David Boté Estrada / flickr
Chenpi drying
In Cantonese, “gold” and “tangerine” are the same word. In Xinhui, half a kilo of “chenpi”, old tangerine peels, is worth almost R$10,000.
Xinhui is located on the eastern side of Jiangman, a city in the south of Guangdon province, in China, according to a report from .
Of course there are tnagerina without everywhere. You may even have some growing in your garden. But the point is that, in Xinhui, these are worth the same as gold.
No, this article does not explain how you can get rich selling tangerines, because only those from Xinhui are worth 18540 euros per kilo: more precisely, the kilo of old shells.
“The composition of the water and soil made it an ideal place for growing tangerines”, explains the chef Li Chi Waiwho, because of the tangerine business, drives a Porsche. “For this reason, it is believed that the shells here are richer and with more micronutrients than the others.”
And it is not just any bark that is exported from Xinhui: it is “chenpi”, a type of bark that is dried in the sun for 3 consecutive winters.
There are 4 main types of chenpi, a traditional food from the ancient Chinese Empire: peels of green tangerines (which are harvested before they are ripe), those of light red tangerines (harvested in November), those of large red tangerines (ripe in December) and post-winter large red tangerines (harvested, as the name suggests, are harvested after winter, and are therefore sweeter).
E Chenpi is like wine: the older the variety — in this case, the skin — the better. In 2023, 1kg of dried tangerine peels produced in 1968, auctioned in Hong Kong, sold for 9270 euros.
But currently, 500 grams of 50-year-old chenpi costs much more: about 75,000 HKD (about 9270.98).
More and more value is given to this food, and in Xinhui Chef Li makes a soup of braised fish innards with lamb’s head and hoof made with tangerine peels that are more than five decades old. The menu costs almost €300 per person.
“This thick soup is a traditional Cantonese dish rare that few people are still doing it. We think it is a good dish to highlight the 50-year-old chenpi, which has a deep eaglewood flavor, due to its rarity and rich flavors”, explains the chef.
“The city has developed a lot thanks to tangerine peels”, says the resident of the region Zhou Zhiweiwhich currently produces and purchases around 163 tons of chenpi per year.
In addition to preventing obesity, chenpi also has anti-oxidants and flavonoids (anti-cancer components) and has the potential to stabilize blood pressure.
“It has been an important ingredient in regional culinary culture — so common that we stop thinking about it. I hope to elevate it by improving the way we see it,” says Chef Li. “If terroir and age are important for wine, why aren’t they important for tangerines?”
In fact, tangerine culture is so deeply rooted in the region that in Cantonese, the region’s dialect, “tangerine” and “gold” are literally the same word: “gam”.
