You probably won’t find Anhui cuisine in the United States—it’s a type of cooking so depended on its local resources that without them, there’s simply no Anhui cuisine.
All ingredients in the Anhui style of cooking come from the Mt. Huangshan, the mother mountain in Anhui province—its wild animals, birds, fish, weeds, mushrooms, fruits, bamboo, tea—whatever is edible was made into a dish.
The rise of the Anhui businessmen was the reason Anhui cuisine became one of China’s eight classic cuisines. They started out in the wood, tea and pawnbroker businesses, and rose to the top in Qing dynasty with their honesty and trustworthy reputations.