Zhuchang Sticky Rice Cakes 猪肠粑

Zhuchang Sticky Rice Cakes (猪肠粑) are glutinous rice rolls made with shredded coconut, from Wanning (万宁), Hainan. The name means "pig-intestine cake" and comes from the roll's shape. Hainan Daily noted in 2017 that coconut and glutinous rice rolls are made all over Hainan, but only in Wanning are they called zhuchang ba, and it named Beimen village (北门村) in Wancheng town (万城镇) as their sole place of production.

Ingredients

The making is laborious and draws on glutinous rice, coconut, white sugar, white sesame, ginger, peanuts and lard.

How it is made

A large zhuchang ba is built from several rice sheets layered together, and each layer keeps some crisp patches. The layers must not be pressed hard: some makers once flattened them with a rolling pin, but that made the roll too dense and lost the layering, so skilled hands stretch the sheets by hand instead. Hainan Daily counts it among Hainan's rice cakes that should be soft and chewy, with sheets neither too thick nor too thin.

Where it comes from

Local tradition holds that the roll came to Wanning with migrants from Fujian (福建) at the end of the Ming and start of the Qing dynasty. The story told with it is that fishermen's wives found glutinous rice cakes kept well and staved off hunger, so they made zhuchang ba for their husbands to take to sea. In 2017 Hainan Daily reported that Yan Jiaxing (严家兴), who learned the craft from his father, was perhaps the only maker still able to produce a roll one metre long, and that no one was willing to take over the work. In 2022 the paper again named Yan, of Beimen village, as the maker whose rolls locals accept as the real thing.