Yun­lin is know for its aquaculture, but few people realize that rice noodles are also a local specialty. However, with the decline of the rice noodle industry, only some five producers remain in the county. Located in ­Kouhu Township, ­Xiang Yi Foods is the largest of these remaining producers.

Stepping into their 2000-square-meter facility, packed with equipment, you are immediately struck by the smell of noodles being steamed.

“All of our noodles are steamed,” says boss Lee Chiu-hsia, a 1994 winner of a Shen­nong Award (for outstanding achievement in farming, rural home management or rural sustainability). Patiently, she goes on to explain how steaming noodles differs from boiling them.

Taiwanese rice noodles are made using one or the other of these two methods—boiled noodles are also known as “thick noodles” or “­Puli rice noodles”, and steamed noodles as “fine noodles” or “Hsin­chu rice noodles” (regardless whether or not they are made in ­Puli or Hsin­chu).

Lin Ming-hsing, the other head of the company, says that according to the Trademark Act, placenames like “Hsin­chu” can’t be trademarked, so while referring to “­Kouhu Hsin­chu rice noodles” may seem odd, it is in fact par for the course.

Xiang Yi’s rice noodle production process is one of many steps: 1.Cornstarch, wheat starch, and rice milk are mixed together, then steamed until half done.

Surprisingly, neither Lin nor Lee come from rice-noodle-making families. After marrying Lee in 1980, Lin went to work in the rubber-making industry in Kao­hsiung, but things didn’t turn out so well. Lee’s family were wheat gluten makers, and suggested the two of them have a go at making rice noodles with their wheat starch (an ingredient common to both rice noodles and wheat gluten). Thirty years later, they’re still at it.

“In the past, there were particular seasonal ups and downs in the rice noodle business,” says Lee.

Wheat noodles and rice have long been staples of the Taiwanese diet, but rice noodles were often just used as part of sacrifices to the ancestors and the ­deities. As Lee explains, market demand was at its highest around the birthdays of major deities, and so business boomed in the first and seventh lunar months, but bottomed out during the fourth and fifth months.

“Back in the 1980s, we’d sell most of our rice noodles over about five months of the year,” says Lee.

In 2003 the couple moved their business to new premises in ­Kouhu Village, where they remain today, and this move created new opportunities for growth.

The first of these opportunities came with the SARS epidemic. The Japanese began putting stricter controls on imported foodstuffs, and after visiting ­Xiang Yi three times to inspect their facilities, a major Japanese client that had been trading with a competitor decided to take its business to ­Xiang Yi.

Lee remarks that the client was im­pressed by the texture of ­Xiang Yi’s noodles, and since 2003 has remained a steady client, buying on average three shipping containers—about 27 tons—of packaged noodles every two months.

On top of this, ­­Xiang Yi have been active participants in the Tai­pei International Food Show for the past few years, as well as securing two clients in the US, one of whom switched to ­Xiang Yi from a mainland Chinese company.

Even though their sales to Japan and the US account for more than NT$1 million a month, Lee still considers the rice noodle industry to be a low-margin, high-volume sector.

“Consumers pay about NT$80–100 a kilogram for rice noodles, but it costs us about NT$30–50 a kilogram to make them,” she says. Despite this, they’re not willing to raise their prices; “I wouldn’t feel good about selling them for too high a price.”

3.The noodles are put in a steaming unit to be finished.

Xiang Yi can produce as much as 3,000 kilograms of rice noodles a day, which enables them to quickly fill domestic orders. But increasing those domestic orders and overcoming the seasonal sales problem has been a tricky puzzle for the couple.

The Taiwanese have always loved the taste of rice noodles, and those who like Hsin­chu rice noodles mostly prefer to eat them stir-fried. Lee was quick to notice this, and spotted an opportunity years ago: “Fewer and fewer people can actually make stir-fried rice noodles, and more and more people would rather just buy them microwaved from convenience stores rather than cooking them themselves.”

After thinking long and hard about how to get their products into convenience stores, at a Council of Agriculture event in 2006 Lee Chiu-hsia met Li Dong­yuan of ­Chiayi Foods, known for their Jia­qi­wan brand of rou­zong (meat-filled ­zongzi dumplings) and oily rice. ­Chiayi Foods had already reached an agreement with 7-Eleven to supply the chain with oily rice and with gift boxes for celebrating the one-month anniversary of a birth or marriage.

When Li Dong­yuan learned of Lee Chiu-hsia’s winning of a Shen­nong Award for her rice noodles, he was happy to work with ­Xiang Yi to get their microwaveable rice noodles into convenience stores. After much testing, the partnership ultimately got product onto store shelves, and were met with a warm reception from consumers.

Today, Lee Chiu-hsia says, ­Xiang Yi supplies ­Chiayi Foods’ New Tai­pei City location with some 300 boxes—3,600 kg—of rice noodles for further processing each week, and since breaking into the convenience-store marketplace, they’ve been able to get their microwaveable noodles onto shelves in 5,000 7-Elevens across Taiwan.

Hypermarkets, meanwhile, remain a battleground on which ­Xiang Yi is not willing to fight. “Hypermarkets have the same variability in sales of rice noodles as traditional markets, and just to get onto their shelves would cost us NT$350,000. It’s not worth the expense,” says Lee.

Lee Chiu-hsia, one of the founders of the Yunlin-based Xiang Yi Foods, was the 1994 recipient of a Shennong Award. As well as being involved in the rice noodle business, she is also an active part of the local leisure farms association, designing rice-noodle-based menus for visitors. This photo shows Lee and a summery meal of cold rice noodles and vegetables created by her and members of the association.

As for the manufacturing process for Hsin­chu rice noodles, Lee likens it to a steam bath and massage:

“Each stage in the process might look easy, but it’s taken us a good 30 years of practice to get the texture and mouthfeel of the noodles just right.”

So what’s their secret?

First comes getting the mix of ingredients right, which can be tricky.

Lin Ming-hsing explains that the thickness of the cornstarch determines the firmness of the noodles, while the wheat starch and indica rice milk impact their stickiness. The exact proportions of these three ingredients vary from company to company, and are closely guarded secrets.

Next, the mixed ingredients are moved on to steaming, steamed to about 20% cooked, and then pressed through a cylinder, the holes in the end plate forming the long, thin noodles. After that, the noodles are coiled up and steamed to completion at 120ºC.

A few minutes later, the cooked noodles are taken out of the steamer and put on a table, filling the room with steam and the scent of rice.

Women at each end of the table then take hold of the ends of the noodles like a tug-of-war, quickly lifting the two-meter-long noodles into the air and stretching them out. After a couple of rounds of this tug-of-war, the “warriors” are drenched with sweat.

After this, the hundreds of long, fine noodles are almost as elastic as rubber, but retain the characteristic softness of rice noodles. This is how ­Xiang Yi give their noodles the consistency and texture they are so proud of.

But there’s more to come, as the noodles are still wet at this point. A group of employees then cut the noodles to lengths of about 40 or 50 centimeters, while another group use long bamboo chopsticks to fold the noodles, finishing one batch of noodles in just three seconds.

Once everything’s ready, the racks of noodles are then sat in a room to dry at about 50°C. When asked how long the noodles take to dry, Lee says “it’s hard to say for sure,” and that it depends on the weather on the day and how many noodles are in each rack.

“Some people say wind-dried noodles are better quality, but that’s not really the case; the humidity, temperature, and wind level outside are hard to control, but inside we can adjust the temperature and humidity, and thus control the drying time,” explains Lin Ming-hsing.

Lee Chiu-hsia, one of the founders of the Yunlin-based Xiang Yi Foods, was the 1994 recipient of a Shennong Award. As well as being involved in the rice noodle business, she is also an active part of the local leisure farms association, designing rice-noodle-based menus for visitors. This photo shows Lee and a summery meal of cold rice noodles and vegetables created by her and members of the association.

In addition to ­Xiang Yi’s two main brands of Hsin­chu rice noodles, 12 years ago the ever-driven Lee created a variety of rice noodle with extra calcium, which is now sold in Tai­Sugar stores.

Working with a pharmacist friend, Lee tried dozens of different brands of calcium and went through hundreds of cooking tests and taste tests, finally finding a combination and process that created noodles with added calcium, but which still tasted and felt like regular rice noodles.

Despite all this hard work, though, Xiang Yi haven’t applied for a patent for these noodles. Aren’t they worried their hard-earned intellectual property will be copied?

“We’ve been selling these for over a decade and still haven’t seen another brand of added-calcium rice noodles. Maybe no-one else really cares about R&D in the rice noodle market!” remarks Lee, “Me, though? I love trying new things.”

And she hasn’t stopped developing new and creative kinds of rice noodle. Right now, she’s working on a “Gracilaria rice noodle,” using Gracilaria grown in ­Kouhu, by the ocean, which is rich in minerals and dietary fibre.

These noodles have already been in development for several months. “I don’t know why, but we can’t get the Gracilaria to break up after boiling or in a blender. If we can’t turn it into some kind of paste, we’ll have a lot of trouble mixing it into the noodles,” says Lee, explaining why she feels they still have a long way to go on this latest invention.

Lin Ming-hsing, Lee’s life partner as well as business partner, says that at the moment they can only get the proportion of Gracilaria to noodle up to about 5%, but they want to get over 20% before they take it to market.

“Working in a traditional industry can be hard work!” says Lee. When they started the company 30 years ago, they couldn’t even get 30 kg of noodles done in a day, and looking back, Lee can’t even imagine what kind of courage (or foolhardiness) helped the two get as far as they have.

Today, as Lee zips around the factory and Lin handles the business side of things, the couple are preparing their four children to become the second-generation leaders of the business. Driven by a love of rice noodles, this husband and wife make an indefatigable team, never stopping for a moment.

2.The mixture is squeezed out into long, thin noodles.

After packing, the noodles are shipped to a processor that supplies convenience stores around Taiwan, and even to clients in Japan and the US.

6.They are then placed onto racks and put in a drying room.

4.The finished noodles are pulled and stretched, increasing their elasticity.

5.Using large bamboo chopsticks, staff fold and stack the noodles.