Korean-Style Pounded Rice Cake 朝鲜族打糕
Korean-Style Pounded Rice Cake is featured among the local specialties of Heilongjiang.
Korean-Style Pounded Rice Cake (朝鲜族打糕) is the rice cake of China's Korean ethnic group (朝鲜族), made by beating steamed glutinous rice with wooden mallets. In Jixi (鸡西), Heilongjiang, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism lists it among the city's featured foods on a rural travel route, next to Jixi cold noodles, rice sausage and stone-pot bibimbap.
How it is made
Chinese Wikipedia describes the traditional method: the steamed rice goes into a wooden or stone trough and is struck with a wooden mallet over and over until no whole grain is left, then cut into small pieces and dressed with sugar or peanut powder. Two people usually face each other across the trough and strike in turn, which is why pounding the cake became a customary rite for newly-weds.
At a 2023 intangible-heritage fair organised by Liaoning's culture and tourism department, each batch took an hour and a half from soaking the glutinous rice to steaming and pounding; the heritage bearer on the stand rolled the finished cake in soybean flour, cut it into pieces and boxed it.
Flavour and texture
Wikipedia calls the cake soft, sticky and fragrant. Because it is beaten by mallet it has a firm, chewy bite, and the coating of yellow soybean flour adds its own flavour.
Where it comes from
The Heilongjiang provincial government, describing the province's Korean ethnic group, singles out rice-based cakes as the most distinctive of their special foods: there are more than 30 kinds, eaten mainly at festivals and ceremonies. At a child's first birthday the table laid out for the fortune-telling game zhuazhou (抓周) holds rice, red beans, pounded rice cake, noodles, thread, books, brushes and coins, and whatever the child grabs is read as a sign of its future. Wikipedia adds that the cake is also a New Year food and that a family moving house makes it to give to the neighbours.
In Jixi, the ministry's route takes visitors to the Korean folk-custom park at Jilin Township (鸡林乡) in Jidong County (鸡东县) to taste Korean food. At a Korean intangible-heritage showcase held in that township on 16 August 2024, the Jidong County government reports, 20 Korean folk-food businesses exhibited and visitors were invited to make pounded rice cake, bibimbap and kimchi themselves.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.