Hunan May Be the Earliest Site of Rice Cultivation in the World

1-0: Rice Noodles

After I came to the U.S., I kept dreaming of having freshly made rice noodles every morning—the kind made at 3 a.m. in some small factory and delivered by dawn to every little shop in town. By the time it reached your bowl, it probably had only been out of the steamer for four or five hours. By 8:30 or 9:00 a.m., it’d usually be sold out. The noodles would come topped with generous portions of braised meats, and the tables would be lined with endless jars of pickled mustard greens, sour vegetables, chopped chilies, and snow cabbage. Some shops went all out with ten-plus toppings, but most stuck to four or five basics. The essence of a good rice noodle shop was never in the side dishes—it was in the broth and the way the noodles were cooked. It didn’t have to be flashy—just good.

Besides rice noodles, there was tang you tuo tuo—sugar-oil dough balls. Not ba ba, mind you, but tuo tuo: chewy, bite-sized balls skewered like candied hawthorn, crisp on the outside, soft and glutinous inside. You had to eat them 15 seconds after they came out of the fryer. The ingredients were simple: glutinous rice dough rolled into balls, deep-fried slowly in warm brown sugar oil. It required patience and precision—always over charcoal, never gas. Even the lowest flame from a gas stove is too strong—it cooks the outside before the inside softens. I’m talking about the stall near Changjun Middle School and Wenmiaoping. For some reason, the best snacks always seem to cluster around middle or high schools. There was also a fried-everything shop nearby. And a late-night place that served rice noodles with pork lard—legend has it they invented the combo. The seasoning was simple: chicken bouillon, soy sauce, lard. Just like Kung Fu Panda said, there is no secret ingredient.

We may not know exactly how old the Fuyan Cave people are, but reportedly, the so-called Yuchanyan person was dated using radiocarbon analysis of organic remains, which is generally more accurate than uranium-based dating of inorganic matter—because it dates the thing itself, not the mineral crust that happened to settle on it. Carbon is more stable, more honest. That’s how we know how old the Yuchanyan person is: they left behind carbonized rice grains.

Friends—rice. Rice! Over 10,000 years ago, someone was already growing it? That’s wild. If you can grow rice, then surely you know about planting seasons, tools, pests, crop cycles. Isn’t that… a bit advanced for 10,000 years ago? But if rice existed that early, then maybe—just maybe—this is how rice noodles began.

1-1: Rice Noodle Streets

There are still shops like that now, usually tucked downstairs in old residential buildings with no sign, definitely not on those so-called “Rice Noodle Streets” or tourist traps. Those famous places are overrun with influencers and nowhere near as good as they used to be. Wenheyou started as a tiny crayfish-and-beer street stall, now it has indoor amusement parks. The lady frying stinky tofu has a museum. She even DJs now. Everything changes too fast. I don’t think “rice noodle streets” even existed when I was a kid. Dingwangtai still stands, I think—but the last time I went, it was eerily quiet. Or maybe I didn’t actually go—maybe I just dreamed it.

All my memories of Changsha are fading and sharpening at the same time. When I studied memory, I learned it’s not just subjective—emotional significance determines what gets stored. That shook me. You only remember what hurt or moved you. Once, someone asked me what a narrative film is. I had to start by explaining what a narrative is. Personally, I don’t think life unfolds with any kind of logic. Events feel random. Sure, zoomed out, you can see patterns. But up close, it’s chaos. You only see patterns looking back. Even then, it’s just pattern recognition inside randomness. That’s statistics. That’s narrative.

I don’t think I have a narrative. I have emotionally-tagged memory fragments. Maybe one day, when I die, I’ll force them into a story. But for now, all I know is that the details keep getting clearer. Every time I go back, things are different. A few days ago, I saw a photo from 2010 taken on Jiefangxi Road. It felt like three years ago—but it’s been fifteen. Terrifying.

What did I do in those fifteen years? I’m not sure. It feels like I did a lot. Or maybe nothing. I don’t even know if there’s anything worth doing, or recording. But if I don’t record it, will it all disappear? Even if I do record it, what’s the chance it survives? So what’s the point? Maybe just this: for myself. I want to know how far this road can go. Life is a creative act. This is just the manual.

1-2: Yuchanyan Person

I don’t want to look up radiocarbon dating anymore. The last post about uranium dating gave me a headache. I honestly don’t care about the technical details. ChatGPT says this Yuchanyan dating is widely accepted in the field, basically reliable. I don’t know if that’s true. I just want to understand how there could already be rice—early-stage domesticated rice, not wild rice—10,000 years ago. Sure, it wasn’t jasmine or sushi-grade stuff, but still, it was agriculture. Humans were already farming 10,000 years ago—and yet during the Great Famine, people still starved. Turns out, starting early means nothing when war and politics come and ruin it all.

Aside from Yuchanyan, there’s the Gaomiaotou site in Daoxian, also in Hunan, where carbonized rice from around 9,000 years ago was found—so the whole region likely had agriculture. And beyond Hunan, there’s the Shangshan site in Zhejiang—yes, with actual paddy fields (!!). In Jiangxi’s Wannian County, the Xianrendong and Dacaopei sites produced some of the world’s oldest pottery. These are all signs of highly advanced prehistoric craft and farming. Makes you wonder: have we really evolved that much in 10,000 years?