$9,650 for 500 grams of old tangerine peels? Welcome to Xinhui, where ‘gold’ grows on trees

Yet every year, over the fall and winter months, its streets fill with a unique fragrance that hints at its ancient history — and a bright future: drying tangerine peels, or chenpi.

For residents, it’s the smell of gold.

In fact, the word for “tangerine” in Cantonese, the local dialect, is pronounced the same as the word for “gold” — “gam.” And just like the precious metal, some of those peels can be worth enormous amounts of money.

Xinhui is located on the eastern side of Jiangman, a city in southern Guangdong province. Rows of trees, characterless factories and farms flank new highways. The occasional shiny glass skyscraper looms above, a symbol of the area’s economic rise.

“This is Jiangman Wanda Plaza, the tallest skyscraper in Jiangmen,” says Zhou Zhiwei, a native of the district, as he drives his visiting friend, chef Li Chi Wai, around Xinhui in his gleaming white Porsche.

“Of course, it’s nothing compared to Hong Kong’s skyscrapers but still impressive — almost 200 meters tall. Look at all the well-paved expressways, too. Xinhui has developed so much.”

The city’s success can largely be attributed to its peels.

While tangerines can be grown in other regions, only the ones harvested in Xinhui — and specifically, only their peels — are valued as highly as gold.

The health benefits of aged tangerine peels

The health benefits of aged tangerine peels, a Chinese medicinal herb, have been documented since the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279).

“Xinhui is at the confluence of the Xijiang River and the Tanjiang River in the heart of the Pearl River Delta region (in Guangdong province),” says Li, executive chef of Hong Kong’s one Michelin-star restaurant The Legacy House, in the Rosewood Hong Kong hotel.

Li left Xinhui for Hong Kong when he was a teenager. After working as a Chinese cuisine chef in the bustling city for the last few decades, he has a renewed respect and passion for the produce from his hometown.

“The water and soil composition have made it an ideal place for tangerine farming,” he says. “It’s therefore believed that peels from here are richer and packed with more micronutrients than others.”

Tangerine peels can only be called “chenpi” (aged peels, which are scientifically known as Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium) if they’ve been sun-dried every fall and winter, consecutively, for at least three years. (For the rest of the year, they are carefully stored away.)

There are four major types of peels: green tangerine peels (harvested before ripening); light/second red tangerine peels (harvested in November); large red tangerine peels (fully ripe around December); and post-winter large red tangerine peels (harvested after winter when there’s more sugar content in the tangerines).

Chenpi was said to have been used in dishes served to emperors and empresses living inside Beijing’s Forbidden City. Today, the ingredient is largely found in traditional medical prescriptions and daily cooking, especially in southern China.

Different types and ages of chenpi have various medicinal uses, but in traditional Chinese medicine they’re generally believed to strengthen the spleen, aid in digestion and enhance the respiratory system.

Modern research suggests chenpi boasts anti-oxidants and flavonoids (an anti-cancer component) and has the potential to stabilize blood pressure and prevent obesity.

And like fine wine, the older the chenpi, the more precious it becomes.

Similar to Li, Zhou moved to Hong Kong briefly in the 1980s to look for better opportunities. But seeing the potential in tangerine peels, he returned to Xinhui in 1996. He is now a key player in the trade — a certified chenpi appraiser, vice president of the Xinhui Chenpi Industry Association as well as a proud tangerine peels producer.

“My father and my grandfather both grew tangerine trees. When I started in the aged tangerine trade, it was looked down upon. We were considered country bumpkins or ‘scrap’ dealers. But I knew it had potential,” says Zhou.

He was right. In the last two decades, the chenpi industry has flourished.

In 2023, a kilogram of dried tangerine peels produced in 1968 auctioned in Hong Kong sold for HKD 75,000 ($9,646). That same year, Xinhui became the first and only district in Jiangmen to rake in 100 billion yuan ($13.8 billion), accounting for about a quarter of the city’s GDP. The chenpi industry was valued at RMB 23 billion ($3.2 billion) last year.

“The city has developed so much thanks to tangerine peels,” says Zhou, who now produces and acquires around 163 tons of chenpi annually.

Revolutionizing the market

Chef Li isn’t in town just to catch up with his old friend, Zhou. He’s been traveling between Hong Kong and Xinhui regularly for the last few years to research and source ingredients for his annual aged tangerine peel banquet at The Legacy House in Hong Kong.

In Xinhui, chenpi is utilized in many dishes, such as steamed fish garnished with chenpi oil and powder, and duck stewed with sanbaoza (a bundle of chenpi and salted olives that’s tied up with reed grass).

Chenpi wine, drinks and candies are ubiquitous.

“It’s been an important ingredient in Cantonese culinary culture — so common that we stop thinking about it. I hope to elevate it by refining how we see it,” says Li, who pays close attention to harvest times and ages when sourcing chenpi.

“If terroir and age matter for wine, why won’t they for tangerines?”

After tasting hundreds of tangerine peels, Li launched his first tangerine peel banquet in late 2022, offering diners a booklet to educate them on the ingredient. The seven-course tea-pairing menu began with a trio of starters — minced fish dumplings, deep-fried beef balls and scallops — made with different forms of 10-year-old chenpi from Xinhui’s Tianma district, and ended with a pillowy glutinous rice dessert stuffed inside a young green tangerine.

In December 2024, a new “Dried Tangerine Peel Gastronomy” menu was launched, featuring peels aged from six to 50 years, sourced from various Xinhui farms.

The highlight of this menu, which costs HKD 2,280 ($294) per person, is a braised fish maw soup with lamb head and hoof made with tangerine peels that are more than five decades old.

“This thick soup is a rare traditional Cantonese dish that few people are still making. We think it’s a good dish both to highlight the 50-year-old chenpi, which has a deep agarwood taste, because of its rarity and rich flavors,” says the chef.

The preparation is laborious: the lamb’s head and hooves are stewed with chenpi, sugarcanes, water chestnuts and ginger till the meat is tender. It’s then stewed in a stock made with matured chicken, pork bone, red meat and more chenpi for more than six hours with additional ingredients like fish maw, shredded chicken, mushrooms, conpoy and more pre-soaked chenpi.

The result is a soup thick in collagen and bursting in flavors.

‘They’re for my daughter’s dowry’

Currently, 500 grams (nearly 18 ounces) of 50-year-old chenpi costs about HKD 75,000 (around $9,650), hence the price of the chef’s banquet.

Hearing Li talk about the inclusion of the aged peels in his soup, Zhou gets excited.

“I have some 50-year-old chenpi as well, bought when one of the government’s produce departments shut down,” he says. “Want to see?”

Leading us through his company’s headquarters, he takes us to a series of storage units filled with labeled boxes. In the last room, he pulls out a sack of tangerine peels.

“These are valued at about RMB 100,000 ($13,700) per catty now. This column could sell for about RMB 3 million ($410,000),” he says, referring to the traditional Chinese unit of weight, which equals 500 grams. “But they aren’t for sale — they’re for my daughter’s dowry.”

But Li says his menu, available till the end of February, is about more than the age and cost of the chenpi. He hopes diners can appreciate the ingredient beyond its health benefits.

“People often assume all chenpi tastes the same. But they actually have very different characters,” he says.

For instance, the chef’s braised spotted grouper fillet is paired with a six-year-old peel. Harvested and dried after the winter, the peels retain more sweetness from the sugar in the fruits. The slight rock sugar taste pairs well with the fish.

The lobster roll wrapped in bamboo pith is cooked with a 13-year-old tangerine peel from Meijiang, a riverside farming region on the northern side of Xinhui, which has a tinge of oyster flavor due to its location in a river delta that connects to the sea.

By pairing different chenpi to a dish’s flavor profile, Li’s approach differs from traditional methods, which often only state the year of the peels without further information. The feast becomes an educational journey into chenpi.

A hopeful future for Xinhui

At 3 p.m., the duo heads to Zhou’s farm in Shuangshuizhen, a Xinhui county, where workers are bringing hundreds of young chenpi indoors after hours out drying under the gentle autumn sunlight. Others sort the peels into different categories.

The tangerines, which produce good-value chenpi for mass consumption, are still green.

Zhou picks a few of the fruits and carefully cuts them open. He takes the flesh out while the peels stay intact, resembling a three-petal flower.

“You see Zhou cut away from the stem,” explains Li. “The small stub is important as it indicates that the fruits are harvested from the tree directly instead of falling off the tree — which will have a dent where the stub would be and be considered less desirable.”

The tangerine flesh isn’t sweet yet. In the past, they were discarded — only the peels were seen as having value — but that has changed, too.

“The flesh is used to make enzymes and health products,” says Li.

Zhou is hopeful that the industry will flourish even further.

“There are more young entrepreneurs nowadays, exploring innovative business opportunities,” he says. “It’s the direction I think Xinhui should head — deepening our manufacturing and diversifying the product development of chenpi.”

Xinhui may not be a widely developed tourist city yet, but visitors can enjoy attractions like the historic Chakeng Village, known as the “hometown of chenpi.”

From fall onward, thousands of white and golden peels fill the plaza.

A stone’s throw away from Chakeng Village is Chenpi Village, a relatively new cultural and recreational landmark that will meet all travelers’ tangerine needs. The café sells tangerine ice cream and coffee garnished with savory and sweet peel powder. Shops sell a wide range of chenpi as well as related edible souvenirs. Restaurants like Hengyi Shao E serve Xinhui’s famous roasted goose, which is coated with a secret chenpi sauce as it’s barbecued over a wood fire.

As we pass the rows of tangerine farms on our way back to the Jiangmen high-speed railway station to make the journey back to Hong Kong, Li reflects on his own childhood in Xinhui.

“I remember strings of chenpi hanging above every kitchen stove. It’s so common I didn’t really care for it. As a hungry poor kid, I’d steal tangerines from farms on my way to school and throw away the peels. Who knew the peels would become so valuable? I was so wasteful back then,” he says with a smile.

After spending decades away from his birthplace, Li’s appreciation for this once-humble ingredient goes beyond pride or the monetary value it possesses.

“Bitterness is not common in most culinary cultures…the bitterness in a good chenpi, when designed properly, is a delectable taste that dissolves quickly — leaving a sweet aftertaste,” says Li, who hopes his creations can help introduce the ancient Chinese ingredient to a wider, international audience.

“As an old Chinese saying goes, ‘bitterness and sweetness are one.’ Understanding the necessity of bitterness in life is important for one to truly appreciate and savor the sweetness.”

To him, that is the true beauty of chenpi.

-CNN