Chuwang Buckwheat Cakes 楚旺扒糕

Chuwang Buckwheat Cakes (楚旺扒糕) are cakes of buckwheat flour served cold with a sharp dressing. They began as a local snack of Chuwang (楚旺), a town in Neihuang County (内黄县) in Anyang (安阳), Henan, and have since spread across the county, where they are sold on the streets of its villages and towns.

How it is made

The main ingredient is buckwheat flour. The traditional method runs through several steps: scalding the flour with boiling water, cooking it, patting it into cakes and leaving them to air-dry. Once cooked, the cakes are dressed cold with mustard, sesame oil, garlic juice and aged vinegar. At the Ma family workshop (马家扒糕) in Beijie village (北街村), Chuwang, sorting the buckwheat and controlling the heat still follow the family's old rules, while sealed gift boxes and ready-to-eat packs are sent out to other parts of China.

Flavour and texture

The cakes are smooth in the mouth. The dressing makes them sour, hot and fragrant, a combination summed up in a folk rhyme about the dish that lists mustard, garlic juice, sesame oil and vinegar and ends on 'sour, hot and fragrant' flavour. In the rhyme the cakes are cut up, dressed and eaten with a fork.

Where it comes from

Tradition dates the snack to the early years of the Daoguang reign (道光) of the Qing dynasty, when a man named Ma Kui (马奎) is said to have brought it to Chuwang from Baoding (保定). The Ma family business in Chuwang, run in 2025 by its fifth-generation heir, Ma Huazhou (马华州), traces back more than 190 years. The Hong Kong Commercial Daily reported in 2025 that Chuwang Buckwheat Cakes are on Anyang's municipal intangible cultural heritage list.