I wonder how the fennel beans sold in Nanjing Confucius Temple are made.

Anise bean is a kind of wine standing by almost all hotels in Shaoxing all the year round. Soak dried broad beans (local people call them arhat beans), drain the water, put them in a pot with fennel, cinnamon, salt and edible kaempferia, add a proper amount of water, cook them slowly with slow fire, so that the seasoning juice can be absorbed from the skin into the bean meat, and after the water is basically boiled, take them out of the pot and cool them to obtain fennel beans. This fennel bean is blue and yellow. The skin is wrinkled, the bean meat is tough and chewy, and the fragrance is sweet.