Home > Food > Sani ‘Goat Tofu,’ a.k.a. Goat Cheese


Sani ‘Goat Tofu,’ a.k.a. Goat Cheese
by Ritva Lehonkoski
T he Sani Yi, one of the few Chinese minority groups who make cheese, inhabit an area that has become a premier
tourist attraction. They live near the famous Stone Forest, southeast of Yunnan’s capital city, Kunming. By and large the Sani Yi eat the same kinds of food as the Han Chinese. Neither the Han nor any of the other Yi groups have a tradition of using milk products. The Sani, however, make a cheese from goat’s milk which is called rǔbǐng (乳饼 ’milk cake’) in Chinese and [tɕhi³¹gɯ²¹] in Sani (pronounced roughly like CHEE-GIRH). There are only three other minority groups in China that make cheese: the Tibetans, the Mongols, and the Bai, and none of them live near the Sani. Of these, only the Bai make same kind of cheese as the Sani rubing, which leads one to ask whether there is a connection between the two.

Interestingly, the Sani trace their origins to the Dali area. Their migration to the present Stone Forest area is said to have occurred at the time of Nanzhao kingdom (737-902 AD). According to Allen (2002) who has researched

Pix
Frying biscuit-sized slices of rubing until they’re golden brown.
Photo by: Carl von Bell
Bai cheese making, it is possible that the Bai were already making rubing at that time. The Sani could have taken the cheese-making skill with them, when they left Nanzhao and as a result, there are two people groups in China, living 500 kilometers apart, that make the same kind of cheese.

According to a traditional story, that was told to me by Ang Ziming (p.c.), the origin of the Sani rubing is as follows: There was a boy whose mother died. The father remarried and the new wife was not good to the boy. The boy left Dali and started to go towards Kunming. On the way, he was hungry, so he obtained some milk but didn’t drink it all. By mistake he dropped some sour vegetables into the leftover milk and later discovered that the milk had coagulated. He tasted it and thought, “What a delicacy!”

Today, rubing is enjoyed, not only by Sani, but also by Han Chinese living in nearby areas. Much of the rubing on sale in Kunming comes from the Stone Forest County.

The local Chinese goats, which are black in color, produce less milk than the imported white goats. However, the cheese yield is better from the black goats’ milk. Therefore, people often mix both types of milk when making rubing. One may also find rubing made of cow’s milk.

The local people usually enjoy rubing as a fried dish. They cut it into ½ cm thick slices about the size of a biscuit, and fry it in shallow oil on both sides until it is golden brown on the edges. The slices are then removed from the pan and sprinkled with some salt. Restaurants often provide customers a mixture of salt and chili on the side for dipping according to their taste.


References: Allen, Bryan. 2002. Make Boluo de yihan: Ji Zhongguo shaoshu minzu de nailao [What Marco Polo missed: The cheese of China’s ethnic minority peoples]. (Liu Xiaofeng, trans.) Ethnic Guide 266. 35-37.