If you visit south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, you can't miss rice noodles. From capital Nanning to tourism city Guilin, from mango-hometown Baise to longevity village Bapantun, the people of Guangxi would not call it a day without eating a bowl of rice noodles.

There are three symbolic rice noodles in Guangxi: Nanning-special laoyou rice noodles, the well-known Guilin rice noodles, and internet-sensation river snail rice noodles from Liuzhou. 

They, to an extent, showcase the changes this region has witnessed in the past six decades. 

Laoyou rice noodle

In the 1930s, an old man in Nanning used to visit a tea house every day. But once, he did not show up for many days due to the flu. When the tea house owner heard about it, he prepared a bowl of hot noodles for the old man with pickled bamboo shoots, chili, fermented soya beans, and crushed garlic.

The sour and spicy noodles helped the old man recover fast. The old man was grateful to the tea house owner and later sent him a plaque reading "old friend frequent."

That's how laoyou noodles also known as "old friend noodles", got its name. Since the people of Nanning love eating rice noodles, the dish gradually became laoyou rice noodles.

"In Nanning, if you mention laoyou, it not only refers to laoyou rice noodles but also a kind of cuisine that tastes sour and spicy," said Huang Weining, founder of Laoyouwang restaurant. 

Huang, a Nanning native, has run the restaurant focusing on laoyou cuisine for 11 years. His grandfather and father both worked in the catering industry, and he learned about the laoyou noodle story and Nanning cuisine culture during his childhood. 

Out of his interest in laoyou cuisine, he quit his job at a state-run company and visited famous local chefs and ingredients production places to seek the best flavor for his own restaurant. As his restaurant has become more popular, he now hopes to further develop laoyou cuisine to open more restaurants next year and also develop packaged laoyou rice noodles.

Compared with Guilin rice noodles and river snail rice noodles which are popular outside their birthplaces, laoyou rice noodles have always been confined to Nanning. "The reason that laoyou rice noodles have stayed within the region's boundary is its cooking process," said Huang, adding that cooking laoyou rice noodles is more complicated.

"First, we need to stir-fry ingredients in a big fire and then boil uncooked rice noodles, it takes around three minutes."

"If you have ten customers, the tenth needs to wait for half an hour," said Huang. "To popularize laoyou rice noodles, the cooking process must be improved."

Although there are some packaged laoyou rice noodles available in the market, the taste is not satisfactory and local people would rather go to the street for a freshly made bowl of rice noodles.

As with many local specialties, laoyou rice noodles have a long way to go before reaching foodies across the world.

Guilin rice noodle

Guilin rice noodles have a long history that dates back to the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). It is said that the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty sent 500,000 soldiers to what is now southern China to unify the country. In the battle that lasted for three years, his army's provisions ran low and many soldiers suffered from hunger and illness. 

The soldiers, who had come from northern China, were accustomed to eating noodles but only rice was available in southern China. To feed the army men, the chefs grounded rice and made them into rice noodle. To cure diseases, army doctors made herbal soups. As soldiers ate rice noodles with herbal soup, a prototype of Guilin rice noodles was born.

Two thousand years have passed since then, but Guilin rice noodles are still a cuisine that is full of live. 

Sitting behind the counter, the 66-year-old Li Guizhen looked self-assured in her Laodongjiang Guilin rice noodle restaurant. On the wall behind her, a plaque displays the price of a bowl of Guilin rice noodles ranging from four to five yuan (less than a U.S. dollar), a unified price across Guilin.

Although a major tourist destination, Guilin has always kept its signature food at surprisingly low prices, making the rice noodles an easy get for both local people and tourists. 

Often, one can witness a group of people chatting in different dialects in the queue outside this 40 square meter restaurant, adjacent to a scenic spot in the city center.

"Over a thousand bowls of rice noodles can be sold every day. In summer, it's two thousand," Li said proudly. She said that the secret of the good taste of her Guilin rice noodles lies in its brine, which was inherited from her grandfather and has improved through four generations.

The delicious food not only attracts food lovers, but also money makers. The granny's apprentices and their restaurants are all over the country, from first-tier city Beijing to southwest China's remote Yunnan Province. Huang said that an apprentice on an average learns between one to three months and then uses her brand to open an independent restaurant. 

Inheriting the essence of northern and southern Chinese food, Guilin rice noodles find its way to the stomach of every Chinese. Booming Guilin rice noodle restaurants across the country are proof. 

If you are in Beijing's CBD, there are about 50 restaurants that offer "Guilin rice noodles" in a five-kilometer range.

Cheap, easy and fast, the three characteristics help Guilin rice noodles gain national popularity and make Guangxi's influence omnipresent nationwide.

River snail rice noodle

Born in the late 1970s, river snail rice noodle, or Luosifen in Chinese, is very young. It is a common street snack in Liuzhou City and was never heard of by many people outside Guangxi until its instant fame. 

In 2012, a popular food documentary called "A Bite of China" was aired on China Central Television. While documenting Guangxi's pickled bamboo shoots, the river snail rice noodles were introduced to the whole nation as pickled bamboo shoots remain its indispensable ingredient.

Since its national debut, river snail rice noodles have appeared frequently both online and offline in TV shows, live streaming videos, and newspapers.

The noodle really has something to talk about. First, it is a big challenge to the human senses. It smells bad and tastes sour and spicy. Many people refuse to taste it because of its smell. But if you dare to try it, you will never forget it and probably get addicted to its bad smell. It is a test whether you belong to the minorities who like it or majorities who hate it.

Second, it is a new-era celebrity Chinese food in the vein of chili sauce Laoganma. In fact, it has been so popular in the U.S. that on several occasions fresh stocks of river snail rice noodles got sold out within hours on many renowned e-commerce platforms and, to ensure fairness, some platforms even cap the amount of purchases per customer.

"Most fans of river snail rice noodles are young people," said Long Renfeng, founder of Xianluoshuang restaurant chains, whose five river snail rice noodle restaurants are located in Guilin's commercial district.

He conducted market research and found that the sales of river snail rice noodles reached 100 million yuan on Tmall.com, Alibaba's online shopping portal, during the "Double 11" shopping extravaganza in 2017. 

To take advantage of the online sales trend, Long is developing a new kind of packaged river snail rice noodles that are cheap and fashionable in order to meet young people's expectations and beat the online competition.

Long probably made a smart decision. Data from Alibaba shows that around 28.4 million packaged river snail rice noodles were sold during this year's "Double 11," the most in any food category.

Born late but running fast, river snail noodles have amazed the world and are leading a new way in Guangxi's development.

Videographer: Chen Kairan

Video editors: Li Ningning, Shen Anqi

Photographer: Chen Kairan, Wu Yan, Liu Xiaonong

Designer: Liu Shaozhen