Fried dough sticks are also called fried stew and fried ghosts. It is a kind of breakfast food made by Hangzhou people in the Southern Song Dynasty. 1 142, Yue Fei, a national hero, was cheated by a traitor and his wife Wang, and was secretly framed in Fengbo Pavilion. When people in Lin 'an (now Hangzhou) learned about this incident, they were all very angry and hated King He.

At that time, there was a restaurant specializing in fried food near Fengbo Pavilion. The owner of the restaurant is frying food by the oil pan. Knowing that Yue Fei was killed by Mr. and Mrs. Qin Gui, he couldn't restrain his anger. He grabbed a piece of dough from the basin, kneaded it into two little people, a man and a woman, stuck it together back to back, threw it into the oil pan and repeatedly shouted, "Eat fried Qin Gui!" As soon as he shouted, everyone around him understood what he meant, so they all swarmed in and helped to do it, shouting and eating. Other restaurants have followed suit after seeing it. At that time, the whole city of Lin 'an began to "fry" and soon spread all over the country.

"Fried juniper" has spread to today, and many areas have changed their names to "fried dough sticks", but there are still places called "fried stew" or "fried ghost".