'Dough-Stick Brother' bemused by fame

Three years ago, a Sichuan peasant named Li Gang set up an iron skillet and a few tables at an old residential block in Chengdu and started cooking deep-fried dough sticks - one of the most common breakfast foods for Chinese. The business was small and returns were modest - until early this month, when the 47-year-old street vendor became an overnight national celebrity after he reportedly found a healthy replacement to a chemical compound that has been used to cook the food for hundreds of years. The media dubbed him "Dough-Stick Brother" and praised his effort to make a common food healthier, particularly as food-safety scandals have raised serious concerns among the public in recent years. The sudden fame has resulted in not only additional business, but also an offer for a free booth in a prime location of the city. However, the attention and notoriety have been a bit overwhelming for the man with a humble background, and he explains that it's not what he set out to achieve.

What led you to try making a living by cooking deep-fried dough sticks?

My home is in a small village in Sichuan's Shehong county [under Suining city]. I left my hometown at the age of 16 to make more money. I did a lot of different jobs. I worked as a construction worker, electrician, factory worker and laundry-shop operator. In 2008, I was working at a cloth-dyeing factory in Jiangsu province, but the business was not going well. I needed a better-paying job to make money to pay my son's university tuition fees. So I came to Chengdu to seek help from my brother, who had a stall that he used to make and sell breakfast foods. I learned from him how to fry dough sticks. Later, I set up my own stall.

A year ago, I was watching a TV news programme that said alum, a compound that is commonly used to leaven dough when frying the dough sticks, contains aluminium and could harm one's nervous system if consumed over a long period. One night, I was a bit drunk and forgot to put alum in the dough. The next day I found that the dough sticks were actually not  as bad as I had expected. This inspired me to look for something to replace alum and lower the amount of aluminium in the snack. At that time, I thought that maybe more people would like to buy my dough sticks if I succeeded.

So what do you use in your deep-fried dough sticks instead?

I have conducted more than 50 tests over the past year, and I tried a lot of things, such as eggs, corn flour, rice powder and buckwheat powder. Some of them did work, but the taste wasn't as crispy as when I used alum. Finally, I found something better. I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I can say that it's something that is a reflection of a peasant's wisdom. It is 100 per cent natural. People said my dough sticks tasted the same as others. At first nobody believed I didn't add alum. A customer told me I should get the food certified by an authorised organisation, so I brought samples of my dough sticks to  Chengdu's food-safety testing centre. [The test] cost me more than 200 yuan [HK$247]. The centre said my dough sticks contained 16 milligrams of aluminium per kilogram - much lower than the national standard of 100mg per kilogram.