A white porcelain plate holds three bamboo skewers side by side, each threaded with three glossy red hawthorn fruits coated in a thin clear hard sugar shell, the bare skewer tips showing at one end.
Candies, and preserved fruit steeped in sugar or honey.
Bingtanghulu is a snack of fruit, often hawthorn, threaded on bamboo skewers and coated in a thin hard shell of rock sugar. It originated in the Beijing and Tianjin area and is called tangdunr in Tianjin. Skewers of grapes, yam bulbils, crabapples, hawthorn and the like appear in Yanjing Suishiji (1900), with the name written in different characters. An article reprinted in January 2026 identifies this book as the beginning of the definite record; the earlier Sui and Southern Song accounts are folk tales without documentary support, so no origin year is given here.
What
Bingtanghulu is a snack of fruit, traditionally hawthorn, threaded on bamboo skewers and coated in a thin hard sugar shell made from rock sugar.2,3,5
When
Bingtanghulu made by threading grapes, yam bulbils, crabapples, hawthorn and the like on bamboo sticks appears under a variant spelling in Yanjing Suishiji (1900). An article reprinted in January 2026 identifies this book as the beginning of the definite record; its origin remains undocumented, and the Sui and Southern Song accounts are folk tales without documentary support.1,4,5
Where
Bingtanghulu originated in the Beijing and Tianjin area and is a snack of northern China. It is called tangdunr in Tianjin, with different local names in Tianjin, Anhui and Shandong. As of February 2021, a village in Xiong County, Hebei, had made it for more than 100 years.2,3,6
How
The hawthorn is washed, dried, stemmed and skewered. Rock sugar and water are boiled into syrup: one method cooks it until amber, thick and threadlike, then tests a drop in cold water; it is ready when it hardens at once without sticking. Another uses a thermometer and cooks it to about 150 degrees Celsius. The skewers are rolled in the syrup and cooled on an oiled board; oiled wooden boards are used in Xiong County today.6,7,8,9
Why
Bingtanghulu is sweet, crisp and cool; clearing away coal fumes is a historical claim, while taking hawthorn cooked with rock sugar before meals as a remedy belongs to a folk tale.1,2,3,5
Impact and influence
In February 2026, bingtanghulu was among the festive items on the stalls of long-established vendors before the Changdian temple fair opened. Versions with other fruit have also developed and spread on social media. In August 2024, doctors in Boston warned that the sugar gets very hot and that more children were being burned making it at home.3,10,11
Legend has it that a favorite consort of Emperor Guangzong of the Southern Song fell ill and none of the court physicians could help. A wandering healer said she should eat hawthorn cooked with rock sugar before meals. She did, she recovered, and the remedy spread among ordinary people. English Wikipedia names the consort Huang Guifei.
Told in: A folk tale found in a Beijing travel article and in the Chinese and English Wikipedia entries, none of which names a document; the emperor in the story is Guangzong of the Southern Song, with no specific year.
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is how I make bingtanghulu at home, with ready-made hawthorn and rock sugar and one small pot of syrup. Safety comes before anything else: for the hard shell the syrup has to reach about 150 degrees Celsius, the temperature a thermometer recipe gives, which is far hotter than boiling water, and the sticky syrup clings to skin. A Boston television station reported in August 2024 that doctors were seeing more and more burned children after home attempts at the recipes popular on video, and the doctors also cited cases in Australia that needed skin grafts. So let an adult do the cooking and keep children away from the stove. Some of the recipes I looked at give no amounts, so the amounts below are my own choices at home; I judge the sugar with the cold-water test and give no minutes, because every pot and flame is different.
Ingredients
Hawthorn fruit 300 g, about 15, washed, dried completely and stemmed
Bamboo skewers 5
Rock sugar 200 g
Water 120 ml
Neutral cooking oil a little, to grease the plate
Cold water for testing 1 small bowl
Steps
Wash the hawthorn, wipe each one dry and let it air until no drops of water are left on the surface. Thread 3 on each skewer and leave a bare stretch at the top to hold.
Rub a thin film of oil over a plate and put it beside the stove. Set a small bowl of cold water next to it for testing the syrup.
Put the rock sugar and 120 ml of water in a small heavy pot and heat over medium until the sugar dissolves. After that do not stir; turn the heat down and cook slowly.
When the syrup has turned amber, thick and threadlike, put on oven gloves and drop a little from a chopstick into the cold water: it is ready when it sets hard at once and cracks instead of sticking to the teeth. With a thermometer, that is about 150 degrees Celsius.
Take the pot off the heat and tilt it slightly. Roll each skewer through the syrup to coat it evenly, lift it out and let the extra syrup drip off. Take care, because the syrup sticks to skin.
Lay the skewers on the oiled plate and let them cool for 2 to 3 minutes; once the shell is hard they are ready to eat. Do not touch the syrup left in the pot; let it cool completely before you deal with it.
Tips
If you are burned, run cool water over the burn for 20 minutes, without ice, and see a doctor for a deep burn or one on the hands or face. This is the doctors' advice in the Boston television station's report.
The fruit must be completely dry, and frozen fruit should never be dipped straight in, because water meeting hot sugar spatters.
