🍽️ Four-Fruit Sweet Soup

Shaved ice with beans and candied fruit.

Four-Fruit Sweet Soup is Zhangzhou's classic summer cooler, beloved across southern Fujian. It is built on a base of shi hua gao—a translucent jelly made from boiled seaweed—to which assorted toppings are added: cooked mung beans, red beans, barley, tremella, grass jelly, taro balls, fresh fruit, then syrup and shaved ice. Each bowl is a textural party: crisp seaweed jelly, mealy beans, chewy taro balls, and a mouthful of icy sweetness that never feels heavy. Stalls let you pick your own toppings to taste and budget. It is the everyday summer dessert of Minnan, found on nearly every street, a cool, sweet way to understand the region's laid-back warm-weather street life.