Museum of ancient scholars

Photo provided to China Daily

Like many others, I was surprised when I heard about the dish called fried hairy tofu. The chefs put freshly made tofu on bamboo chips for fermentation for three to five days, until white fine hairs grow on them. The hair would be gone when the chefs fry the tofu and scramble them with other ingredients.

The other unusual dish is the smelly mandarin fish, which smells awful but tastes good, just like smelly tofu. The cooks make the mandarin fish into kipper by soaking it in light salt brine under the room temperature for about a week.

The next day, I climbed Huangshan city's other mountain－Qiyun Mountain, which is about 74 kilometers from Huangshan Mountain. The two mountains have been equally famous since ancient times.

Qiyun is one of the top four Taoism mountains in China, and Qiyun literally means it's as high as the clouds. It has attracted many Taoism practitioners throughout history such as Zhang Sanfeng in Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Many well-known ancient scholars and officials such as painter and poet Tang Yin (1470-1523) visited the mountain and wrote calligraphy for it, which were carved on the cliffs or on monuments inside the caves.