If you ask a Guilin local what is his favorite food in Guilin, he may tell you "Guilin Rice Noodle". This food can be taken as the fourth treasure in Guilin. Some one tells me that a foreigner has stayed in Guilin for couple of months. The first sentence of Guilin dialect he learnt to say is "er liang mi fen" which means "I want to have a bowl of Guilin Rice Noodle".

The History

Guilin Rice Noodles were first invented in Qin Dynasty (221 B.C.). Till now, it has a history more than 2,200 years. During the Qin Shihuang (a Qin Emperor) period, some soldiers were sent to battlefields in the south to integrate China. Soldiers from northern part were not used to eat rice meals. Aimed to deal with this problem, the General found a way to make the rice into something delicious. And then this dish, the original Guilin Rice Noodle, became very popular among the Guilin and Yangshuo restaurants. After developing for thousands of years, this traditional Guilin food makes it become renowned throughout China.

How to eat

Guilin Rice Noodles can be either round or flat. The round one is more suitable to eat without soup while the flat one can be tasted together with the delicious broth. Because it is made of rice, the color of this food is white.

Beside the rice noodle, there are various materials putting into this food, voluptuous gravy, fried peanuts or soybeans, scallions and thin slides of different kinds of meat such as beef, horse meat, and pork. You can also add some spice and chili in the rice noodles.