Chencun Rice Noodle Sheets 陈村粉
Chencun Rice Noodle Sheets is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
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Chencun Rice Noodle Sheets (陈村粉) are very thin steamed sheets of rice noodle from Chencun town (陈村镇) in Shunde District (顺德区), Foshan (佛山). Nanfang Net (南方网) describes them as thin, springy, smooth and soft, white as gauze and smelling of rice, and says they are made without additives. The making technique entered Foshan's municipal intangible cultural heritage list in 2019.
Where it comes from
In the late Ming and early Qing, Chencun's water transport gave rise to a rice market (米墟) that became a rice trading hub for the Pearl River Delta. Nanfang Net relates that a local man, Huang Dan (黄但), saw that the borax and preservatives in ordinary flat rice noodles were unhealthy, borrowed methods from Xiqiao (西樵) in Nanhai (南海), and in 1927 opened a shop called Huang Dan Ji (黄但记) at the rice market to sell his own. Locals called it 'Huang Dan noodles'; outsiders called it Chencun noodles.
His sons Huang Quanhui (黄铨辉) and Huang Zhijun (黄志均) ran two family shops, Huang Dan Ji and Huang Jun Ji (黄均记). Chinese Wikipedia, citing a Shunde Library oral-history interview, says Huang Zhijun settled on the name Chencun Fen in 1993–1994, when a buyer for a Foshan hotel asked what the noodles were called.
How it is made
New rice is stored for half a year before use. It is rubbed and washed in a basin for more than 20 minutes to remove the outer skin, then soaked for a time that varies with the weather. A bluestone mill grinds it slowly, at no more than 60 turns a minute, into a fine slurry whose thickness has to be judged exactly. The slurry is steamed on tin trays over boiling water for one and a half to two minutes, and the sheet is cut into strips with a quick, precise knife.
The finished sheet is 0.5 to 0.7 millimetres thick, thin enough to see through.
How it is eaten
There are two traditional ways to eat it. For the cold version, cooled sheets are cut into fine strips and tossed with sesame oil, soy sauce, shredded pickled ginger and toasted sesame seeds. For laozhai fen (捞斋粉), the noodles are blanched in boiling water, drained and served with a dipping dish and small condiments. Nanfang Net counts more than 70 dishes made with them, among them the noodles steamed with pork ribs and a crab dish with chicken fat and Huadiao wine (鸡油花雕蟹陈村粉).
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.