This round bread might look like a bagel. It’s even got the trademark hole in the middle. But this is not a bagel. It’s guang-bing, and it’s got a heroic past. This is the story of how a humble little doughy treat helped China win a war 500 years ago. And that hole? There’s a story there, too.
The year was 1563 and the Chinese General Qi Jiguang and his troops were fighting against raiding Japanese pirates. Night after night, the pirates would sneak off their boats and raid the Chinese camps, returning to sea with their loot before General Qi’s army had even woken up.
Each time Qi’s forces moved the location of their base, the Japanese pirates knew exactly where their new location was because of the campfires the Chinese soldiers lit to cook their food. So General Qi Jiguang came up with a solution – bread baked in underground clay ovens. Guang-bing was born.
The holes in the middle allowed these new creations to be hung up on a piece of string by the soldiers. When they were moving, they could wear them as something of a bagel necklace and are said to have just bitten into them as they hung around their necks.
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Guang-bing’s legend lives on through bakers who continue to make the snack with the traditional method. One of these is bakeries is run by Huang Yilin and his family in the region of Fu’an. Huang wakes up at around 3 o’clock each morning to get started, first forging the signature hole, and then sticking the circular dough to the walls of a clay oven heated by charcoal.
At breakfast time, customers start arriving. Guang-bing can be eaten at different times of day with different fillings, or even just by itself, back as many of the soldiers used to.
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