Yiwu city, a major date production area in southern China, has a history of more than 2,200 years. People have grown date trees there for more than 1,700 years. As early as 400 years ago, the city already had several date orchards. The plant area for date trees once exceeded 200 hectares. Yiwu still has 4,920 century-old date trees.

There is a saying that the processing technique of candied dates was introduced to Yiwu by Huizhou merchants at about 140 years ago as the city enjoyed favorable transport and was popular with merchants. Luo Hongwei, an inheritor of the technique, said that his grandfather told him the technique was invented by a monk called Zhong Ci who was fond of growing date trees. 

Candied dates are honored as one of "Yiwu's three treasures"; the other two are ham and brown sugar. Candied dates are good to give as gifts for friends and relatives or as treats for guests. The dates are not only popular in China, but are also exported overseas.

Yiwu candied dates won first prize at a provincial fruit processing competition held in 1982 and were honored as a "Zhejiang high-quality agricultural product" in 1990. Chouzhou brand candied dates were given a silver award at the THAIFEX-World of Food Asia event in 1993.