Tanzhou Paddy Ragworms 坦洲禾虫
Tanzhou Paddy Ragworms is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
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Tanzhou Paddy Ragworms (坦洲禾虫) are worms gathered from the rice fields of Tanzhou (坦洲), a water town in Zhongshan (中山), Guangdong, and cooked as a seasonal delicacy. A 2013 Guangzhou Daily report calls them the most classic food of Tanzhou and a traditional 'field-bank' dish there. The worms live in the silt of paddy fields where fresh and salt water meet and feed on rotting rice roots, which is where the Chinese name, literally 'rice-plant worm', comes from.
Where it comes from
The worms come out only on the big tides of the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month. There are two runs a year: the 'lychee worms' (荔枝虫) of the third and fourth lunar months, and the 'golden-flower worms' (金花虫) of the eighth and ninth lunar months, which come in larger numbers and are plumper. The first day of the ninth lunar month marks the peak of the year's harvest, and the worms taken that day are held to be the fattest.
The Zhongshan Daily names the first and fifteenth days of the ninth and tenth lunar months as the ragworm seasons, when worms from Shenwan (神湾) and Tanzhou reach the market. Wild worms grow only in clean, unpolluted tidal flats or paddy fields at the fresh-and-salt-water boundary, and the paper calls them a strict gauge of the environment. A local saying (禾虫过造狠唔番) warns that once a season has passed you cannot get the worms back: once the four ragworm seasons have passed they are hard to find. The same paper reported in 2022 that large-scale breeding has been achieved in fresh water, with the worms raised together with rice.
How it is made
The best-loved way to cook them in Tanzhou is claypot-stewed ragworms (炖钵仔禾虫). The cleaned worms go into a small earthenware bowl and are snipped with scissors so that they release their juices, then mixed with crushed garlic, dried tangerine peel, oil and salt. The bowl is steamed over water until cooked and then set over a low charcoal or electric stove until the liquid dries off and the top smells toasted. Some cooks first put the worms in peanut oil, beat in a few eggs, cut up the worms, stir in the other seasonings, stew the mixture and finally dry it out over a small stove.
Flavour and texture
Cooked this way, the dish has a thin, slightly crisp outer layer and a smooth, tender inside. It tastes fresh and savoury without being greasy.
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.