If mung bean soup is the light, cooling side of summer, red bean soup is its cozier cousin — thicker, rounder, a little more comforting. Made from small adzuki beans simmered down with a little rock sugar, hóng dòu tāng is one of the most beloved sweet soups in Chinese homes,
If the chilled sweet soups of summer are about cooling down, this one is the opposite — a warm, glossy, deeply nutty bowl you wrap your hands around. Black sesame soup, hēi zhī ma hú, is one of the coziest desserts in the whole Chinese repertoire: smooth as velvet, toasty, and
When the heat becomes too much, a huge pot of this is what appears on stoves across southern China. Sweet mung bean soup — lǜ dòu tāng — is the original summer cooler: tiny green beans simmered until soft, lightly sweetened, and served ice-cold from the fridge. It's the bowl
There's a particular kind of relief that comes from a bowl of something cold and barely sweet on a hot afternoon — not the sugar-rush of ice cream, but something lighter, almost soothing. In Chinese homes, that something is often a bowl of chilled tong sui, and snow fungus