Yangxin Zhezi Rice Noodles 阳新折子粉

How it is made

The Yangxin county heritage centre lists the whole process. The rice is chosen and washed, left to ferment, ground to a slurry and pressed dry, then patted into lumps that are boiled until half cooked, with the boiling time set by the season. The lumps are pounded smooth with a rice pestle (碓), kneaded, packed into a barrel on a noodle frame and pressed into strands, which go into boiling water. The cooked strands are lifted out, rinsed in clean water, laid on a bamboo zhezi (竹折子) in small folds of about half a jin (roughly 250 grams), and dried in the sun before packing.

The county names three points that set the noodles apart from other rice noodles. The grain is good early-season rice grown in Yangxin. The rice ferments in ceramic vats, which gives it a particular aroma and is, in the county's words, the key difference from other rice noodles. And the gaps between the bamboo strips of the zhezi let the noodles dry quickly without taking on other smells, which keeps their texture.

Where it comes from

The county dates the craft back more than 300 years, with people in Yangxin making zhezi noodles by hand from the Ming dynasty and the skill passed down since the Republican period. Older makers say the noodles were once sent to the imperial court as "贡粉" (tribute noodles). Before 1949 they were served to honoured guests and given to breastfeeding mothers to help milk flow, and only well-off families could afford them; in the planned-economy years, getting a meal of zhezi noodles counted as a stroke of luck.