🍽️ Tortoise Herbal Jelly

Herbal jelly, bitter then sweet.

The Tortoise Herbal Jelly is Wuzhou's most famous medicinal-edible sweet in Guangxi, with a long history. Tortoise plastron and sarsaparilla along with other herbs are long-simmered, and the liquid set with mesona into a dark, smooth jelly with a faint bitterness. It is usually cubed and served with honey, syrup or condensed milk—bitter at first, then pleasantly sweet, cool and soothing to the throat. Wuzhou people value it for clearing heat and nourishing, a healthful sweet for Lingnan's humid climate. The jelly is smooth and bouncy, subtly bitter but increasingly cool and mellow. Today Wuzhou produces it commercially in ready-to-eat cans, original and fruit flavors alike. It is both a local summer cooler and a must-try, must-buy medicinal sweet for visitors to Wuzhou.