🍽️ Chengde Jelly

Mung-bean jelly with sesame sauce.

Chengde Jelly is a traditional cooling snack of Chengde, the summer resort in Hebei, handed down together with the city's imperial summer-palace culture. Mung-bean starch is mixed with water and cooked into a transparent paste, cooled into a crystal jelly and cut into strips or slices. It is dressed with garlic water, vinegar, sesame paste, sesame oil, salt water, topped with cucumber shreds and chili oil, and eaten cold after tossing. The texture is smooth, springy and ice-cold, with a tangy, savory, spicy appetite. Chengde is hot by day in summer, and a bowl of jelly is the locals' favorite heat reliever. Unlike Sichuan's numbing-spicy version, Chengde jelly follows a northern, sesame-garlic, refreshing style. Along old streets outside the Mountain Resort in summer, jelly stalls draw long queues, making it the most fitting cool-down for visitors touring the palace and a representative of Chengde's summer folk food.