Ningbo Nantang Old Street: Gagnyagou Closed Its Shops, but the Taste Didn't Leave

Seven a.m., and the street wakes to hot oil

Just past six. The shutters on Nantang Old Street weren't all up yet, but Shen Pengfei was already there. I heard the roll-up door from twenty meters off—metal scraping up. The Guangming Daily wrote about him by name last May: his freshly fried youzanzi, a Ningbo snack that goes back to the Guangxu era of the Qing.

The oil pot went on. Steam rose and pinned his forelock back. He kneads the dough a full fifteen minutes, never stops, and there's a pale brown callus on the inside of his wrist from years of it. He checks the oil heat with one look. No thermometer. First batch in, a hiss, and the smell reaches you before you're ten steps close.

I stepped in and grabbed one straight from the pot. Hot. A fleck of oil jumped to the base of my thumb, a small red dot that stayed half the day. He laughed, said slow down. The youzanzi is hollow inside, salty, a bit of scallion. Three and a half yuan each. Not much.

This street runs under a kilometer, and it holds a hundred years of Ningbo's appetite.

Ningbo's eating history, on one old street

From Nanmen San Shi to Nantang

This spot used to be Nanmen San Shi, an old trade crossing, one of Ningbo's eight historic blocks. January 2012, phase one opened, and old names like Zhao Dayou moved in first. Early 2025, it made the first list of Zhejiang's intangible-heritage themed streets—confirmed by the Guangming Daily.

Thirty-odd old brands on one block

The street is short; walk brisk and you're at the end in seven, eight minutes. But it packs over thirty heritage brands and snack shops: Gagnyagou, Zhao Dayou, youzanzi, dousutang, Meilongzhen… name half and you've got a table. The Ningbo Cuisine Museum sits in there too, wedged between the stores.

Name after name, hard to keep straight, the tongue gives up first.

Gagnyagou: the sign Jiang Agou drew himself

Jiang Agou couldn't write his own name

1926, a man named Jiang Dingfa set up a tangyuan stall by the Chenghuang Temple, on Kaifang Street. His nickname was Jiang Agou. He couldn't read or write—couldn't even put down the characters for his own shop sign. So he drew. A jar, a duck, a dog, to sound out gang-ya-gou. That was the logo. The dog's tail sits wrong, like a kid's sketch, and a hundred years on nobody's redrawn it.

The man who shrank the shops to one

The brand changed hands a few times. In 2009, Zhejiang Caidefeng Holdings took it, and Chen Kaihe took the helm that same year, handing the outgoing boss Ye Xiaofei a ten-year plan.

The turn came in 2023. The Nantang shop closed in November 2022 when the lease ended; the Wanda shop followed in spring 2023. The only store left standing was Tianyi Square—188 Zhongshan East Road, with a row of roasted-chestnut stalls out front stealing the foot traffic.

From outside it looks like the end. Chen Kaihe tells it different. He called it a normal market adjustment, a shift to supermarkets and online; and he said every Ningbo branch was profitable. The brand does roughly eighty million yuan a year. In 2026, the hundredth year, he plans to open an experience store.

I went to the Tianyi Square one on purpose. Three in the afternoon, near empty, two women folding tangyuan behind the counter. The freezer stacked with coded packs, barcodes on, waiting for the supermarket.

Writing this, I got thirsty. Went down for a bottle of water, cold, drank too fast and my temple spasmed for ten seconds. Sat on the step out front, watched myself in the mall's glass door, hair blown every way.

Chestnut smell drifted in, mixing with the sweet of tangyuan. Two trades, living side by side.

Cicheng rice cake: the year-high cake ground out of water

What the water mill actually ground away

Late Qing, a man named Chen Peiji watched the tofu makers and worked out a water-milled rice cake. The rice has to be that year's late-season japonica, the water from around the Yingxiong reservoir. Soak, grind, steam—that water-mill craft is still here.

But be straight: the pounding step left human hands long ago. Mostly machines now. Hand-pounded cake turned into a year-end ritual—if a family wants some noise at New Year, they invite a master for a few whacks, for luck, not a daily thing. The wooden mallet is heavy; one man can't swing it, two take turns. The pounder sweats, a kid reaches to touch, gets pulled back by an adult.

Heritage first, then a geographic mark

2009, Cicheng's hand-made water-milled cake entered Zhejiang's heritage list. November 2020, Cicheng rice cake got the national geographic-indication protection. The whole chain passed five hundred million yuan a year.

Feng Hengda was among the first Zhejiang old brands, behind it Ji Ping, thirty-odd years at it. They built a heritage display hall. The Cicheng-born writer Feng Jicai wrote of the cake: it is the historic name card of Cicheng's food culture, a legacy left by our ancestors.

Five hundred million a year, and at the root it's just a few vats of soaked rice.

The Ningbo Cuisine Museum: hanging fresh and salty as one on a plaque

The small courtyard by the gate tower

January 2021, a small courtyard opened by the Nantang gate tower, privately run, Ningbo's first local-cuisine museum. The official name is four characters: Ningbo Cuisine Museum. Elsewhere they call it the Yongbang cuisine museum; here they don't.

A plaque that carries the soul of Yong cooking

In the main hall hangs a plaque: fresh and salty as one, signed Dai Yongming—the grand old man of Yong cuisine, head of the Ningbo Cuisine Research Association. Few characters, the signature small like he was shy. Over six hundred and fifty eating-related old objects fill the rooms; the centerpiece is a Ming-dynasty stone carving, Song people cooking, the cook carved with eyes narrowed, tasting for salt.

Salty is the base of Ningbo food, fresh is what the sea gives. The plaque just says it out.

The plaque was hung later. The words had been passed down for years.

The old tastes are turning into living fossils

Some worry for these old brands, figure once in a museum they should just wait to die. I don't see it that way.

I tried Gagnyagou's new flavor, durian-cheese tangyuan. Smells strong, but bite in and it works, sweet with a salty tail. The recipe leaned lighter, less oil and sugar, reaching toward the young.

Cicheng cake put out an instant version too—tear the bag and it's ready to stir-fry. Tearing it, the serrated edge nicked my finger.

So you see, these old brands didn't step back. The shops closed, the battlefield moved—factory machines, supermarket shelves, the order button on a phone; any of those holds more than one street-front room.

The oil pot stayed hot. The hands kept stirring.

Back to that pot of youzanzi at dawn

Next day I went back to Nantang. Still seven, Shen already frying. Smoke off the pot, he looked down turning the long chopstick, didn't see me.

Stood a while. The callus on his wrist went pale in the steam. Youzanzi came out batch after batch, hollow, salty, three and a half each. No tourists yet, the street empty, only the oil smell drifting.

Leaving, I saw a plastic basin by his door, catching the fried crumbs, a few scallion bits sunk at the bottom not fished out. Wind turned one. He'd probably clear it later, or maybe forget.

Note: shop dates, heritage and geographic-mark details come from public reports such as the Guangming Daily and Ningbo Evening News; check locally before you go, as operating status changes.

Zhou Ye writes about the stomach and the cities of Jiangnan. A columnist who believes taste is the dialect of geography.