Wenzhou sticky rice, a staple morning meal from the southern city known for its entrepreneurship, is the glue that holds a global diaspora together
Zhu Tong never forgets the mist that gushes out when the steamer opens. As the breakfast joint owner scoops out glistening grains into a bowl, he tops it with sprinkles of fried dough and a generous ladle of broth made with mushroom and minced pork. Zhu would use a stainless steel spoon to thoroughly scrape down every inch of his bowl.
This is how Wenzhou sticky rice (温州糯米饭), a breakfast staple of Zhu’s hometown of Wenzhou in southern Zhejiang province, was consumed in the family-run shops by the entrance of his village. But for the first 26 years of Zhu’s life, he experienced such delightful memories barely once or twice a year, when his parents took him back home for a visit.
Born in Wenzhou’s Yueqing town in 1988, Zhu was raised in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, some 1,600 kilometers north. Zhu’s father is a veteran Wenzhou businessman who, starting in the 1980s, traveled widely and distributed electric appliances made by the city’s burgeoning manufacturing industry all across northern China. The work was hectic and distances long, so the family rarely returned to their hometown, which made the taste of sticky rice especially precious to Zhu since childhood. “Each year, I went back to relive the same flavors from the year before,“ Zhu recalls.
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