A food market celebrating Hainan's traditional cuisine and intangible cultural heritage opened at Haikou's Qilou Historic Quarter on October 23. Featuring nearly 30 local specialties, the market was held alongside a food exchange event between Hainan and Guangdong provinces. Visitors had the chance to explore Hainan's culinary traditions by sampling local dishes and watching how they are made.

Qilou Historic Quarter is one of Hainan's best-known historic districts. Its buildings combine traditional Chinese and Southeast Asian architectural styles, with covered walkways at street level providing shelter from the sun and rain. From October 23 to 27, food stalls lined the street, bringing an added sense of bustle to the historic neighborhood.

Organized around a typical day of eating in Hainan, the market introduced visitors to the island's food culture, from breakfast and main meals to local snacks. Offerings included Hainan rice noodles, Wenchang chicken and Ding'an sticky rice dumplings, alongside zaopocu, qingbuliang dessert, local teas and Shanlan rice wine.

Among the foods attracting visitors were yucha and roucha, from Baisha Li Autonomous County in Hainan. Made by fermenting fish or meat with cooked rice, corn flour and other ingredients, they have a distinctive sour and salty flavor. The techniques used to prepare them were added to Hainan's provincial intangible cultural heritage list in December 2023.

"It's my first time trying yucha and roucha. The sour, salty taste is unusual, but the more you chew, the more flavorful they become," said a Haikou resident after sampling the dishes.

Another specialty drawing attention was Ding'an's black-pork sticky rice dumpling. Made with locally raised black pork, glutinous rice and salted duck egg yolk, the ingredients are wrapped in leaves and slowly cooked over a wood fire for 10 to 12 hours, giving the dumplings their distinctive flavor.

Visitors could do more than taste the food. Each day from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., practitioners of traditional food-making techniques recognized as intangible cultural heritage gave live demonstrations of how to prepare jian dui (fried glutinous rice balls), Hainan rice noodles, qingbuliang and other specialties. Visitors could speak with the makers, sample the food and purchase their products.

The food market was part of the 2026 Hainan Folk Culture and Arts Season, a series of three events running from October through December. Upcoming events will focus on traditional handicrafts, locally made products and hands-on cultural experiences.

By combining food tastings with live demonstrations, the market gave visitors a chance to experience Hainan's local culture through everyday food traditions. It also created more opportunities to showcase traditional skills and pass them on to future generations.