Lin Xi takes every opportunity she gets to visit her hometown Hengyang, a city of 6.5 million people in central China’s Hunan province. Whether it’s a public holiday or just a regular weekend when she doesn’t have too much school work, Lin hops on the one-hour train from Changsha, the provincial capital where she relocated for college four years ago, to spend more time with family, reconnect with old friends, and most importantly, have a bowl of the local delicacy, lufen (卤粉, literally “brined rice noodles”).

Even though Changsha boasts around 6,000 rice noodle, or fen (粉), restaurants, Lin can’t find a bowl of lufen, usually made with a mixture of cooked rice noodles, master stock, and toppings like beef slices, that tastes just like home. “There aren’t so many lufen restaurants in Changsha compared to Hengyang, and they’re different in a subtle way that I can’t explain,” Lin tells TWOC over a bowl of the stuff at Zizhulin, a famous local lufen chain near Hengyang Railway Station. The restaurant is her first stop after getting off the train, and she has been coming here since she was a child. Despite not living in the city for the past four years, Lin still considers herself a regular at the restaurant.

Hengyang’s affinity for fen is not surprising, since rice noodles have enjoyed a long history in rice-planting southern China, dating back at least 2,200 years to the Western Han dynasty—“rice noodles in the south and noodles in the north (南粉北面),” goes a common saying. Archeological findings from that period reveal that the process of making rice noodles has stayed remarkably consistent over the years: grind the rice with a mill, cook it with a steamer—or a zeng (甑) in ancient times—and finally cut it into thin slices with a knife. While rice noodle’s exact place of origin remains unclear, many provinces and regions in central and southern China, including Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Guangxi, have claimed to be “the hometown of rice noodles (米粉之乡).”