Luosifen, traditional rice noodles cooked with river snails, has become popular from being a street food sold at night markets in Liuzhou, Guangxi Region to an export commodity entering the global market.
A dish of rice noodles boiled with pickled bamboo shoots, dried turnip, peanuts and fresh vegetables in spiced river snail soup, Luosifen is budding to reach all of the world as Guangxi Luobawang Food Co. Ltd. got its permit on Thursday and became the first company authorized for bulk exportation of the dish.
Luobawang manufactures the instant version of the dish and it lasts from 30 to 180 days.
Before it became an export product, Luosifen crossed the borders of Guangxi Region and penetrated the whole of China through an effort of the company Luobawang to distribute some 20,000 packages of instant snail rice noodles each day to other regions of the country.
The popularity of Luosifen can further be traced from a government project in 2010 which encouraged the opening of more restaurants serving the dish in big cities outside Guangxi. It was also featured in 2012 in the documentary show "A Bite of China."
Today, with the help of distributors, Luobawang has already exported instant snail rice noodles to Australia and the U.S. The company continuously seeks to expand its exportation to even more regions and countries.
Aside from Luobawang, there are other companies who have applied for export certificates. This was according to Li Jianhong of Liuzhou's commerce commission. There are more than 60 manufacturers of instant snail rice noodles playing in the market today--a big leap from just one manufacturer in late 2014.
This shows that the snail rice noodle industry is one that's moving--and not slow at that.