Travelling through Dali with a leg of ham

Zhang Mei [Photo provided to China Daily]

That gave her the starting point for a book she had long wanted to write about her native Yunnan.

She shakes her head quickly when I ask if she had been on a mission to relive her childhood.

"When you go back to a place, whether it's home or another place that you have loved, it's a chance to look at it with new eyes. Visually, Yunnan has changed so much that it looked very different.

"But the smells and tastes－the cooking, the herb harvesting, those were straight out of my childhood."

Each time she returns to Yunnan, she says, she remembers a Chinese saying: "When you are actually living in the mountain, you can't really see the beauty of the mountain, but when you step away you see the grandness."