BEIJING: Remote county in Jiangxi becomes ‘land of bakeries’ despite having negligible production of wheat and no flour mill. Wang Xiaoyu reports.
If it’s 3 pm on a weekday, then you will find Chen Xinxin, a Beijing-based human resources manager and self-acclaimed pastry aficionado, gorging on a tennis ball-shaped cake from Bao’s Pastry — a Chinese chain bakery. That’s one of the guilty pleasures she allows herself.
“Every ingredient of this item -from the crunchy pork floss and seaweed crumbs, the cake base and a decadent layer of salad dressing that glues everything together -hits the right note,” the 32-year-old said. “Even its size is just right for an afternoon snack, enough to satisfy my craving while not killing my appetite for dinner later.” This mini cake apart, Chen buys a variety of other baked goods and snacks from Bao’s Pastry.
“I made my first purchase about six years ago when I first started working in Beijing, and am still a loyal customer,” she said.
But it was not until July when Chen discovered that Bao’s Pastry was founded in Zixi, a mountainous county surrounded by dense forests, in Jiangxi province. She got to know of it when she came across an online video promoting the county on the microblogging platform Sina Weibo. “It’s hard to imagine that a remote county where people’s staple food is rice has now been crowned ‘the land of bakeries’ in China,” she said. “Little is known about this place.” –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
