Zhancui

The Zhancui brand began in 1954 as a small workshop making preserved fruit. The Chaozhou region of southern Guangdong is rich in citrus, green plum and olive, and locals have long candied and salted such fruit with sugar, salt and licorice — the tradition from which Zhancui grew.

Over the following decades the workshop grew into an integrated agricultural-processing enterprise and became one of Chaozhou's signature preserved-food brands. In 2024 it was named a national Chinese Time-Honored Brand, part of a cohort that put Chaozhou second in Guangdong for new additions.

Chaozhou preserved fruit turns on the timing of selecting, salting, sun-drying and seasoning. Each house guards its own blend of licorice, dried tangerine peel and galangal, producing the salty-sweet-sour 'liangguo' flavour that locals nibble alongside tea and carry home as gifts.

It is a third-batch Chinese Time-Honored Brand and a designated national leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization.