Old-fashioned Taiwanese candy: Xingang yi
Located next to Fengtian Temple in Chiayi’s Xingang Township is the 133-year-old Ching Chang Li store, which specializes in making old-fashioned Taiwanese candy.
The shop’s fourth-generation owner, Lu Yang Hsiu-mei, mentions that Ching Chang Li’s founder, Lu Qitou, was from Chiayi’s Minxiong Township, and in days gone by he was a small vendor selling malt sugar, peanuts, and cubing (“thick pastries” made with only flour and sugar). Once when he was stuck inside for several days by incessant rain, he looked at the ingredients around him and got an inspiration: He took peanuts dampened by the wet weather, simmered them in malt sugar and shaped the mixture into small pieces with little heads and pointy tails that looked like mice, so he called his new treat “mouse candy.” “The name was novel and intriguing, and people who came to the temple to worship would buy sweets as offerings and as gift items.” Lu earned enough to set down roots in Xingang.
Mouse candy proved popular, but its name lacked elegance, so it was first changed to shuangrenrun, with the name coming from the two nuts (shuang ren) inside a peanut shell. Later some of this snack was given to the Emperor of Japan as a gift and was much appreciated, and it got another name: Xingang yi (yi meaning “candy”).
The owner leads us into the back of her shop, to the place where they make Xingang yi. They make a wheat-flour batter the evening before and let it stand overnight, and they use peanuts grown in nearby Yunlin County which are plump and full-bodied.
They start cooking the peanuts in the malt sugar at 6 a.m., then blend in the batter and simmer the mixture for more than an hour. Lu Yang Hsiu-mei is in control, and she uses a strip of bamboo to pick up a little malt sugar and kneads it with her fingers to test the firmness. This is a technique she learned from her mother-in-law, and she expects her son to take over from her in the future.
The candy is a part of the memories of many Xingang natives who have moved away. Inside the shop there are three elderly women from neighboring Bantou Village. One says: “I’ve been eating this candy ever since I could walk.” She has three sisters who are scattered all over Taiwan, but when they come home for Lunar New Year they always come to this place where these taste memories began and buy a few bags to take away with them.
“It has the aroma of rice flour and peanuts along with the sweetness of malt sugar, and it has a unique chewy texture—that’s Xingang candy.” This old-fashioned and simple taste also represents something else: perseverance in carrying on a tradition.
Xingang candy (Xingang yi, pronounced Shinko ame in Japanese), is a Taiwanese sweet with an old-fashioned feel.
After simmering maltose syrup with peanuts, bakers dust the dough with rice flour and form it into long strips.