Pole-Pressed Egg Noodles 杠子面

Pole-Pressed Egg Noodles (杠子面) are hand-made noodles from Xingyi (兴义) in Qianxinan (黔西南) prefecture, Guizhou: a dough of flour and free-range eggs with no water is pressed flat under a set of poles and cut into strands as fine as hair. They are listed as prefecture-level intangible cultural heritage.

How it is made

Guizhou Daily (贵州日报) explains that of the three traditional hand-noodle techniques in China, pressing, pulling and cutting, Xingyi's noodles combine pressing and cutting. The dough is mixed from flour and eggs alone, without any water, and everything is done by hand. It is then rolled out with a set of up to thirteen poles of different sizes, the main tool being one large pole: the sheet is pressed, folded and pressed again, over and over. A noodle maker with decades in the trade told the paper that the sheet gets so thin because the big pole is worked across it again and again by human strength. Finally the maker cuts the sheet with a knife into strands about as fine as a hair.

How it is eaten

Cooked, the noodles carry a light egg aroma and have a smooth, springy bite. They are served in a rich chicken broth and topped with a spoonful of fried peanuts, cuishao (脆哨, crisp fried pork pieces), fine shreds of pork and either crunchy bean sprouts or zhacai (榨菜, pickled mustard stem). In Xingyi they are sold at breakfast stalls in the morning and at night markets, and Guizhou Daily compares local attachment to them to Lanzhou's love of beef noodles.

Where it comes from

Guizhou Daily dates the noodles to the end of the Qing dynasty. By local account a noodle maker named Huang Bingrong (黄炳荣) developed the pole-pressing method on top of the traditional craft to make the noodles chewier, and the method has been handed down since. Pole-Pressed Egg Noodles are the main product of the Laogangzi (老杠子) noodle workshop.