The Last Hammer of Fuhuan

In a village in China’s Anhui province, a 1,600-year-old way of pressing oil comes down to one man. As regular readers know, disappearing food traditions are a recurring obsession at Roads & Kingdoms. This is driven partly by appetite (food made the old way is, almost without exception, more delicious) and partly by nostalgia (a welcome counterpoint to our current age of industrial agriculture and AI apocalypse), but these traditions also open doors to hidden worlds and remarkable stories. Today’s dispatch is one of them: the story of the Fuhuan Village Wood-Press Oil Mill in China’s Anhui province. Operating since the 1950s, the mill is possibly the last remaining outpost of the 1,600-year-old Huizhou wood-press technique first recorded in the Northern Wei dynasty’s Qimin Yaoshu, an ancient Chinese agricultural treatise. As soon as I saw these photos taken by R&K’s Alejo Sabugo while he and Jane Yang were scouting an upcoming trip, I needed to know more about the mill and the striking figure in the images. So I reached out to Jane and asked her to tell me everything she knows. Jane tells me that the mill has five master craftsmen, all around 60, who work through each step in order: sifting and roasting the seeds, grinding them into powder, steaming the powder, then loading and hammering the press. “The most memorable among them is a one-eyed man named Li Wu who is deaf and cannot speak. He handles the most important step: swinging the hammer that presses out the oil.” Continue reading Access this and all our other premium articles by joining our membership program. Plans start at $6.50 per month and include twice-weekly digital features, access to in-person events, and more.