 "US treasury secretary Janet Yellen says she ate 'magic mushrooms' in China")
US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said she ate "magic mushrooms" on a recent four-day trip to Beijing. Last month, she was seen eating a dish called Jian shou qing at a restaurant in Beijing.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Yellen said, "I went with this large group of people and the person who'd arranged our dinner did the ordering. There was a delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later."
The dish was made from Lanmosa asiatica mushrooms, considered poisonous as they can be hallucinogenic.
A Weibo user had posted about Yellen eating at a restaurant called In and Out during her trip. It started a trend online and, according to CNN, has "dramatically boosted" the business for the food chain.
"When I walked by their table on my way to the washroom, I slowed down to take a glance at the dishes they ordered," said the user Pan Pan Mao in the post. Among the dishes the food blogger claimed to have spotted were grilled fish with herbs, stir-fried pickled Yunnan wild greens with potato slices and cold rice noodles.
Later, the restaurant confirmed the news by posting on Weibo in Chinese, "US Treasury Secretary Yellen was here".
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Through laughter, Yellen told CNN that none of them "were affected by the mushrooms".
"I read that if the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I am sure they were at this very good restaurant, that they have no impact. But all of us enjoyed the mushrooms [and] the restaurant, and none of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them," she said.
What is Jian shou qing?
Jian shou qing is a type of mushroom widely used in China's Yunnan province, which translates to "see hand blue". It gets its name from its characteristics, where the inner surface of the mushroom bruises and turns blue during slicing.
Their scientific name is "Lanmaoa asiatica".
These mushrooms are medium-large sized and have a reddish colour on the outside. These are considered poisonous as well as hallucinogenic. However, some reports suggest that they lose these properties after being cooked.