Longans and lychees are both sold dried. Their skin, even more brittle when dried, surrounds a shrunken fruit which is dark, sweet and slightly smoky in flavour and resembles a round raisin. Sometimes sold minus the seeds, compressed into a cake, in small, expensive packets.

Dried longans are simmered with black sticky rice in a Nonya version of rice pudding, or eaten as a snack like any dried fruit. They are boiled in water to make cool drinks, floating in lightly sweetened liquid together with finely shredded agar-agar jelly, barley, white fungus, water chestnuts, Chinese red dates and crushed ice.