Mostly here my mother-in-law just heats it up and serves it as a soup, often with dried osmanthus and sticky rice dumplings. With or without egg at seeming random. It's also used in a wood ear sweet soup that's kinda tasty, but that seems to have corn starch or some other thickener added to it. There's street carts in winter that have a gloppy kinda/sorta drink (you need a VERY thick straw to drink it!) made with water, corn starch (I think ... it might be tapioca starch), and sugar that is flavoured with chopped Chinese dates and this stuff as well.