Shuihe Rice Cakes 水籺

How it is made

Guangxi Daily (广西日报) describes Nankang shuihe as made from good local rice through several steps: soaking the rice, grinding it, steaming it layer by layer, then cooling it and cutting it into blocks. Chinese Wikipedia sets out the layering: rice is ground into a slurry on a stone mill and poured evenly into a basket-shaped steamer; once that layer has cooked, another layer of slurry is poured on top, and this is repeated several times before the cake comes out. It is then cut open and seasoning is poured over it before eating. Elsewhere the cake is mostly called bojichui (簸箕炊), after the woven bamboo winnowing basket used to hold it, and in Lingshan County (灵山县) it is called shuigaohe (水糕籺).

Flavour and texture

The finished cake is glossy and smooth, with a texture between soft and chewy. Guangxi Daily credits that texture to steaming one layer at a time.

Where it comes from

He (籺) is the general name for cakes and snacks made from glutinous rice, ordinary rice or cassava flour in western Guangdong and in Qinzhou (钦州), Yulin (玉林) and Beihai. The Hepu County government ranks he as the forebear of all Hepu snacks and lists shuihe among its many kinds.

According to Guangxi Daily, Nankang shuihe dates from the Qianlong reign (乾隆) of the Qing dynasty. It began as a food for offerings to ancestors at the Zhongyuan Festival (中元节) in Nankang and is now a heritage snack known across Beihai. In 2020 the Nankang shuihe making technique (南康水籺制作技艺) entered Beihai's fifth list of municipal intangible cultural heritage.