On September 25, the “Return to Yunshuiyao, Happy Mountain Town” 2026 Nanjing County (南靖) Second Intangible Heritage Carnival and its “four dishes and one soup” food consumption event opened at the Yunshuiyao scenic area in Nanjing County, Zhangzhou, Fujian, and ran through September 27. According to People’s Daily’s Fujian channel, the three-day programme made “four dishes and one soup” tasting the centerpiece of the Mid-Autumn holiday, digging into local ingredients and traditional cooking to put township banquets and regional snacks on show and to sell quality farm produce. Zhangzhou’s culture and tourism bureau guided the event, the Nanjing County government hosted it, and the county publicity department, the culture, sports and tourism bureau, the tulou management committee and the Fujian Tulou Tourism Investment Group co-organised.
What Sits on the Tables
Food stalls drew the first crowds. Tulou ciba, a glutinous rice cake, pulled visitors in to buy and taste, while Longshan town sent out sour-soup beef with bamboo shoots, Meilin town brought soy-braised beef hoof and Nankang town added coffee-braised pork ribs, the aromas carrying across the site. Each participating team cooked from local ingredients with old methods and presented the region’s food culture without shortcuts. The programme added free tasting, dish viewing, a popular-dish vote and food check-in activities, using display, hands-on experience and interactive promotion to keep sharpening Nanjing’s “one county, one table” food brand and to pull visitors in through food while carrying local culture through flavor.
Heritage Beside the Food
Intangible heritage ran alongside the eating. Built on the Mid-Autumn theme of returning home to reunite, the carnival organised itself around four core elements it names as tower, ballad, art and taste, and set up an eight-in-one immersive scene for viewing, performance, play, shopping, appreciation, tasting, learning and eating. Several local inheritors of intangible heritage gathered at the market to show tulou construction technique, traditional bamboo weaving and wool knitting, giving visitors a close look at the crafts. Bobing (博饼), the Mid-Autumn dice game of southern Fujian, and other games followed in turn, and the crowds joined in. A heritage market called “Craft Inheritance, Heritage Gathering,” an immersive interaction zone and a coupon exchange event ran at the same time, and the site stayed busy.
A Stage Under the Tulou
At 8 p.m. on September 25, after the opening ceremony, the “Sound of Yunshuiyao” heritage-themed Mid-Autumn gala took the natural stage of the World Heritage tulou. Song and dance, instrumental pieces and folk performances followed one another, with the old tower as the backdrop, the moon overhead and a stream running past, and the result was a dense, immersive Mid-Autumn programme. The day fell on the Mid-Autumn Festival itself, so the Yunshuiyao scenic area filled with visitors, and the World Heritage Fujian tulou and the heritage performances set each other off while the food aromas carried through the site.
Turning Visitors Into Spending
Nanjing is the core home of the Fujian tulou World Heritage site. Deputy county head Dai Hai’e told the opening ceremony that the tulou is a heritage treasure that can be seen and felt, that “four dishes and one soup” carries the warmth of everyday life, and that the two set each other off and keep deepening Nanjing’s culture-tourism character. Cai Zhihong, a deputy director of the county culture, sports and tourism bureau, said the carnival borrowed the Mid-Autumn holiday and used the World Heritage tulou as its main stage, planting local heritage performance, heritage food and hands-on craft into the tulou space and building a themed food market around Mid-Autumn custom. That, he said, lengthens the visitor stay and turns sightseeing traffic into culture-tourism spending, pushing World Heritage and intangible heritage closer together.
Culture shapes the trip and the trip carries the culture outward. The event put on display the “tulou homeland, happy mountain town” character that Nanjing promotes and built a strong Mid-Autumn culture-tourism mood, with heritage kept alive, food feeding tourism and the market lifting surrounding business. For a visitor, one trip to Nanjing County covers both the World Heritage tulou and a run through the township banquets and regional snacks, which may be the most concrete appeal of this kind of county-level food market: culture you can see, touch and taste.
