Cold Shrimp (Iced Rice Noodles)

Cold Shrimp is a traditional Yichang summer dessert: rice is ground to a batter and pressed through a special ladle into cold water, setting into soft white strands swollen at the head and tapering at the tail like tiny shrimp, then bathed in cooked brown-sugar syrup and served ice-cold—slippery, sweet and refreshingly cool.

The method is said to come from the folk kitchens of western Hubei; with Yichang sitting on the Yangtze and its summers hot and damp, people pressed rice batter into shrimp-shaped iced treats to beat the heat, handing the craft down until it became the city's most recognisable summer snack, with stalls such as the Wang family's on Jiefang Road especially well known.

Made fresh and served in a bowl with brown-sugar syrup, it is often paired with ice jelly or sweet rice wine, the most popular cooling sweet on the summer street, commonly sipped from a cup as locals walk.

The shrimp-shaped rice strands, the amber brown-sugar syrup and the icy, cooling mouthfeel are the clearest marks that set Cold Shrimp apart from sweets elsewhere.