There has been Jinbang milk curd(diary product, a kind of curd processed from milk) from Ming Dynasty according to the legend. Jinbang, is a village in Daliang Shunde. There was few farmland in Jinbang village in ancient time, every family raised several buffalos to earn a living by selling beef and milk. Too much milk unsalable under damp and stuffy weather could not be preserved for a long time and easily underwent deterioration, so Jinbang people who were good at cooking came up with an idea to turn it into translucent slices of milk curd for long preservation. It was surprising that the milk curd was even more delicious than the fresh milk after a chemical reaction of salt and vinegar. Take two slices of such milk curd into the rice congee, you can taste the sweetness and aromatic fragrance of the milk, which is also a good way to clear heat and prevent from getting cold. This wisdom is passed down generations by generations and becomes a famed snack in China, being dubbed as “Oriental Cheese”.

At 6:00 a.m. in the early morning, Jinbang village in Daliang wakes up in the sunrise.

The village is not big, but with many traces of old age when crossing the narrow alleys.

Aunty Huan gets up early and neatly puts the milk curd on the window. The ding-dong sound made by glass bottles colliding with each other and the birds’ cheerful chirp starts a happy day for aunty Huan.

Aunty Huan has run this most authentic shop of “Huan’s Jinbang milk slice” for 46 years.

A slice of milk curd that is as thin as a cicada’s wing may puzzle people from other places, but it’s an indispensable gourmet for Shunde people and it’s a gem of wisdom which people feel proud of.

A small pot of milk and a pot of vinegar are heated in turn on the coal stove. Aunty Huan skillfully starts to make the milk curd after breakfast.

Boil the fresh milk that was received in the early morning with the marmite to 40-50°C.

The temperature of the milk and vinegar determines the success of the milk curd. A too high temperature may be difficult for the milk to solidify. All of these are controlled by personal experience.

A big basin of saline put at hand seems very simple, but it’s crucial to the whole processing procedure.

Only the sea salt without being processed could be used. When the salt melts, use gauze to filter the salt and make it into salt particles to make saline with appropriate concentration.

Molding tool made by old Longan tree has been used for more than 50 years and is passed down generations by generations. Finally it lands on Aunty Huan’s hand.

A spoon of milk and vinegar mixed well in the small bowl and poured into the mould after solidification.

Aunty Huan holds the mould with one hand and press quickly with the other hand, and slices of milk drop off into the saline like blooming white lotus.

The pressing process may seem simple, but it’s rooted deeply in aunty Huan’s years of experience of making the milk curd. It will stink within half a month if it is not pressed hard enough and dried enough.

The ready-made milk curd will be put in the glass bottles and the milk that is easy to go bad could be preserved in this way.

Put it in the water to drink can help you to clear heat; And it could be put into the rice, making it taste special.

It takes only two minutes to make a slice of milk, but from the beginning of aunty Huan’s business, she has used more than 20 kg fresh milk to make about 1800 to 2000 milk slices. The golden time of Jinbang milk curd was the 70s in the last century and almost every family had buffalos and there was even a buffalo street of several miles long. The fresh milk produced by the buffalos was not only sold to various regions but also used to made double-skinned custard, ginger milk curd and stir-fried milk.

Many new shops of milk curd emerged and much milk curd was sold to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, etc. But nowadays there are less people raising the buffalos and the price of fresh milk is increasingly high, resulting in only several shops making milk curd in Jinbang village. “The business is not easy to run, it costs about 9 yuan for 0.5 kg of fresh milk, but it can only make 35 slices of milk. The profit is really low.” Said aunty Huan.

In 2013, Jinbang street was set as residential area and the government no longer allowed people to raise buffalos in Jinbang. In order to make milk curd, aunty Huan needs to walk a long way to collect fresh milk from the farmers, which indicates a higher cost. However, aunty Huan neither raises the price nor closes her business. She still sticks to her business and sits in her shop waiting for old customers. There are always a few strangers from other place coming to the quiet Jinbang village in every period of time. Local people could not understand mandarin and they finally figured out by gestures that they came here for the milk curd after watching the report on CCTV called Taste in China.