Hot summer in Beijing annoys me quite a bit, I often lose my temper and appetite. A plate of salad won’t satisfy my stomach after a whole day’s hard work. This is awkward as you don’t have the appetite for a meat feast. I can’t figure out any good option until I see Peking-style cold needles. It’s healthy, delicious, and can fully fill my stomach.

The history of Chinese cold noodles can date back to the Tang Dynasty. It’s rumored to be created by Wu Zetian, the first empress in Chinese history. Before she was chosen to serve the royal court, she often ate noodles with her lover at a local restaurant. One day, as her tongue was burned by the hot noodles, a whim comes up her mind. “Why can’t we eat our noodles cold?” Then she worked on the cooking method of cold noodles with a local chef. Finally she found the perfect ingredient - rice milk for a bowl of cold noodles. She hugged her lover to celebrate when the chef named the noodle “Couple’s Cold Rice Noodles”.

In the middle period of the Tang Dynasty. Poet Du Fu once mentioned “Leng Tao” in his poem “Huaiye Lengtao”. Here “Leng Tao” or cold treatment, is the cooking method of cold noodles. According to the poem, we should extract the juice from fresh scholartree leaves, knead dough with the juicy and water, roll the dough out, cut it into strips and boil.

Another poet, Wang Yu described a similar method of cold noodles preparation in his poem “Ganju Lengtao”, and since then cold noodle has become an necessity in summer.