How Tanghulu Went From a Chinese language Road Snack to a Colourful Controversy

With their glassy coatings and shiny colours, tanghulu is a deal with that has gone from conventional Chinese language road snack to social media sensation. It’s most recognizable as a stick that’s about eight inches lengthy stacked with shiny purple hawthorn berries, like strings of rubies clustered atop meals carts. The candied skewer has origins in historical China, however lately, it’s shapeshifted—changing into modernized by new purveyors and TikTok stars incorporating a rainbow of latest fruit variations.

Right here’s the whole lot that you must learn about tanghulu, why you’re seeing it in every single place, and what the talk is all about.

What’s tanghulu?

Tanghulu is a sweet-and-sour deal with of skewered candied fruit, historically hawthorn berries, encased in crystallized sugar. It’s stated to have originated in northern China in the course of the Track Dynasty (960 to 1279), when the emperor’s favourite concubine supposedly fell sick and a two-week food plan of tanghulu healed her. (It then apparently turned a favourite snack of the royal household.) Tanghulu actually interprets to “sugar gourds” in Mandarin, the bubbled shapes resembling the calabash gourds that have been symbols of excellent luck in historical China. In the present day, in China, tanghulu usually seems across the new 12 months and Lunar New 12 months as a festive meals merchandise, the place the baubled snacks are displayed and offered in parks, road stands, meals markets, and temples. “The fruit, leaves, and flowers of hawthorn are thought of to have natural medicinal properties for addressing a spread of coronary heart, digestive, and circulatory points,” Nancy N. Chen, professor of anthropology on the College of California, Santa Cruz, says.

Not like different forms of candied fruit, what makes tanghulu distinctive is the way in which the fruit is candied. It doesn’t require any particular instruments: Fruit is skewered and dipped into boiling sugar, coated, shaken a bit to take away the surplus, and, oftentimes, instantly plunged in ice water. The method creates a cool, laborious shell that cracks and splinters upon biting. The sourness of the hawthorn offsets the sweetness, and the crunchy exterior belies a delicate inside.

Why am I seeing it in every single place?

As Chinese language individuals began immigrating to neighboring nations like Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore within the following dynasties—significantly between the Yuan and Ming dynasties, when many northern Chinese language individuals fled to Korea—the snack turned part of different cuisines, additionally largely offered in areas with road distributors.

In the present day, completely different variations of tanghulu have sprung up in these areas. Most notably, distributors have swapped hawthorn berries for strawberries, grapes, entire peeled tangerines, tomatoes, pineapple, even marshmallows. Whereas this transformation started in China, it’s accelerated in Korea. Celebrities like Okay-pop group Blackpink’s Jennie have performed a job in popularizing the snack in South Korea, notably when she and bandmate Jisoo made it of their 2020 Netflix documentary Blackpink: Gentle Up the Sky. And because the Hallyu wave, a concerted authorities effort to disseminate Korean popular culture, continues to make its means by Western nations, it’s migrated into the American cultural periphery.

In consequence, tanghulu has change into extra generally related to any type of candied fruit, somewhat than hawthorn particularly. The variations “mirror artistic approaches when sure meals objects won’t be obtainable,” Chen says.