Traditional treat (3)

No matter how a piece of rice cake is fried, baked, toasted, steamed, stewed or grilled, the white glutinous ingredient must first undergo a process that may take up to three days.

Harvested rice is soaked in a huge water tank until it is soft enough to be milled without much effort. Water milling takes at least two people - one to grind, the other to add water to the ground rice until it becomes a milky paste that flows into a cotton-cloth bag. Squeezed rice paste is then put into a bowl in a wooden container and steamed.

As the milky paste turns pink and gradually becomes transparent, it becomes gaohua, "the blossom of cake".

"When I was a kid I often stole gaohua from the steamer as my parents did not notice, for me the gaohua is the essence of rice cake. It is sweet and juicy, which made it worth the pain of getting a beating if I was caught," said Liu Qishou, a 65-year-old resident in Cicheng in north Ningbo.

Liu has been making rice cake for six decades. Liu said steaming the gaohua is art of timing.

"If it is heated too long, it becomes too wet to be shaped, but if the heating time is too short, the sweetness cannot come out," said Liu.