US treasury secretary ate ‘hallucinogenic’ mushrooms during ‘magical’ China trip

Jetting off to Beijing wasn’t the only trip US treasury secretary Janet Yellen made last week.

Yellen spent four days in China in an effort to thaw diplomatic relationships between Washington and Beijing earlier this month.

But her first day on July 6 as part of a two-day trip to Beijing was apparently ‘magical’.

For her first meal in the capital, Yellen dined at Yi Zuo Yi Wang, a restaurant located in the upmarket shopping and dining district of Sanlitun. 

Yi Zuo Yi Wang, or ‘In and Out’ in English, specialises in food from Yunnan, a southwestern province known for its sweeping panoramas of snowy mountains and dense forests.

And mushrooms too. Among them is jian shou qing, a funky fungi that some say has psychedelic properties – Yellen ordered a dish with it four times.

Local food blogger Pan Pan Mao said on the Chinese social media platform Weibo that Yellen and her table were peckish, to say the least, with a spread of dishes ranging from grilled fish and herbs to a lot of mushrooms.

‘The waiter said that she likes mushrooms very much, so she ordered several servings,’ Mao said.

The restaurant confirmed Yellen visited, sharing photographs of her there on Weibo and added that Yellen ordered four helpings of jian shou qing.

‘It is true she came here after landing in China. Our staff said she loved the mushrooms very much,’ Yi Zuo Yi Wang said, adding: ‘It was an extremely magical day.’

The restaurant’s hashtag at the end of the post, ‘US Treasury Secretary Yellen’s first meal in Beijing is Yunannese’, went viral on Chinese social media.

Users were impressed, according to state media, by the secretary’s chopstick skills.Others noted how she sat at a table just by the bathroom.

Yi Zuo Yi Wang went on to dub Yellen the ‘God of Money’ and made a new menu with everything she ordered of the same name.

The sign, posted to the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, reads: ‘That’s right! US Finance Chief Yellen dined at Yi Zuo Yi Wang for her first meal upon arrival in Beijing. Four orders of Jian Shou Qing.’

‘We received a larger number of inquiries about bookings. We are fully booked for Friday and Saturday,’ a member of staff told the English-language Chinese newspaper Global Times published July 7.

Peter Mortimer, a professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany in Yunnan, told CNN that jian shou qing is considered poisonous in China because it’s said to have psychedelic properties.

The mushroom is also called ‘seeing blue hands’ because, when pressure is applied to its inner surface, it bruises and turns blue, according to the Chinese encyclopedia Baidu Baike.

To scientists, it’s called ‘Lanmaoa asiatica’, Mortimer said. The Botanical Society of Yunnan considers the mushrooms poisonous when eaten raw.

‘However, scientists have not, as of yet, identified the compounds responsible for causing the hallucinations,’ Mortimer said.

‘It remains a bit of a mystery, and most evidence is anecdotal. I have a friend who mistakenly ate them and hallucinated for three days.’

After Yellen’s trip, Chinese state media outlets posted articles on how to eat jian shou qing safely.

Speaking to state news agency Xinhua, a shopper at a Yunnan wild mushroom market claimed: ‘You thought you were walking straight but you just fell sideways.’

Yellen’s aide confirmed to CNN that she dined at Yi Zuo Yi Wang and that the mushroom dish was properly cooked.

Sadly, Chinese officials say that Yellen’s time with them wasn’t as ‘magical’ as her dinner at Yi Zuo Yi Wang.

As treasury secretary, Yellen is among the most high-ranking US officials tasked with keeping relations between the two economic powerhouses steady.

Yet even after meeting with her counterpart Vice Premier He Lifeng, Yellen did not announce any breakthroughs.

‘The US and China have significant disagreements,’ Yellen said at a news conference in Beijing on July 8. ‘Those disagreements need to be communicated clearly and directly.

‘But President Biden and I do not see the relationship between the US and China through the frame of great power conflict.’

‘The relevant meetings and talks were frank and open, pragmatic, in-depth, and constructive,’ China’s Ministry of Finance said.

‘Mushrooms can also be diplomatic?’ Yi Zuo Yi Wang added on Weibo, sharing the CNN story headlined: ‘Mushroom diplomacy.’

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