It is said that tofu has been made for more than 1,300 years in Shangjie Neighborhood Committee of Anping Town, Anren County, Chenzhou City. In its prime, tofu was made in every household in the town. Due to its location in Anping Town, the tofu here is called Anpingsi Tofu. Anpingsi Tofu is made with local spring water and traditional techniques. It is full of soybean fragrance with a tender taste, favoured by people for thousands of years.

 

 

As time goes by, the number of tofu-making home workshops in the Shangjie Neighborhood Committee has gradually decreased. Thus, the technique of making Anping Tofu is facing the problem of fading away for no inheritors. It is a top priority for the village to carry forward the ancient techniques of making Anping Tofu from generation to generation.

 

Relying on its special location, Shangjie Neighborhood Committee has made great efforts to develop the tofu industry. Through several years of careful preparation, in 2018, Zhao Xiongwu, with the determination of inheriting and developing Anpingsi Tofu, invested 12 million yuan in the construction of Hunan Longtanquan Tofu Processing Plant, in which the village collective invested 400,000 yuan in shares. The tofu plant had an annual sale of more than 7 million yuan. It provided jobs for over 100 people with an annual income of more than 20,000 yuan per person, which effectively helped solve the employment problem of villagers. 

 

“I earn 3,000 yuan every month in the tofu plant. And the tofu plant is near my house,” said Zhang Manjiao, satisfied with the current work, adding that she hoped the factory would develop better. The traditional tofu workshop has turned into a tofu factory, where traditional techniques are perfectly integrated with modern technology, exploring a unique new path of rural revitalization.

 

A variety of products have also be developed that can be transported. In order to create a new taste while keeping the original flavor, Zhao Xiongwu visited many places to find two old craftsmen in Yueyang of Hunan and Dazhou of Sichuan for product improvement. After continuous efforts, with the original taste, as well as standardized product specifications, the tofu produced in the processing plant has been well received by many people in Anping town and even the county.

 

At the end of last year, Shangjie Neighborhood Committee transferred 1,200 mu (80 hectares) of contiguous land to construct the high-standard farmlands as a soybean production base, with the one-stop production mode of “base + farmers + processing + sales”. This year, the Shangjie Neighborhood Committee has been striving to make “Anpingsi Tofu” a provincial leading enterprise within three years and further expand the scale of the industry by building a logistics and storage centre in the county.

 

In recent years, Anping Town has taken advantage of its location to develop characteristic industries throughout the town, including “rice, tobacco, mushroom, flower, medicinal herb”, in a bid to improve villagers’ income and help more people to get rich together.