Did Janet Yellen Accidentally Eat Psychedelics In China? What To Know About The Sold-Out Dish Cooked With Hallucinogenic Mushrooms

Topline

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has sparked a “magic mushroom” craze in China after dining at the Yunnan restaurant chain Yi Zuo Yi Wang and eating the local jian shou qing, a dish made with hallucinogenic mushrooms that has since sold out at locations across the country.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attends a climate roundtable at the US embassy on July 8, 2023 … [+] in Beijing, China. Photo by Pedro Pardo

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Key Facts

Yellen visited China in July for a four-day, state-sponsored trip that included a meal at the chain—translated to “In and Out” in English—that serves southwestern Chinese food influenced by the border countries of Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar.

The dish she was photographed eating, which she called “delicious” and said she didn’t order herself, features Lanmaoa asiatica mushrooms, known for being hallucinogenic.

In an interview with CNN, Yellen said she didn’t know the mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties before she ate them but that none of the people she dined with were affected by them, because “if the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant, that they have no impact.”

After Yellen’s visit, the chain said on the social media platform Weibo that the dish completely sold out at several locations and that “colleagues from headquarters… turned into mushroom cutting workers” to keep up with demand.

Lanmaoa asiatica sporocarps photographyed by Panmeng Wang on June 22, 2017 in Yunnan, China.

U.S. Department of Energy

Key Background

Yunnan province is known as the “kingdom of wild fungi” and Chinese officials have had to issue warnings and guidelines around the risks of eating the hundreds of species of wild mushroom that hit the region’s markets each year. There were 482 incidents of wild mushroom poisonings in China last year and the Southwest region of China—where Yunnan is located—was the most severely impacted. The Lanmaoa asiatica Yellen ate was the most common recorded cause of “psycho-neurological disorders” from mushrooms in the country last year, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Energy says it can “easily cause hallucinations if eaten in an improper way.” The genome sequence of the mushroom has not been identified so scientists don’t know exactly what causes the psychedelic reaction, and Peter Mortimer, a professor at Kunming Institute of Botany, told CNN most evidence is anecdotal.

Crucial Quote

“I have a friend who mistakenly ate them and hallucinated for three days,” Mortimer said.

Big Number

404. That’s how many patients were poisoned by mushrooms in Yunnan last year. Nine of them died.

Tangent

The mushroom industry plays a large role in the economy of Yunnan. A specialized market for fungi called the Yunnan Mushuihua Wild Mushroom Trading Center sees 20,000 visitors per day, the government-owned China Daily news source says, which increases to about 60,000 people during the busy tourism season. The wild fungi industry in the province grew from $2.9 billion (21 billion yuan) in 2021 to $3.4 billion (25 billion yuan) last year.