Village in central China’s Henan develops fried dough twist industry, boosts rural vitalization

The fried dough twist business is now a shiny signboard of Mahuazhuang village in Minquan county, central China’s Henan Province, helping boost rural vitalization.

Photo shows villagers making fried dough twists in Mahuazhuang village, Minquan county, central China’s Henan Province. (Photo/Bi Jingjin, Song Ming)

The village has a history of about 300 years of making crispy fried dough twists. Hence, the traditional craft for making the well-known regional snack in the village has since become a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage item in Henan.

But it has not been an easy task to develop a small fried dough twist business into a thriving industry in the village.

In 2017, the village was home to 252 impoverished residents, which led to a poverty incidence rate of 13.9 percent, recalled Yang Yongfeng, the first secretary assigned to fight poverty in the village, who believed that developing distinctive local businesses would be the best way for the village to shake off poverty.

However, Yang found that fried dough twist plants and home-based workshops in the village were troubled by poor sanitary conditions, potential safety hazards, the lack of a unified brand and standards, and packaging that was too simple.

Yang also observed that they were trapped in a vicious circle of low price competition, which had been the main barrier that hindered the development of the village’s fried dough twist business.

To change the situation, Yang presided over a meeting on boosting the village’s fried dough twist industry with persons in charge of eight fried dough twist plants and five home-based workshops in March 2018.

Yang called on them all to give up on their low price competition strategy and instead sell their products for the same agreed price while creating a unified brand, adopting the same specifications and forming a unified sales network.

However, nobody bought into Yang’s idea at first. To reassure them, Yang said the village could turn its fried dough twist business into a larger-scale industry as long as they were united in ensuring quality and a scale up in production. The official even vowed to distribute 30,000 boxes of fried dough twists himself personally. In the end, they all agreed with Yang’s suggestion.

The village then set up a committee for stricter quality supervision. In less than two months, the village was able to guarantee the sanitary conditions for the production of the local snack.

Besides, the wholesale price of a box of fried dough twists was set at 28 yuan (about $4.3), double the previous price.

The village’s efforts paid off. Between the time that the meeting was held in 2018 and the Spring Festival in 2019, the village garnered a combined sales value for fried dough twists of over 7 million yuan and raked in net profits of more than 1 million yuan, generating a collective income of more than 200,000 yuan for the village. Most fried dough twist plants and home-based workshops in the village saw their profits double.

Yang then went on to create a unified brand and adopt the same production and packaging specifications for the snack, which specifies that each bag should include four 12-cm-long fried dough twists.

Meanwhile, the village set up a food company and turned the original fried dough twist plants and home-based workshops into the company’s workshops.

The company purchases raw materials and guarantees product quality, in addition to having formed its own unified sales network. Fifty percent of the company’s profits are distributed to the manufacturers of the snack, while the rest is included in the village’s collective income, which is then used for conducting research and development into new fried dough twist products, market and production expansion, as well as the village’s construction.

As a result of all these efforts, the village realized impressive sales for its fried dough twists, which rose to reach 10 million yuan in 2019, bringing a collective income of 500,000 yuan and providing over 300 direct jobs for villagers.

When Song Ming, a successor to Yang, came to the village, the official managed to further promote the fried dough twist industry in the locality.

In June 2021, the village dispatched Zhang Yabo, a college graduate who returned to the village, alongside another villager to the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences to learn how to develop fried dough twists with different flavors with the support of food experts. The village eventually succeeded in producing fried dough twists with different taste profiles to meet the various demands of consumers, Song introduced.

The village has also opened online stores to sell its fried dough twists on several e-commerce platforms. In addition to inviting live-streamers to sell the snack, the village has also turned villagers, especially younger ones including Zhang Yabo and his younger brother, into live-streamers, according to Song. Last year, the two brothers sold over 2 million yuan of fried dough twists online, reporting a net profit of 300,000 yuan.

At present, Mahuazhuang village has built two new plants to scale up the production of fried dough twists, Song said, adding that it will build a fried dough twist industrial park and further expand its sales channels moving forward.