The artificial cultivation of tremella was originated in 1894. Deling, a maid in Qing Palace, wrote something about Tongjiang Tremella in her book about imperial kitchen that, “Tremella is so expensive that only one small box of it will cost ten or twenty taels of silver. Moreover, people, either ordinary people or government officials cannot get tremella of high quality sometimes though they are willing to buy it at a high price, because the finest tremella has been exclusively used by Sichuan officials to pay tribute to Empress Dowager. Those officials employ many people throughout the year to seek the best tremella to flatter Empress Dowager and collaborate with foreign businessmen, thus making big fortunes.

　 “Building Tremella Mountain Stele”, which was unearthed at Wawayan, Yanjiagou, Fuyang in April of 1964, can prove that the story above is true.

　 According to historical materials, in the first year of reign of Qing Xuantong (1909), Qing government began to collect tax on Tongjiang Tremella at a standard of rare goods – ten pennies for every ounce. In 1924, Edry Smith, a priest from England, was attracted here to buy some tremella for his relatives and friends when he went down south from his investigation in Dunhuang. Chen Lisheng in Chenhe, who did business in tremella in Chongqing and Shanghai, finally became the richest man in Chenhe and was honored as “King of Tremella”. In March of 1995, Tongjiang was granted the title of the “Town of Chinese Tremella”.