Fuan Jiguang Cake

Husband Wang Yongbin used an elongated shovel and a large colander to take out the cooked Jiguang cake from the oven and handed it to his wife, who helped to string holes in the cake eyelets

Fu'an News Network News (Zheng Zuhui) Jiguang Cake was originally just a local small cake, named after being used by the anti-Wu hero Qi Jiguang as the main dry food of the army during the Ming Dynasty, and the traditional name of "Jiguang Cake" is still preserved in Fu'an. In the streets and alleys of Fu'an City, you can often see baked cake workshops, including many generations of family-style old shops, the raw materials of the burned Jiguang cake are only flour, alkali noodles, salt, is a veritable healthy food, deeply loved by local men, women and children.

In the back alley of the north street of Fu'an City, there is a generation of Wang Ji Jiguang Cake Shop. Wang Yongbin, a 35-year-old shopkeeper, and his brother Wang Youyi and his sister have been passing on their father's business and have been learning to make Jiguang cakes for more than ten years. Due to the brothers' skillful skills in baking jiguang cakes, and still using traditional techniques such as charcoal baked cakes, the surface of the burned jiguang cakes is full and smooth and bronze, the inside of the cake is soft like cotton, the bottom of the cake is hard as iron but not scorched, the outside is crisp and the inside is crisp, the taste is pure, attracting many hungry cake customers to come. According to Wang Yongbin and his wife, when the Spring Festival returns home every year, it is the peak season for demand for Jiguang cakes. After the Spring Festival, most of the locals who have been working and doing business outside the home for a long time will bring some Jiguang cakes to other places to relieve their hunger. When traveling on weekdays, portable relay light cakes are also often brought dry food. Because the custom of jiguang cake as the main sacrifice is still continuing to this day, it will enter the peak around the Qingming Dynasty, and most people will have to buy enough portions to distribute it to the villagers or neighbors after the sacrifice is swept away, so as to beg for good luck.

It is said that after Huang Jun, the head of Fu'an Yang, was raised in the sixteenth year of Jiajing (1537), he served as the Tongzhi of Wenzhou Prefecture (Ming and Qingding as the prefects and the adjutants of Zhizhou), and this person "tended to be high-minded and knowledgeable... When the Wokou invaded, he urgently led the people to fight", and later, he "has struggled to break the thief, and died of widowhood" (according to the "Chronicle of Fu'an County"). According to this, it is inferred that the light cake making process in southern Zhejiang was spread by Huang Jun. Later, Qi Jiguang led his soldiers to hunt down and suppress Wu Kou, marching to the east gate of Cixi Longshan, an old farmer offered many salty cakes with small holes in the middle and sesame seeds for the Qi family army as a consolation. Because the bread was filled with holes and worn with a rope to carry, it was selected by Qi Jiguang as a dry food commonly used in the army. After the news spread, people from all over the coast rushed to make such a glorious cake for the army. The name of the light cake has spread ever since. Due to the meritorious service of the Qi family's army, it is said that the Jiajing Emperor gave the name "Jiguang Cake", and fu'an still continues this name to this day.

Source: Fu'an News Network

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