Spicy snack production resumes in latiao hub

Food manufacturer Malawangzi, known for its popular spicy gluten strips, or latiao, said it plans to fully restore production on Friday after an unprecedented flood hit Pingjiang county, Hunan province, on Monday.

The company stopped production on Monday as supplies of clean water, electricity and gas were cut, even though the factory was not flooded, said Li Manliang, a deputy general manager.

Latiao is a popular snack, especially among younger Chinese and children. Pingjiang is the hometown of latiao and the base of 116 latiao enterprises, with an annual production value of more than 20 billion yuan ($2.75 billion). Three people from the county invented the snack in 1998, and more than 90 percent of the founders of latiao companies in China come from Pingjiang.

The industry offers employment to 102,000 people in the county, which has a population of about 1.1 million.

As of 8 am Wednesday, the flood had affected 436,000 people, with almost 76,000 urgently resettled, ThePaper.cn reported, citing local authorities.

Based on preliminary estimates, the deluge, which has also caused widespread damage to poultry, crops, houses, cars and infrastructure throughout the county, has led to direct economic losses of over 2.5 billion yuan.

The report added that road access, power, communication and clean water have been partially restored and authorities are working hard to enable the resumption of normal life and production.

Founded by Zhang Yudong in 2009, Malawangzi is the county's biggest latiao company and one of the biggest in China. The company's sales hit 1.09 billion yuan last year.

After news of the record flooding in Pingjiang broke, netizens took to social media platforms to ask how the latiao companies in Pingjiang were doing. Many have flocked to Malawangzi's e-commerce platform to show support by buying in bulk.

The hashtag "the Malawangzi factory was suspended" became the top trending topic on the Sina Weibo micro blog platform on Wednesday, garnering hundreds of millions of views.

Li, the deputy general manager, said that after suspending production for two days, two of Malawangzi's production lines resumed operation on Wednesday and two others resumed on Thursday.

All of its production lines are expected to be back in action on Friday, but it will still take about a week for all of its employees to return to work, he said.

Clean water supply resumed on Wednesday night.

"With the local government's support, we are optimistic to resume production as soon as possible to provide safe and new latiao to our customers," Li said.

After the local government issued a notice asking for public donations on Tuesday, Malawangzi donated 1 million yuan for disaster relief. Another local snack company, Jinzai Food Group, also donated 1 million yuan.

Another popular latiao company, Weilong Delicious Global Holdings from Henan province, donated 1.5 million yuan to Pingjiang, hometown of its founder, Liu Weiping.

zoushuo@chinadaily.com.cn