《海陸豐薄餅：薄到透光嘅餅皮，包得住立夏，都包得住日常》Hailufeng Thin Pancake: A Skin Thin Enough to See Through, That Holds Lixia and an Ordinary Day

[Zheng Ge's Take]

Hailufeng thin pancake means the way it is made around Haifeng and Lufeng. With this one the point is not the filling, it is the skin: thin enough to see through, and it will hold vegetables without letting the juice through. Haifeng belongs to Shanwei; but the place this piece is about, I will keep calling Haifeng. The skin is the frame; though as you read on you will see that most of the work ends up in the filling.

It used to be something you waited for: for Lixia, for the family to be in, for someone willing to do the work. Not any more — want one, and there is a stall, an order, a delivery. What this piece is about is the decades in between.

One Dough, Two Skins

The skin is made of wheat flour. In the villages they called it mak fan, wheat flour — the same thing we buy today. Nothing clever in it: flour, water, a pair of hands.

One thing I should say plainly: the rolling method below is the way they do it in Donghai, in Lufeng. Haifeng and Lufeng each have their own way and they are not identical; I am not going to pass Donghai's off as Haifeng's.

In Donghai they do not make a batter. Flour and water are kneaded into a dough, worked until it does not stick and does not crack, then left to rest. That dough is the whole of the skin.

Once rested, the dough is rolled into balls, each ball pressed flat, the top brushed with a little bean oil. Then two of them are put together — two, not one — and rolled thin with a rolling pin. Rolled as a pair, the skin comes out even and does not tear halfway through.

Then into the wok to bake. While it is still hot you peel the pair apart: one sheet becomes two, and both have to stay whole. Peel gently; a torn sheet cannot be mended. The skins go into a tin basin, a piece of white rice-cloth over them so the air does not dry them out.

Roll, Bake — and the Market's Shortcut

A hand-rolled skin has chew and smells of wheat, and it will carry a heavy filling. But it costs you time: knead, rest, roll, bake, peel. Half a day in the kitchen for one family's pancakes.

The ready-made skins sold in the market take another road: flour mixed to a batter, poured onto a hot iron plate, smeared by hand or thinned with a scraper, set by the heat. One after another, far quicker.

Speed has a price. A batter skin is soft; it has not got that chew, and a slightly wet filling goes straight through it. Anyone who grew up on a home-rolled skin can taste the difference at the first bite.

I have watched this step being done on Erma Road. No ruler: fingers and palm. A little thick, one more drag; thin enough to see through, stop. You know whether a sheet is any good before you eat it — lift one corner, hold it to the light, see through it, and still hold the whole sheet up without a hole or a tear.

The Filling Is Made One Thing at a Time

The traditional Donghai filling comes down to the same few things: shrimp, lean pork, white pork, beansprouts, dried tofu, spring onion, shredded preserved radish, strips of omelette. On the table it is a row of small bowls; you take more of what you like.

Not one of them is bought ready and put straight out. The eggs are fried and cut into strips. The preserved radish is cut into sections, split into layers, then shredded. The shrimp are shelled one by one. Those three together are a whole morning.

Lean pork and white pork, one lean and one fat, and you want both. Fried until the water is gone and the smell comes up, cut fine, then set out with the rest.

Dryness matters. A wet filling softens the skin fast and the roll falls apart — fry it a little drier rather than a little wetter.

Rolling is its own skill. Two skins laid out joined together, filling on top, both hands taking the edge and folding it over and over. The local word for it is "gou 4". It has to be tight, neat, and it must not leak — the first one I ever rolled, my father-in-law put his hand over mine to teach me.

What Has Been Added, and One Thing I Will Not Say

Today's filling has grown a great deal: cucumber, shredded potato, garlic, ham sausage, coriander, carrot, onion — and among the seasonings, white sugar and orange paste.

Some people say that once you add those, it is no longer a proper traditional Donghai pancake. I could not say — and I will not pretend that I can. But one thing I will say flatly: at our table the pancake still keeps to the same few fillings it always had.

New is not automatically worse, and old is not automatically better. But some flavours you only understand once you have tried the new ones and found where the old one has been all along.

From Lixia to Whenever You Want It

Eating thin pancakes at Lixia is a custom in Hailufeng; every township does its own version, and the pancakes differ from place to place. I quote that straight, because the custom itself is where this whole thing starts.

Further back there was something in the villages called a mak pou: a thin skin fried from wheat flour, beansprouts and peanuts on top, rolled up and eaten — very close to the pancake.

Once, eating one was an event. Make your own skins, fry a few dishes, shell the shrimp — labour and hours. A small household would give up halfway, look at the ingredients and sigh, and wait for Lixia to go and eat at the in-laws'.

Then the market began selling skins and that took one load off. In Shenzhen there are shops that sell nothing else: you ring ahead, and you still queue for over an hour. The middle-aged women who make the skins are up at three in the morning; one of them said, "If I hired someone, I would be working for them." The touch is hers; hire a hand and it is not the same thing.

Later people bought dedicated electric pans, meaning to make them at home — it did not work well. Frozen northern skins were tried too: ten to a pack, eight minutes steamed, convenient, but the texture is not the same. In Dongmen market a Lufeng family keeps a stall and you can buy whenever you walk up, which is a fair middle road.

Now shrimp are there all year round, someone will deliver live ones to your door, and the pancake can be ordered and delivered like fast food.

In One Line

There is a line in the original I wrote down, more or less this: it used to be said that you eat thin pancakes at Lixia; now people eat them at no particular time — whenever they want one, they eat one.

What changed is not the taste. It is the threshold. It used to take a solar term, a full table, someone willing to shell that bowl of shrimp; now it takes one phone call.

The same skin holds Lixia and it holds an ordinary day. The only difference is this: once a year, and now whenever. Sometimes I miss the taste of the waiting — it did not come from the filling, it came from the wait.