Humble street snack rides fresh wave of popularity

Editor's note: This series of stories looks at local enterprises in specialized sectors that have a share in global markets.

Luosifen, which translates as river snail rice noodles, has risen from its humble roots as a street snack in Southwest China to take the nation's food scene and beyond by storm, with spikes in domestic as well as overseas sales.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the precooked, packaged version of the product has seen record production and sales, according to industry figures.

Luosifen, which can be traced to Liuzhou, a city in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, features rice noodles soaked in a spicy broth flavored with river snails and topped with pickled bamboo shoots, which give it a distinctive, tangy aroma.

By the end of last year, sales revenue of packaged luosifen hit 15.197 billion yuan ($2.27 billion), an increase of 38.23 percent year-on-year, with the production and sales of many companies in the sector doubling, according to Jia Jiangong, deputy director of Liuzhou's commerce bureau.

Major producers such as Guangxi Luobawang Food Technology pointed to the widespread development of the "homebound economy" during the pandemic, by leveraging online sales and logistics channels. This helped fuel spikes in domestic and overseas orders for precooked, packaged versions of the dish.