China and its cuisine are incredibly diverse.
We travel from city to city,
to uncover the local food scene
and meet the people behind it.
If you want to learn about Cantonese food,
Shunde’s a good place to start.
Shunde sits along the Pearl River Delta
and was one of China’s oldest rice-growing areas in history.
That’s why there are so many rice dishes here.
Wheat flour used to be transported by horse from the north.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty of rice in the south.
So locals use rice a lot.
You’ll find Lunjiao rice cake and Chencun rice noodles
at any dim sum shops today.
They were both created here in Shunde
over a hundred years ago.
You might wonder what’s so special about rice.
We found the families
that discovered just how versatile the grain is.
I'm the fourth-generation owner of Liang’s Lunjiao Rice Cake.
My name is Liang Guihuan,
but everyone calls me Huan jie.
Lunjiao rice cake got its name from Lunjiao, a village in Shunde.
The story goes that Liang’s great-grandfather,
who made sponge cakes for a living, invented this rice cake,
by accident.
My great-grandfather Liang Licheng
invented the Lunjiao rice cake.
It was hard to make a living for his wife and him.
Back in the old days they burned wood to steam the cake.
One day, they got into a fight so they didn’t go and get wood.
Without wood, they couldn’t steam the sponge cake,
so they had no choice but to leave the batter out overnight.
When they finally steamed the cake the next day,
it had fermented.
A tasty, slightly sour, and nutty flavor had developed.
Actually we don’t need that many ingredients
to make lunjiao rice cake.
Rice, white sugar,
good-quality water,
fermentation, and the right temperature.
We use the rice we’ve farmed over generations.
We let the rice ferment naturally.
We treasure the rice a lot. It’s a family legacy.
It’s not complicated to make the cake. It’s just time-consuming.
A slice of Lunjiao cake takes two days to make.
We steam the cake at 2 a.m. every day.
After it's done, we deliver it to dim sum shops
or other restaurants.
It’s sweet, refreshing, and it has a slightly sour note.
This comes from the microorganisms
produced during the fermentation process,
which takes more than 10 hours.
Lunjiao cake looks unique.
The surface looks like lard.
It has a shine and it’s a bit translucent.
And the surface has uneven patterns.
It looks like a chicken walked over it.
When you cut the cake,
you see tiny pockets of air inside.
It’s not just cake.
Rice can also be turned into another staple.
In southern China, rice is often grinded
to make noodles or noodle rolls.
I’m the third-generation owner of Wondankee.
My name is He Shufen.
Our Chencun rice noodles are soft, thin,
bouncy, transparent, and silky.
They’re said to be as thin as a cicada’s wings.
We use rice, and no extra ingredients.
There are no artificial sweeteners,
only the natural sweetness from the rice.
If you cook them with other food, the bouncy and silky texture stands out.
He’s husband’s grandfather created this recipe.
So he was thinking
if he could use rice to make noodles.
Then when people arrived at the docks in Chencun,
they ate a bowl of rice noodles.
Word spread and the noodles became famous.
It’s totally different from the rice noodles
you find in restaurants elsewhere.
After trying ours, you won’t regret coming to Chencun.
There are eight steps to making a rice noodle sheet.
Choose the rice,
soak the rice, rinse the rice,
grind the rice with water,
steam,
let it cool,
cut it.
That’s when the Chencun rice noodles taste the most authentic.
But they can be jazzed up too.
We have Chencun rice noodles with chicken fat,
Shaoxing wine, and crabs,
with XO sauce,
or steamed with ribs.
It also goes well with lobsters and cheese.
This dish looks fancy.
I started making Lunjiao rice cakes
with my father and grandfather when I was just six or seven.
I could do everything on my own by the time I was 14.
And my dad handed over the business to me.
I’ve been doing this for over 40 years now.
The spirit of Shunde people is our persistence,
and our creativity.
Shunde people are professionals when it comes to food.
We care about the freshness and the fire we cook with.
If you come to Shunde, you'll know what I’m talking about﻿.
Did you know Shunde is milk heaven?
We’ll show you why.