Bing Tang Hu Lu: a Traditional Snack of Beijing

With the arrival of winter, you’ll see a lot of vendors in the street selling a traditional snack – Bing Tang Hu Lu, or Tanghulu for short. Tanghulu is a winter snack as the sugar coats are easy to melt at high temperatures during other seasons. This snack originated in Beijing and Tianjin, consists of hawthorn fruit（山楂) glazed in hard candy and skewered on a bamboo stick. It was said that the first Tanghulu had only two haws: a small one on top and a big one on the bottom, which made the treat look like a hulu, or bottle gourd. This is why they are called tanghulu today, which means “candy bottle gourd” in Chinese.

The story of this traditional northern Chinese snack could date back to a beautiful Chinese woman in the 12th century. The favorite concubine of the Song emperor Guangzong (1147-1200) fell seriously ill. No court doctor was able to cure her. Desperately, the emperor issued an appeal for doctors from among the ordinary people to come forward to help. A country doctor recommended that the sick concubine eat red hawthorn fruits fried in brown sugar at every meal for a fortnight. To everyone’s surprise, after a few weeks, the concubine recovered. Not only did this event make the country doctor famous, but also made the red candied fruit popular.

Tanghulu is a traditional Chinese snack of candied fruit. It generally consists of hawthorn fruit and has a hardened sugar coating that comes from dipping the skewer in sugar syrup. Tasted sour, sweet and cold, it can be found everywhere. People usually like to use bamboo sticks to string fresh fruits such as hawthorns, yams, strawberries, little tomatoes together, and then pour a layer of sugar syrup on them.

Nowadays, there are various kinds of Tanghulu. Besides hawthorns, vendors also use other fruits such as bananas, oranges, and strawberries. Also, to make the snack cater to the taste of a wider audience, some vendors sell candied fruits stuffed with walnuts or covered by sesame seeds.

Tanghulu has been beloved by people for its sweet and sour, crispy and delicious taste, and digestion-promoting effect. Would you like to try one of these? It is really delicious!

Copyright: SKETCHES OF CLASSIC BEIJING, China Pictorial Press

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