As a renowned snack in Guilin, Guilin rice noodles is always mentioned and recommended as a local noted snack by Guilinese. Actually, to Guilinese, rice noodles are not merely a kind of food, but it contains a special cultural meaning.

Guilinese are mainly the Zhuang nationality, who are good at singing. March 3 of the lunar calendar is the traditional antiphonal singing festival of Zhuang people. On this day, unmarried men and women gather together and divide into two groups by sexes and sing in antiphonal style. The girls shall be the first to put forward questions in songs, and the young men who love the girl will answer in songs. The girls then will put further questions to those she would not like. The antiphonal songs will stop until the young men and young girls are satisfied with each other.  Then they will begin to throw embroidery balls.

The Zhuang peoples¡¯ embroidery balls are very beautiful. There are 12 facets which is said to represent the twelve months of a year, and means eternal love. When the young man after the girl¡¯s heart has answered all the girl¡¯s questions, the girl will throw embroidery balls. In general condition, the embroidery balls are thrown to the young man after the girls¡¯ heart. But what if it is not the boy after the girl¡¯s heart who catches the ball? According to their customs, the girl will have to abide by an act of god, and marry the boy who catches the ball. The initiative is completely in the hands of the boy.

But this is not the end of the story. The young man who catches the ball can not marry the girl right away. He must go to the girl¡¯s home to work for three years. As the work is payless, it is called ¡°free work¡±, which means to do hard labor for three years for free. During these three years, the young boy must undertake all the dirty work and hard work of the girl¡¯s family. And three years later, if the boy and girl have had affection to each other and feel contented to each other. Then the young man can take the girl to the city or town, and sit in a restaurant. He can order: ¡°Boss, give me two bowls of pork rice noodles.¡±

"Pork rice noodles¡± is to put pork in the rice noodles. It is called pork thread noodles in Chongqing or other places. After the pork rice noodles are ordered, the marriage is fixed basically. After that, the young man goes back home for preparing the wedding banquet to marry the bride whom he has got along with for three years. If after three years hard labour, the young man is still not satisfied with the girl, he will also take the girl to a restaurant and say to the boss£º"Boss, two bowls of vegetarian noodles." After eating the vegetarian rice noodles, the two sides will say goodbye to each other. The girl will be free again and the boy is ready to catch the next embroidery ball.

Even if the embroidery ball is caught by the right person, the process is the same. The young man shall go to the girl¡¯s family to work for three years, to increase mutual understanding and form attachment to each other. If finally, the two sides still feel they are not suitable, they will still eat the vegetarian rice noodles. If they have increased affection with each other, the boy and girl will go happily to have pork rice noodles.

On the evening before I left Guilin, I went to the night booth to eat genuine rice noodles. The preparing methods of the rice noodles at night and in the morning are different. The preparing method of morning rice noodles is basically the same as that of Chongqing, while those of the night noodles are like that of fried noodles. Only they add thick soups in the frying rice noodles, and add pepper powder and shallot.

I sat before a clean and white small wooden table, and patted the table with my hands and yelled to the boss "Boss, a bowl of pork rice noodles." Just a moment, a large bowl of rice noodles with pork and floated oil was served. In eating these famous Guilin rice noodles, it was always on my mind that, if any boy is unlucky to catch the wrong embroidery ball, what if he caught the wrong ball again after three years of free work. That¡¯s really a misfortune. The girl he loved may have got married with others and he has to do another three years of hard work for nothing.