looking at the photograph below,
what is the main ingredient? surprisingly it is small river rocks or pebbles! let me explain, suodiu
is believed to have been invented hundreds of years ago by boatmen who would
prepare the dish when they became stranded in the middle of the river with no
real food while delivering goods, a little stomach psychology was involved when the pebbles were cooked in spices and then sucked on, fooling your stomach into thinking it had been fed! the preparation of suodiu at roadside stalls still goes on
today and can be seen on Xiaohongshu, China’s version of Instagram, typically priced at 16 yuan, at today’s rate £1.75 or $2.23 per serving,
once you suck on all the rocks, you are left with the sauce,
which, some say has a distinct fishy taste from the river pebbles, just a word
of caution, do not chew or swallow the rocks! “Do I have to return the pebbles
to you after I finish?” one patron can be heard asking in one of the viral
videos doing the rounds on Chinese social media, to which the vendor replies
“Bring them home as a souvenir”, so there you have it rock soup, which I guess could be called Stone Soup.
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