SW China city celebrates long history with a record number of buns

The Old Town of Lijiang, Yunnan province decided to come up with a truly unique way to commemorate its 880 years of existence, so it set to work making a bunch of stuffed buns -- 888 in fact, and a rolled cake -- 88.8 meters long – to present to local people, on August 3, and getting its name in the Guinness China record book.

The 888 stuffed buns were the work of 28 female bakers and ranged in flavor from mushroom to ham to rose, all of them steamed for 40 minutes in a huge bamboo steamer that was itself almost a record, at 7.2 meters wide and 2.2 meters high.

Then there was the 88.8-meter cake roll, with six types of vegetables, beef and sauces, made by 88 volunteers, all working together.

After it completed the laborious job of counting the number of buns, officials from the China Records HQ in Shanghai promptly handed over the certificate for the "Largest number of stuffed buns" and "Longest rolled cake" to Yunnan.