Lianzhou Honey Dates

Lianzhou Honey Dates

　　Lianzhou Honey Dates: The finished product is deliciously sweet and offers benefits such as replenishing energy, invigorating the spleen and stomach, moistening the lungs, nourishing blood, enhancing complexion, and promoting fluid production.

　　  Lianzhou has over 6,666 hectares of purple soil developed from red sandy shale. This type of purple soil is loose in texture and rich in phosphorus and potassium, providing ideal conditions for the production of Lianzhou jujubes. Two streams gushing down from the deep mountains nourish this fertile land year-round, filling the rolling hills with the fragrance of blooming jujube flowers.

　　    Farmers who have lived and worked on this purple soil have been improving and domesticating jujube trees for over 500 years. The oval-shaped fresh wooden jujubes contain up to 22% sugar, while the round-pillar-shaped fresh sugary jujubes contain 31% sugar—both are sweet, juicy, crisp yet soft, with thin skins and small pits. The Chinese Dictionary of Local Specialties describes them as “premium material for making honey dates.”

　　    Large-scale production of Lianzhou Honey Dates began in 1956. The process of making candied honey dates is meticulous, scientific, and hygienic, involving steps such as selecting jujubes, scraping jujubes, boiling jujubes, refining sugar, filling jujubes, and shaping them. Jujubes must be selected for their uniform size, freedom from insects, spots, or damage, and for having skins that have turned from green to white but not yet red—indicating they are nearly ripe. Selected jujubes are then longitudinally scored with a needle (to facilitate sugar penetration), boiled in boiling water, cooled in clean water to remove astringency, and are then ready for candying. The sugar used for making honey dates must be Liuhua Sugar produced in Jiangmen, with the syrup refined at a ratio of 50 kilograms of sugar to 15 kilograms of water. When the syrup turns golden yellow, it is promptly poured over the boiled jujubes and slowly stirred and cooked until the jujubes turn yellow. After 12 hours, the jujubes are shaped and placed on bamboo trays to be dried in a solar dryer before being sorted and packaged.

　　    In 1990, the Chinese Dictionary of Local Specialties included Lianzhou Honey Dates among the nation’s renowned local specialties. Its classic and elegant packaging highlights the rich cultural flavor of northern Guangdong. Deliciously sweet and refreshing, it is a typical delicacy of Lingnan cuisine, known for its nourishing, beautifying, and fluid-promoting effects.