Traditional Mooncake Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
The Guodulin Shanxi-style mooncake making craft can be traced back at earliest to the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty, with a history of more than three hundred years to this day. During the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, Guodulin mooncakes were already famous in Jinzhong, Taiyuan, Datong, Linfen, and other places, becoming a fine Mid-Autumn gift. Guodulin mooncake production preserves the traditional craft of Shanxi folk cake-making since the Ming and Qing dynasties, and its special "using dough as filling" technique reveals the characteristics of northern cake-making.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Guodulin Shanxi-style mooncake is a Shanxi specialty, with an archaic form, mellow taste, crisp and smooth mouthfeel, sweet but not cloying, known far and wide for being "crisp and smooth, easy on the palate, sweetly fragrant, and mellow." Guodulin mooncakes are exceptionally careful in the selection of raw and auxiliary materials; the dough-kneading technique and the filling-making process are very distinctive, the hanging-oven form for baking is unique, the baking temperature is entirely controlled by hand, and after baking the cakes are ripened in storage cellars to make their fragrance richer, giving an excellent mouthfeel. Due to adjustments in crop planting structure in recent years, the output of white wheat and other crops has dropped sharply, leading to a scarcity of raw materials for Shanxi-style mooncakes. And the traditional manual production method makes it difficult for manufacturers to mechanize and mass-produce, so under these circumstances the living space of the Shanxi-style mooncake making craft is hard to expand, and protection is urgently needed.
Dough used as filling
The craft keeps a Shanxi tradition in which dough itself serves as the filling, giving the cake its crumbly, non-gummy texture.
Kneading the skin and preparing the filling
Ingredient choice, skin kneading and filling preparation are each handled by methods that cannot be written down as fixed formulae.
The suspended oven and manual heat
The unique suspended oven is controlled entirely by hand, with the baker judging colour and heat without instruments.
Maturation in the cellar
Fresh from the oven the cakes are rested in a cellar so the aroma concentrates before they are eaten.
Zhao Guangjin's skills by touch
She can judge wheat moisture by hand in soaked grain, sift flour dust-free and portion dough without weighing, judging the bake by sight and smell.
The research room and apprentices
Teaching since 2010, more than fifty apprentices trained and a research room set up to develop the products.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Guodulin Shanxi-style mooncake started from Taiyuan, first spreading through the Jinzhong area; by the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty it had reached Taiyuan, Datong, and the Linfen area, becoming a fine Mid-Autumn gift. Within the province, Taiyuan, Datong, and Linfen each took on part of the sales and each nurtured their own mooncake shops; among them, the special technique of "using dough as filling" left its trace in the several lines of mooncakes of northern and central Shanxi, being the shared foundation of northern cake-making. The outward spread of Shanxi-style mooncakes is tied to the carriages, horses, and connections of Shanxi merchants. Merchants traveling outside the province brought home mooncakes as Mid-Autumn gifts; thus the Beijing and Guihua areas where Shanxi merchants gathered also came to know this crisp, smooth mouthfeel. This line of provenance meant that although Shanxi-style mooncakes flourished only within Shanxi, they were known to outsiders early on.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Traditional Mooncake Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
As the authentic inheritor of the Shanxi-style mooncake craft, Taiyuan Shuanghecheng Food Co., Ltd. has made important contributions to the development and continuation of this mooncake variety. Zhao Guangjin (per records of the associated officially documented inheritor): Female, Han ethnicity, born in March 1952, from Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province. Representative inheritor of the fourth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage item, traditional mooncake making craft (Guodulin Shanxi-style mooncake making craft). Senior economist. At the age of 21 she entered Taiyuan's food and grocery industry, successively studying Guodulin Shanxi-style mooncake making and baking under Guo Maosheng, Shi Zhide, and Wang Hongsheng, and together with the old technicians restored the traditional production process. Through repeated practice and reflection, she honed such unique skills as the "water-born hand" (placing the hand in soaked wheat to judge whether the wheat meets the moisture standard), the "dustless sieve" (sifting flour without dust), the "one-hand grab" (making the base and wrapping the filling without weighing, using only the fingers to accurately grasp the portions), as well as baking skills of reading the heat, observing the shape, and smelling the aroma. Since 2010 she has formally taken on apprentices and taught the craft, having trained more than fifty disciples in total, and also led the founding of a Shanxi-style mooncake research office, hiring relevant experts for product development, so that the traditional cake-making craft continues to be inherited and developed under new historical conditions.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhao Guangjin 04-1908
- Liang Qiusheng 04-1909
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。