Freshly-made steaming glutinous rice cakes are laid to dry on racks. [Photo/WeChat account: zsqdly]

Glutinous rice cakes are called niangao in Chinese, which is a homonym of the phrase "higher every year". The dish is believed to increase one's prosperity and is an indispensable part of the Lunar New Year for Zhoushan natives.

As the Lunar New Year approaches, most families in Zhoushan prepare several hundred kilograms of glutinous rice and regular rice in advance to make glutinous rice cakes.

The following is how glutinous rice cakes are made:

First wash and soak the glutinous rice and regular rice and grind them into powder.

Next, put the powder onto a wooden steaming bucket layer by layer until it is full. The powder has finished steaming when a strong aroma is coming out of the bucket.

The steamed powder is then split into small rectangles and pushed into a machine to harden it, and the well-done hot glutinous rice cakes are put under the sun to be aired.

Children often enjoy standing next to the rice cake molding machine to wait for the cakes and eat the freshly-made dim sum with pickled tuber mustard or soybean meal.

Red marks are printed on air-dried glutinous rice cakes. [Photo/WeChat account: zsqdly]