Lishui Rice Cake Craft

Name and batch

The public notice of January 2024 lists the Lishui Rice Cake Craft under traditional crafts among the newly included projects of the recommended list for the fourth batch of district-level representative items of intangible cultural heritage; the applying area or unit is Jingqiao Town and the recommended guardian unit is the Jingqiao Town Culture and Sports Station. Among the items held in this library, Jingqiao Town applied for three traditional crafts in the fourth batch, this one being of the food group together with the fermented-cake craft and the ancient-method brewing craft.

Three names for what may be one item

Two further names, worded differently from the present one, have been found in the sources. Whether all three are the same project has not been verified here, and they are reproduced side by side and not merged.

First, the public notice of January 2024 gives the name Lishui Rice Cake Craft, with Jingqiao Town Culture and Sports Station as the applying unit.

Second, the Nanjing Morning Post of March 2024 reported that the intangible cultural heritage exhibition hall built at Shishanxia Village in Jingqiao Town displays, among others, the Yuhua tea, the Xisong horse lantern, the Shishanxia speciality rice cakes and the maltose of Jingqiao Town, described collectively as items of intangible cultural heritage at national, provincial, municipal and district level.

Third, Lishui Release reported in August 2025 that the Shishanxia rice cake of Ruijia Community, Jingqiao Town, is an item of intangible cultural heritage of Lishui District, and that its essence lies in a distinctive osmanthus filling made from a five-hundred-year-old tree in the village.

It must be stressed that the Nanjing Morning Post places those four names side by side under a collective phrase covering four levels and does not state the level of each one individually. It cannot therefore be used to determine the level of the Shishanxia speciality rice cakes, or of the Yuhua tea, the Xisong horse lantern or the maltose; the level of the present project remains that given in the public notice.

Materials and characteristic of the craft

The report of Lishui Release of August 2025 states that the essence of the Shishanxia rice cake lies in its distinctive osmanthus filling, made from flowers taken from a five-hundred-year-old tree in the village, and that the village, founded in 1245, takes its name from being surrounded on three sides by hills. This characteristic of the material is the only element of the craft found here that bears directly on the present title, but the name used in that report is Shishanxia rice cake.

As for the processes of soaking and grinding the rice, steaming, shaping and colouring, no source describing the process of this project has been found in this library. The sequence of soaking the rice, grinding, sifting and pressing into moulds that appears in one report of a school-based intangible cultural heritage activity belongs to a classroom setting and is not sufficient as evidence of this project's process, so it is not written here.

Transmission and safeguarding

The public notice lists no representative bearer for this project. Among the eight bearers of newly included projects named in the fourth-batch notice, one is the bearer of Malt Sugar Making, Liu Ming; that is a different item from the present one, and no bearer may be inferred for this project on that ground. Nor may the guardian unit of Malt Sugar Making be rewritten on the authority of that notice: its guardian unit is given in Appendix 1 of Li Zheng Ban Fa [2021] No. 3 as Jingqiao Town Culture and Sports Centre, a different document and a different wording from the recommended guardian unit of the present project. The third-batch district-level list of bearers (2017) records none for this project either.

Uncertainties

First, three names stand side by side. Lishui Rice Cake Craft, Shishanxia speciality rice cakes and Shishanxia rice cake are worded differently, and whether they are one project has not been verified; they are given here side by side and are not counted as one.

Second, the level cannot be inferred. The Nanjing Morning Post groups the four names under one collective phrase without stating levels individually, and the present project must not be raised or lowered on that basis; its level is district-level according to the public notice.

Third, almost nothing is available on the process. The sources give only the osmanthus filling as a characteristic of the material and do not record the making of the rice flour, the steaming or the shaping; the sequence given in a school activity report is a teaching setting and is not used as evidence.

Fourth, the glossary of this library also holds the Honglan Yudaigao craft, which belongs to a different subdistrict under a different name and must not be confused with the present item.

Fifth, the recommended guardian unit is the Jingqiao Town Culture and Sports Station and the applying area or unit is Jingqiao Town. These are two different columns of the notice's table and must not be used interchangeably.