Making glutinous rice cakes is a custom in Jingzhou. As the Little New Year (Xiaonian in Chinese, usually a week before the lunar New Year) approaches, every household will make glutinous rice cakes with the glutinous rice they harvest.

Glutinous rice cake is made up of steamed glutinous rice. It needs several steps to make such a snack. Firstly, it requires about several days to allow the glutinous rice to soak in thoroughly in water before putting it into a wooden pot to be steamed. After cooking, the glutinous rice will be ground with pestles and a mortar. After several rounds of hard pounding, the rice dough will be made into palm-sized round rice cakes. Once the rice cakes are ready, local people may fry or roast them and drizzle with sugar.

While many places use machines to produce glutinous rice cakes, the people of Jingzhou continue to employ the primitive craft to carry on their tradition.

(Translated by Yang Hong)