Miaoli Hakka Flat Rice Noodles 苗栗客家粄条
Miaoli Hakka Flat Rice Noodles is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
Miaoli Hakka Flat Rice Noodles (苗栗客家粄条) are the Hakka rice noodles of Miaoli County (苗栗縣). The county's tourism website names fragrant, springy ban tiao among its Hakka dishes, next to pork-head soup and crystal dumplings, with fried shallots and garlic chives as the flavouring.
How it is made
Chinese Wikipedia explains the name: Hakka people cut ban (粄), here a steamed rice sheet, into strips (tiao) and cook them. It gives the method as grinding indica rice (在來米) into a rice milk, pouring it into a flat tray and steaming it.
In 2024 Miaoli added a coloured version. Students of the food-processing department at Miaoli's agricultural and industrial vocational school, working with the Jiasheng (嘉盛) community workshop, developed five-colour noodles (五行粄條) using turmeric, purple sweet potato, red yeast rice, matcha and bamboo charcoal. In 2025 the coloured noodles were produced as ready-meal packs together with Liyuan (栗園美食), which HakkaNews calls a state-banquet ban tiao shop.
How it is eaten
HakkaNews notes that in Hakka villages the noodles are cooked both stir-fried and in soup, as simple home dishes, and describes the stir-fried version as springy and rich with oil.
Where it comes from
In 2024, after the Baolin tea house (寶林茶室) case in Taipei damaged the noodles' reputation, the Hakka Affairs Council agreed to fund ban tiao festivals in Zhubei (竹北) and Miaoli City (苗栗市), the seats of the Hsinchu and Miaoli county governments, to bring business to noodle makers across each county. The Miaoli City office held the first Maoli Hakka ban tiao festival (貓裏客家粄條節) in October 2024, with a ban tiao cooking contest on the programme, and a second in October 2025, which announced three thousand free tasting portions of the five-colour noodles. Miaoli's deputy county magistrate Chiu Li-li (邱俐俐) called ban tiao the most familiar Hakka taste and invited visitors to come to Miaoli for a bowl.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- A common version of Miaoli Hakka Flat Rice Noodles · 苗栗客家粄条常见做法参考照片。Photo: bryan... from Taipei, Taiwan · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited.
