Qingbuliang (Coconut-Milk Cooling Dessert)

Hainan qingbuliang is an iced coconut dessert whose base of coconut milk or clear sweet coconut water is filled with red beans, mung beans, job's-tears, coconut flesh, watermelon cubes, quail eggs, taro balls and a dozen other toppings, generous and clear, cold and refreshing, the commonest street dessert in Hainan.

The name qingbuliang means "clearing heat and replenishing cool," a cooling sweet the Hainanese devised for their hot, damp tropical climate, said to have a long lineage. It was voted among the "ten Hainan foods Hong Kong people love most," standing alongside Wenchang chicken, Baoluo noodles and Hainan rice noodles as a hallmark of the island's flavour.

Made to order, a large bowl is heaped with toppings and flooded with iced coconut milk, stirred through and eaten cold; on summer nights nearly every hand at the night market and roadside stall holds a bowl, the ritual of a Hainan summer.

The rich aroma of coconut milk, the layered abundance of toppings and the icy, heat-clearing mouthfeel are the irresistible marks of Hainan qingbuliang.