Pungent luosifen gains popularity in markets

A group of students visited an industrial park that makes luosifen in Liuzhou, Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. They learned about development of luosifen and visited the production line.

Luosifen, a snail-based rice noodle soup dish, is known for its pungent smell that originated in Liuzhou. Luosifen features rice vermicelli soaked in a spicy broth that is flavored with river snails and topped with ingredients including pickled bamboo shoots, string beans, peanuts and fried tofu skin.

Luosifen originated in the 1970s and 1980s. In the first 30 years of its development, luosifen was only a local snack in night markets.

In recent years, with the improvement of food production and packaging technologies such as rice noodle production, physical sterilization, and vacuum packaging, prepackaged luosifen has become popular in domestic and overseas markets. Liuzhou luosifen has gradually developed into a huge industry with a value of 10 billion yuan.

In 2014, Liuzhou proposed to create packaged instant luosifen in order to realize the large-scale production of characteristic snack. Since then, Liuzhou has introduced supporting measures to promote the development of luosifen industry, built luosifen industrial park, and promoted the development of modernized industrial cluster of luosifen.

Guangxi Luobawang Brand Management Co., Ltd. was one of the first companies to get the "production license of prepackaged luosifen" at that time. 400,000 to 600,000 bags of luosifen came into the market from the company's production workshop.

Liuzhou luosifen has caught up with the "express train" of Internet e-commerce in recent years. The live broadcast continued to expand the sales scale, and luosifen gradually became an "Internet celebrity" snack. Several streamers are selling prepackaged luosifen through the Internet live broadcast platforms.

Liuzhou has explored the cultural connotation of luosifen as it became an internet celebrity snack. The skills involved in making luosifen was inscribed on the list of national intangible cultural heritage in 2021. Liuzhou also built a "luosifen tour" industrial tourism route, luosifen town, snail street and other tourism projects to further enhance its popularity.

According to the statistics of Liuzhou Customs in Guangxi, from January to June this year, 134 batches of prepackaged Liuzhou luosifen were exported, an increase of 109% year-on-year. The value of the goods was 33.37 million yuan, an increase of 179.9% year-on-year.