The frozen mixture of milk a-nd rice was used in China around 200 BC. The Chinese may be credited with inventing a device to make sorbets a-nd ice cream. They poured a mixture of snow a-nd saltpetre over the exteriors of containers filled with syrup, for, in the same way as salt raises the boiling-point of water, it lowers the freezing-point to below zero. It has been claimed that, in the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan enjoyed ice cream a-nd kept it a royal secret until Marco Polo visited China a-nd took the technique of making ice cream to Italy.

Today, ice-cream still is a popular chilled dessert in china. Most of them are produced with ice cream machine by factory. There is a kind of chilled dessert made of mung beans, called lvdousha (sa-nd of mung bean), texturally similar to ice cream. The beans are macerated into a paste a-nd boiled together with milk a-nd sugar.

Besides the popular flavour such as vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, a-nd mango, many Chinese ice cream manufacturers also introduced other traditional flavours such as black sesame, mung beans, red beans, a-nd etc. Some dessert houses also serve ice-cream moon cake during the M-i-d Autumn festival (moon festival). Fried ice cream is served at street food stalls in some areas.