Yunnanese food broadly splits into three cooking styles. In the north , a cold, pastoral lifestyle produces dried meats, vegetables and - very unusually for China - dairy products, infused with a Muslim cuisine, a vestige of the thirteenth-century Mongolian invasion. Typical dishes include wind-cured ham ( yuntui or huotui), sweetened, steamed and served with slices of bread; toasted cheese and dried yoghurt wafers ( rubing and rushan); the local version of crisp-skinned duck ( shaoya), flavoured by painting it with honey and roasting over a pine-needle fire; and shaguoyu, a tasty fish casserole.

Southeastern Yunnan produces the most recognizably "Chinese" food. From here comes qiguoji, chicken flavoured with medicinal herbs and stewed inside a specially shaped earthenware steamer, and crossing-the-bridge noodles ( guoqiao mixian), probably the most famous dish in the province. A sort of individualized hotpot, the curious name comes from a tale about a Qing scholar who retired every day to a lakeside pavilion to compose poetry. His wife, an understanding soul, used to cook him lunch, but the food always cooled as she carried it from their home over the bridge to where he studied - until she hit on the idea of keeping the heat in with a layer of oil on top of his soup. It's best sampled in Kunming, where numerous places serve a huge bowl of oily, scalding chicken stock with a platter of noodles, shredded meats and vegetables, which you add along with chilli powder and spices to taste.

Not surprisingly, Yunnan's southwestern borders are strongly influenced by Burmese cooking methods, particularly in the use of such un-Chinese ingredients as coconut, palm sugar, cloves and turmeric. Here you'll find a vast range of soups and stews displayed in aluminium pots outside fast-turnover restaurants, roughly recognizable as curries , and oddities such as purple rice-flour pancakes sold at street markets. As most of these aren't generally available outside the area, however, their description and a glossary of local names appears in the relevant section. The southwest also produces good coffee and red puer cha, Yunnan's best tea , both widely appreciated across the province.