Penghu: Fried Jujube & Fangpian Cake DIY Experience

The Lantern Festival is Penghu's most distinctive and largest-scale celebration; Penghu locals celebrate it even more enthusiastically than the Lunar New Year! The food during the festival is full of old-fashioned flavors, with tastes that are simple and direct, unfazed by the passage of time. Among these is the "fang pian gui" (肪片龜), a traditional food made in the shape of a turtle, originating from the wish for longevity and peace held by the people of the Minnan region. Today, the complex production process has been simplified into a DIY experience of kneading glutinous rice dough. While kneading, it is important to balance firmness and softness in order to create a round, smooth turtle filled with a collagen-like texture. Legend has it that in Penghu in the 1980s, the basic size of a "fang pian gui" was hundreds of pounds, and there were even turtle kings weighing thousands or tens of thousands of pounds, with blessings and weights written on their shells.