Phnom Penh (FN), Oct. 29 – Domestic and international tourists who come Guilin (in Guangxi Province) to enjoy the scenery will definitely taste Guilin rice noodles.
Rice noodle shops are all over the streets and alleys of Guilin. When you enter a shop, you can order a bowl of rice noodles with beef, crispy roasted pork, golden soybeans and other ingredients. After stirring them together with fragrant brine, you can enjoy delicious food fully and mentally, and it will leave a pleasant aftertaste in your mouth.
A bowl of Guilin rice noodles which seems simple needs more than 10 steps to prepare it. Wen Jing, Manager of Guilin Rice Noodle Culture Center, said that it’s necessary to grind the rice which had been soaked for 12 hours into slurry, filter and ferment for 48-72 hours; after kneading into masses and boiling, use a noodle making machine to press the masses into slender noodles, and finally make such noodles into small balls for later use.
Wen Jing said, "Fresh rice noodles only need to be 'boiled' in boiled water for 10 seconds, and paired with roasted pork, a small spoon of secretly-made brine, chopped green onion, fried soybeans, sour beans and peppers, then a bowl of fragrant rice noodles is ready.”
Guilin rice noodles have different ways to eat, including noodles with pot-stewed meat or fowl, soup noodles, beef brisket noodles, horsemeat noodles, etc. But noodles with pot-stewed meat or fowl are favorite in Guilin. Wen Jing said that brine, as the "soul" of rice noodles, should be cooked with more than 30 kinds of ingredients such as pig bones, beef bones, anise, cinnamon and spices, and it would take 2-3 days to obtain a pot of fragrant brine.
"The traditional way to eat noodles with pot-stewed meat or fowl is dry noodles which must be cooked from fresh and wet rice noodles. Good brine is moderately salty. When mixing, the brine can be evenly 'hung' on rice noodles. After eating a bowl of noodles, the taste is mellow, leading up to meaningful aftertastes”, said Liang Zhiqiang, Guilin Rice Noodle Making Skills Inheritor in the Representative List of the Guilin Intangible Cultural Heritage.
If the "Best in the World" Guilin landscape is a beautiful cloth of Guilin City, then rice noodle is the gene that imbues the flavor of this city. Guilin rice noodle, originated from beautiful mountains and good water, has been widely known at home and abroad, and become a "homesickness" that travelers never forget.
"What is the happy life? A bowl of rice noodles and a cup of wine.” Liang Zhiqiang used this sentence to summarize the fondness of Guilin people against rice noodles. He said, “Many people like to eat Guilin rice noodles, and they will feel weak if they haven't eaten for three or five days. When a traveler returns to Guilin, the first thing is to eat a bowl of rice noodles as if it would relieve his homesickness’’.
In the past, Guilin rice noodles could not go out of the local market due to restrictions on preservation technology. Qin Huiyue, President of Guilin Rice Noodle Industry Association, said that in recent years, Guilin City through the formulation of local standards for Guilin rice noodles and the creation of a supporting industrial chain of rice noodles, roasted pork and brine, broke through the preservation technical barrier of fresh and wet rice noodles, driving the development of pre-packaged rice noodle industrialization, and thus more and more bags of Guilin rice noodles were sold throughout the country, to the world.
Cai, a citizen of Guilin City, said, “My child is working in Shanghai. He called me and said he wanted to eat rice noodles. I bought two boxes of rice noodles in bags and sent them to him to satisfy his craving.” Thanks to the mature production technology of pre-packaged rice noodles, people who work outside can eat authentic Guilin rice noodles.
In recent years, Guilin has continuously explored and carried forward the rice noodle culture, and issued local standards (i.e. specification for processing of rice noodles, store service specifications, and grade evaluation standard), driving the development of the rice noodle industry. By the end of 2022, there were more than 10,000 enterprises and individual industrial and commercial units producing and selling rice noodles in Guilin, with an annual output value of about RMB10,000,000,000 yuan.
Today, Guilin rice noodle shops are blooming everywhere, even in the United States, Australia and other countries and regions, so that diners around the world can enjoy the traditional flavor of Guilin.
Qin Huiyue said that the pre-packaged rice noodles were sold nationwide and exported to the United States, Canada and other countries, with more than 200,000 bags of rice noodles exported every month. He also said, “Next, we will strengthen our overseas deployment, explore overseas markets such as Europe, America, and ASEAN countries, and open chain brand shops.”
Long Fushun, president of Guangxi Guilin Jiushididao Rice Noodle Development Co., Ltd., said that this company was committed to standardized production of the ingredients of Guilin rice noodles, such as brine and roasted pork, and to cold chain distribution to more than 2,000 brand shops nationwide. Now, this company is developing the brine that can be exported to other countries so as to open up overseas markets.
According to the Guilin Municipal Bureau of Commerce, in order to help Guilin rice noodle "Go Global", Guilin has guided enterprises to accelerate the construction of Guilin Rice Noodle Central Kitchen and open chain rice noodle shops, to gradually form an operation system integrating processing, cold chain transportation, etc. Furthermore, Guilin will also create a number of international and domestic well-known brands, support Guilin rice noodle enterprises to carry out export product certification, foster "export-oriented" enterprises and support Guilin rice noodle to go global, so as to expand export scale.
=FRESH NEWS
