LOCAL FOOD GUIDE

Highland Barley Cake 青稞饼

Qingke Bing

Highland Barley Cake is featured among the local specialties of Sichuan.

青稞饼 · AI dish illustration
AI dish illustration · AI 菜品示意图AI illustration of Highland-barley flatbread (青稞饼). Recipes and presentation vary; this is not a restaurant photograph.

Highland Barley Cake (青稞饼) is a baked highland-barley cake enjoyed by Tibetan people in Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟), in Sichuan’s Aba Prefecture (阿坝州). It is golden in colour, with a sweet aroma and a crisp texture.

Preparing the dough

Highland barley is first milled into flour. A leavening agent and water are added to make the dough, which is left for about three hours to ferment. Once it has fermented, rapeseed oil and powdered xiangdou (香豆沫) are mixed in.

Baking and flavour

The dough is then baked in an oven. The finished cake is sweet and fragrant, with the flavour of highland barley still evident when it is chewed.

China Revealed · Editorially updated 2026-09-30

Sources & reading

Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-30. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.