As the combined observance of Cold Food Festival and Qingming Festival became customary over time, Qingming also adopted the Cold Food tradition of avoiding fire-cooked meals, instead consuming pre-prepared cold dishes. In northern China, people eat cold foods like date cakes and wheat pastries, while southerners favor qingtuan and glutinous rice with lotus root. In Beijing, the "Thirteen Cold Food Delicacies" are indispensable during Qingming, including honey twists, ginger juice crisps, Ai Wowo, fried dough twists, and Rolling Donkey.

Rolling Donkey 

This snack features glutinous millet dough rolled with red bean paste, coated in soybean flour. Its name comes from its resemblance to a donkey rolling in dust. Made with yellow millet flour, soybean flour, sweet bean paste, sugar, sesame oil, osmanthus, and candied fruits, it undergoes three steps: dough preparation, filling mixing, and shaping. The final product is golden, fragrant, and delightfully chewy.

Ai Wowo

A beloved Beijing snack with centuries-old roots, Ai Wowo uses glutinous rice and wheat flour wrappers filled with walnuts, sesame, melon seeds, or mashed yam. Its snowy-white appearance is often accented with red hawthorn jelly. The name derives from its dimpled shape and powdered coating.

Sugar Fire Cake 

A 300-year-old breakfast staple originating from Hebei, this pastry is baked in cylindrical ovens. Tongzhou’s Dashunzhai bakery is famed for its version, once favored by foreign dignitaries in the 1960s.

Honey Ears

Also called mimahua (honey twists), this treat is named for its ear-like shape and sticky-sweet glaze.

Ginger Crisps 

These crispy, ginger-infused snacks are a traditional Beijing tea accompaniment, rooted in Manchu and Hui ethnic dining customs. Manchu banquets begin with tea and snacks, while Hui communities use them as alcohol-free ceremonial fare.

Crispy Rings

A uniquely Beijing fried dough ring, crunchy and shelf-stable, often paired with fermented mung bean juice.

Sanzi Twists 

A refined Hui Muslim snack, these intricate fried dough twists date back to the Warring States period and remain a Cold Food Festival staple.

Pea Cake

A spring delicacy, this velvety yellow dessert made from pureed peas melts on the tongue. Traditionally eaten on the third day of the third lunar month.

Spiral Crisps 

Flaky, coiled pastries that crumble at a touch. Stale ones are rebaked into "dry crisps", famously paired with wine.

Cream Fried Cake 

Nutritious and tender, these golden fried balls boast a creamy interior and delicate aroma.

Hardbread

A chewy, slightly sweet nighttime snack from old Beijing, known for its crumbly texture.

Sesame Pancake 

A baked wheat flatbread layered with sesame paste, salt, and sugar.

Sachima 

This Manchu-origin treat—soft, sweet, and melt-in-the-mouth—gained nationwide fame after the Manchu conquest of China.