likely finish the trip with 3000 plus time shutter pressed. It will take some time to process the pictures.

But I am starting the topic now, because I am asking my friends' opinion on something I am getting here.

chin:
I travel to different places few times a year but don't usually buy souvenir. I wasn't planning to buy any in Bhutan but ended up spending quite some money on two kinds of items.

The first is cordyceps 虫草 and the second nice Bhutanese weavings.

When I came to the country, I did not know that Bhutanese harvest cordyceps. One day when we drove pass a rural area near Bumthang, my guide was telling us that the people there used to be very poor. But recently (perhaps just over 10 years ago) they found that they can harvest cordyceps and sell the worms at very high prices. The system of how it work is that at around June, they will harvest and dry the worms. Not everyone can harvest the worms. Each family or village has a quota and they rotate the quota to limit how many people can harvest the worms, and the harvesting period is only one month. Then they will collectively sell the whole stock in an auction. At the beginning of July, the prices will be fixed by the auction or tender, then in about 2 weeks the buyers woud need to complete the transaction with cash.

I did not know what cordyceps means, but after the description, I figured that it's 冬虫夏草 in Chinese. When I was small, my mum used to made soup with this stuff. That was long time ago. About 15 years ago, I read an article that the price of cordyceps has gone up so much that lots of people in Tibet are harvesting the worm and destroyed the environment in the process.

Out of curiousity, I called some people and found out the retail price of cordyceps in HK. I was a bit shocked since I have not had this stuff for well over 20 years. Anyway I asked my guide if he can find some for me.

It happened that our driver's brother is one of those who harvested before. So they start to call people to see if they still have some kept at home. After a few days, they collected from a few sources a bunch of cordyceps.

chin:
Wongyan was kind enough to texted me some hint on cordycepts. Anyway here are the pictures of what I have collected in the last few days.

This is sample 1, only have 20 pieces or so. I am using the iPhone 4 as background so you can estimate the size.

chin:
This is sample 2.

chin:
This is sample 3.

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