Yak Butter Tea in Diqing

Butter with Tea(酥油茶) is indispensable to Tibetans’ daily life. The making process of it is fairly simple. Firstly, pour the local tea into a tea cylinder. Later add butter, salt and refined spice and mix all the materials repeatedly until they are in complete harmony. Due to its pleasant aromas and tasty delicacy, it provides a joy for ever.

Butter with tea plays a very important role in the diet structure of the Zang nationality. The Zang people drink it at least three times a day while some even more than ten times! It can produce a lot of heat so that Tibetans can withstand the cold weather and also can relieve thirst and promote fluid.

Accompanying with the butter, cream dairy dreg is refined from milk. The milk is forged and separated from butter, and the rest is boiled up. After cooling down, the milk turns to be sour and is poured in a funnel-shaped container which is made of bamboo for filtering. That what at last leaves in the container is the cream dairy dreg.

The dreg is white and sour, having a strong function of helping in the digestion of food. When going out, Tibetans always bring the dreg along to prevent maladjustments in foreign lands.