This dish, known as Niang Tofu, lets the flavor of steamed meat sit on top of the bean curd, in addition to letting another sauce slightly flavor it on the bottom. Photo source: China Daily

The recent China Daily article highlighting tofu’s birthplace of Huainan in Anhui province reminded me of one thing.

I’m going to have to return to the area.

My visit will not focus on the glitz and glamour that has accompanied the area’s annual event, the Chinese Bean Curd Culture Festival. In September, Korean pop star group, Super Junior-M, highlighted the festival which attracted crowds.

Rather, it will be to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the chefs, both famous and ordinary, who have expanded our understanding and satisfied our taste buds with this food that goes back 2,000 years.

What do I mean?

Reporter Miao Jie captures one good example in writing about the annual festival:

It also offered diners a chance to sample a variety of cooking methods, including steaming, pot-roasting, frying and boiling. One chef particularly impressed attendees with his ability to cook a wafer-thin sheet of tofu so that it was so tender a needle could easily pass through it.

Now that I read that sentence for a second time, I’m uncertain if the chef actually pierced the wafer-thin tofu sheet with a needle or if that was only hypothetical.

No worries. I get the point. It’s good stuff.

I also want to have a look at the region’s Bean Curd Industrial Park, which brings together like-minded businesses that specialize in production and distribution of soybean cake.

My only suggestion to the business leaders who came up with the name: Um, you might want to keep the words, “Industrial Park,” out of the equation.

Try something like: The World’s First Bean Curd Gastronomy Zone!

Or something like that. You don’t need to use the exclamation point.

But you get the idea. 

I’ve visited industrial parks before. You get the sense of warehouse space or a worker assembling some machinery or driving a fork lift.

Oh, but I do like the article.

I’ve written about tofu’s origins. But I like how this article pointed out something that I overlooked, that Liu An was an emperor and that his grandfather, Liu Bang, was the first emperor of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).

Also, Liu An’s birthday is Sept. 15 – which is the start of the annual Chinese Bean Curd Culture Festival.

So: Mark your calendars.

The date and festival roll around yearly.

In other bean curd news, Asiana Airlines – a South Korean flag carrier – will start serving kimchi with tofu on its flights, as well as mung bean pancakes, The Korea Times reports.

You know: On those long flights, it’s always refreshing to have delicious food.

My thanks to A Beautiful Mosaic for the mung bean pancake recipe.

Speaking of Niang Tofu, my wife found some recipes for the dish - which is popular among the Hakka ethnic group in China.

After you’ve found one that you like, you can use Google’s translation tool to get the directions in English.

The photographs alone are worth a look.

The dish is noteworthy because you can put ground meat, fish and shrimp on top of the tofu.

Then, you can steam it and eat it. Or, you can fry it and add a sauce.

My wife tells me that “niang” means to let the flavor appear over time – kind of like making wine.

Crowds gather last week in Anhui province to mark tofu's birthplace and its long history.

People outside of China probably realize now that the country enjoys the noise, color and crowds of grand public spectacles – especially during Lunar New Year or much-ballyhooed state banquets.

Zhang Yimou impressed a global audience last year with his opening ceremony to the Beijing Olympics.

The Chinese Bean Curd Culture Festival, which is Anhui province’s annual celebration to mark the birthplace of the food, is no different.

The festival held in Huainan ended last week and drew big lights, scores of people, a large television audience and numerous entertainers – including Korean pop stars – and businesspeople.

More than 2,000 years ago, Liu An, the grandson of a Chinese emperor, told his assistants to make a medicine that would prolong his life.

As a daoist (taoist), he wanted a long life and an elixir to help.

His assistants arrived in Huainan, used fresh mountain water and soybeans in their medicinal pursuit. They eventually realized they had created a new type of food, as the story from China goes. 

Judging from one video posted on YouTube from this year’s government-sponsored event, there was a focus on the Korean pop star group that bloggers fulllyricseng and liltwillee identify as Super Junior-M.

(I couldn’t have identified this group of singers. So, thank you fulllyricseng and liltwillee. I only understand pop stars from Asia to be a general concept. As in: Young people, typically popular, with stylish haircuts and fashionable clothing and who sing, often about love.)

The singers talked about which dishes they like, including mapo tofu, bean curd soup and chou – or smelly – tofu.

A mapo tofu comment from one of the singers earned a “thumbs up” gesture from the mistress of ceremonies, who said it is the most famous and traditional Chinese dish.

She also talked about how the singers were well informed about tofu dishes.

Interestingly enough on this YouTube page, online banter broke out among some commenters.

One person was concerned that the mistress of ceremonies during the interview pushed one of the singers out of the group on stage.

What would have been more eye catching, though, would have been an easy-to-find video stream of the top Chinese chefs preparing bean curd dishes at this annual festival which started in 1992.

Iron Chef has a great bean curd video. YouTube also has one of a Chinese chef making mapo tofu.

Organizers for this year’s festival, though, set up a special bean curd Web site that includes photos. The information is in Chinese but Google’s translation device should be able to help.

It looked there were plenty of activities to keep tofu enthusiasts busy, including an awards ceremony, family cooking competition and cocktail reception.

One hundred families competed in this year's bean curd cooking competition, part of Anhui province's annual tofu festival. Photo source: beancurd.org

Since the 1990s, the festivals have drawn a total of about 90,000 people from the province, China and other countries. In 2000, for example, an estimated 300 scholars attended bean curd cultural seminars at the annual event, the People’s Daily has reported.

From 1992 until 2000, the celebrations reportedly attracted an estimated $1 billion in international investments using today’s exchange rate.

The People’s Daily article did not specify which companies invested the money or where they put it.

Photographs from previous tofu festivals in Anhui have appeared online.

Tofu creations from earlier bean curd festivals in Anhui province.

The Anhui News has posted background information about bean curd and the gala event.

If anyone comes across additional images or videos from this year’s bean curd festival and show chefs working their magic, please send them to me.

Speaking of grand spectacles, the next one in China will occur Oct. 1 – which marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

In another glittery event last year, China set the record last year for making the world’s largest dried tofu – which was marked, naturally, with a big celebration.

This piece of dry tofu set the world's record and measures about 13 feet by 13 feet. It weighs about 4,100 pounds. Photo source: chinadaily.com.cn

I should note that there are other large international meetings this week, one at the United Nations and the upcoming G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh.

I’ve covered or attended many meetings over the years. But this session from the World Science Festival in June would have been one that I lingered at for a long time.

You know, asking questions. Trying to figure things out.

Just look at Bobby McFerrin and his incredible, audience-involved demonstration of the Pentatonic Scale - which apparently is found in nearly all of the world’s music. (McFerrin’s Web site is here.)

This Vimeo clip is making the online rounds – and for good reason: Fun and lively but with important music history behind it.

Imagine going to any place in the world and having people recognize, in some fashion, these notes.

I saw the clip on Boing Boing. It looks like Cory Doctorow heard about it from Marilyn at Intelligent Travel Blog.

Additional videos, including ones with McFerrin, can be found on this Vimeo page or on this World Science Festival page.

The sounds made by the audience reminded me of Chinese Buddhist monks I heard years ago at Jiuhuashan in Anhui province.

My hotel was across the road from a temple. I heard the monks chanting as I fell asleep.

Let me just say this: I’ve often heard the refrain that U.S. students lag in science, compared to others around the world.

After realizing how science can be explained, taught and learned, I hope that’s not the case.

That makes it older than the modern version of the hamburger, which started showing up around the 1800s. Yes, Egypt’s pyramids are more senior. But tofu predates the Gutenberg printing press and American-style democracy.

Not bad for food that starts with a roly-poly bean a bit smaller than the size of your fingertip.

As the story from China goes, Liu An, the grandson of a Chinese emperor, lived in Anhui province, which is west of Shanghai. Liu believed in Daoism (Taoism) and sought a long life. So, in 164 BC, he instructed eight of his assistants to discover a medicine, an elixir in a sense, to accomplish his goal.

During this process, the assistants went to the province’s Huainan area, which is north of the capital city of Hefei. There, they used fresh mountain water and soy beans to make milk. They took the milk and added coagulants. They worked feverishly to find the magical formula.

Instead, as the story goes, they created the wiggly mass known as tofu.

Apparently, a farmer entered the picture after the birth of this vegetarian dish. As the story is told, he was the first person to taste it.

Now, was he a cautious but curious bystander who volunteered to eat what was before him? Or did the assistants require this commoner to test it to help prolong the emperor’s lineage?

In any event, he tasted. He digested. And, as I’m sure the assistants noted, he lived. His reaction: It was nice and soft.

Map from the Anhui government

From there, a “bean culture” sprouted. People in different parts of China started experimenting with the food. A Chinese monk is said to have introduced tofu making to Japan.

Many believe it spread there and in Korea, Thailand and other parts of Asia because Buddhism grew in popularity in the region.

Buddhists, as we know, prefer to eat vegetables. In recent years, Anhui province has hosted a regular tofu festival.

In the West, people spell the food as ”tofu.” It’s the popular spelling from Japan. But in China, you’ll run across ”doufu.”

* Sincere thanks to my wife, who helped translate the tofu history, which was written in Chinese.