Xuanmiao Temple snack making skills, a traditional skills project in the fourth batch of Suzhou City Intangible Cultural Heritage Representative Projects List. Xuanmiao Temple is located in the center of Suzhou Ancient City and was built in the second year of Xianning in the Western Jin Dynasty (276 AD). In the Ming Dynasty, Xuanmiao Temple had formed an open-air market. In the Qing Dynasty, Xuanmiao Temple was already the most prosperous center of Suzhou City, forming the unique Suzhou Xuanmiao Temple traditional snacks. Gu Lu described the scene of Xuanmiao Temple snack stalls in "Qing Jia Lu": "Xuanmiao Temple in the city is especially popular with tourists"; "The curtains are set up, gathering in the morning and dispersing in the evening, selling many candies and snacks"; "Teahouses and snack shops are like clouds". In the first year of the Republic of China (1912), the Miro Pavilion was destroyed by fire. Various snack stalls extended from the main mountain gate, the east and west foot gates, and the terrace around the Sanqing Temple. The snack market was even more prosperous on a ruin of more than 3,000 square meters behind the Sanqing Temple. Sugar porridge is the representative of Xuanmiao Temple snacks. The production is very delicate. The red beans used should be large and full, with uniform grains. After cooking, they should be crispy and tender. The glutinous rice should be from Jintan, Changshu and other places. After the red beans are boiled with water, they are poured into a mesh sieve and rubbed, and the bean shells are discarded. Then lard is mixed into the bean paste and stir-fried to remove the astringency and enhance the fragrance. The original paste of the bean paste is mixed with sugar and water, boiled, sprinkled with osmanthus, and thickened with water starch to make osmanthus red bean paste. Finally, the cooked glutinous rice porridge is poured into a bowl and poured with a layer of fine and glutinous osmanthus red bean paste, which becomes a sweet and delicious osmanthus red bean paste sugar porridge. In addition to sugar porridge, the variety of snacks in Xuanmiao Temple changes with the seasons: soup dumplings and Beijing yeast are winter foods, soup dumplings in spring, siomai in summer, and crab meat steamed buns in autumn. For example, people eat supporting cakes on the second day of the second lunar month, eat green dumplings and fermented rice cakes around the Qingming Festival, eat moon cakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival in August, eat warm lotus roots, copper pot water chestnuts, and hot fruits in late autumn, and eat sugar porridge in autumn and winter. Each vendor has his own production skills and special foods, forming many well-known snack "brands". Fresh and fragrant tofu pudding, beauty-enhancing osmanthus lotus seed soup, orchid-like small wontons, unique-tasting fermented rice balls, etc. Among the snacks and desserts of Xuanmiao Temple, Begonia cake is a representative type of baked cake made with pyrotechnics. Li Gujin of the Western Han Dynasty recorded in "The Book of Food for the People": "Plum blossom cake, the shell and utensils are baked, similar to cakes, and round like plum blossoms." From the Western Han Dynasty to the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Begonia cake was mainly a private home-made snack for the ladies and wives of some wealthy families, and was generally not passed on to others. By the Xianfeng period, it was already popular. During the Republic of China, Zhao Yongchang's stall in Xuanmiao Temple was the most famous. The mold for making crabapple cake is about two centimeters deep, with eight centimeters in diameter at the top and bottom. There are seven holes in one plate, and the inner diameter of each hole is corrugated around the periphery. It weighs about seven kilograms. The powder slurry, bean paste, sugar sweetness, dryness and wetness of oil blocks, and various melon seeds and nuts are very particular. "First there was crabapple, then there was plum blossom." The shape of plum blossom cake is large at the top and small at the bottom. The mold is about ten centimeters deep. There are nineteen holes arranged in a nest shape in a plate. The upper diameter is seven centimeters, the bottom diameter is three centimeters, and it is cone-shaped. The wall of each hole is plum blossom-shaped and weighs about fifteen kilograms. Its production process is similar to that of crabapple cake, but because it is large and has many ingredients, it takes a longer time to bake, about fifteen minutes; before it comes out of the oven, it needs to be sprinkled with osmanthus syrup, and then covered and baked for two minutes. When the plum blossom cake comes out of the oven, it is divided by copper fibers. After demolding, the cake body has five distinct edges, just like a blooming plum blossom. Begonia cake and plum blossom cake are not bound by seasons. They can be eaten at the market, temple fairs, and boating. They can not only fill the stomachs of ordinary people, but also be accepted by scholars and poets for their recitation. They are affordable and elegant. The reputation of being the best in Jiangnan has also come with it. The snacks at Xuanmiao Temple depict a simple and moving folk customs of Suzhou: fried noodles with soybean milk and eight-treasure rice; fried steamed buns with thousand pieces of steamed buns; rice balls with fermented glutinous rice and rice; and snails in chicken and duck blood soup. Eating begonia cake and plum blossom cake, drinking osmanthus red bean paste sugar porridge, the snacks are small, but they reflect the big world of market life. (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.) (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.)