In Shanxi province you may be offered brains to eat. Frightened? You shouldn’t be, because these brains are only a food, which is famous for its unusual name and rich nutrition( 营养 ). Brains as a food were invented more than 300 years ago by Fu Shan, an artist whose mother had been ill for a long time. To help her become well again, he studied medicine and invented a kind of soup made of meat, vegetables and a number of Chinese medicine. Rice wine was also used in the soup to help illness caused by old age. After taking the soup his mother got better little by little and lived a long life. Fu’s soup became the talk of the town. Many people came to see him. One day a restaurant owner asked him what was in the soup. “I’ll tell you,” Fu said. “But if your restaurant is going to sell the soup, you must call it brains because of its shape and colour. And your restaurant should be renamed after my mother.”