Cold Noodle Sheets 面皮子
Cold Noodle Sheets is featured among the local specialties of Gansu.
Cold Noodle Sheets (面皮子) are a cold wheat-flour dish from Wuwei (武威) in Gansu, where local media call it Liangzhou mianpizi (凉州面皮子). One dough gives two parts: yellowish, translucent sheets steamed from the flour's starch, and spongy steamed gluten (面筋). Both are dressed with a sour, garlicky vinegar sauce and chilli oil.
How it is made
Plain flour and cold water are kneaded into a smooth dough and rested for 30 minutes. The dough is then rubbed again and again in cold water until the water runs clear, which separates a starchy liquid from the gluten. The starch water stands for three hours, the clear top layer is poured off, and a little penghui (蓬灰) alkali, or edible alkali and salt, goes into the thick batter to make the sheets chewier.
The batter is poured onto oiled trays and steamed over high heat for five to eight minutes, until big bubbles rise on the surface. Once cool, each sheet is peeled off, stacked and cut into strips. The gluten is left to rise with yeast for 20 minutes, steamed, and cut into small pieces.
Ingredients
The dressing starts from Liangzhou smoked vinegar (凉州熏醋), mixed with celery water and ground Sichuan pepper and thickened with starch. Chilli oil is made from local slim chillies with hot oil poured over them. Garlic water, mustard water, blanched celery and shredded carrot finish the bowl.
Flavour and texture
The Wuwei Daily describes the sheets as glossy yellow and see-through like jade. They are smooth and springy, the gluten is soft, and sour and hot flavours come together in each mouthful. The paper quotes a line recommending it in every season: in spring to ease tiredness, in summer to cool off, in autumn to dispel damp and in winter to keep warm.
Where it comes from
The old name was lengxing (冷饧). The New Gansu (新甘肃) news service traces the dish to the Sui and Tang dynasties and says Dunhuang manuscripts record a cold wheat food of this kind. Its making technique joined the fourth batch of the municipal intangible cultural heritage list in 2015. In Wuwei, mianpizi stalls run from the early-morning markets to the night markets, and the long-established Ji Mianpizi (吉面皮子) and Yujia Mianpi (于家面皮) are a standard local breakfast. In 2026 the CCTV programme Shengcai Youdao (生财有道) featured a Wuwei mianpizi shop that has been selling it for 60 years.
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.