Xiangshan Seafood 象山海鲜

Xiangshan Seafood (象山海鲜) is the seafood cooking of Xiangshan County (象山县), which lies on a peninsula in Ningbo with the sea on three sides. Chinese Wikipedia counts Xiangshan seafood among the county's calling cards and notes that the county has been named China's home of the swimming crab (梭子蟹). Its dishes range from salted crab to mullet jelly and are served in formal sets such as the 'sixteen bowls' and the haicuo (海错, 'sea miscellany') banquet.

The sixteen bowls

A Xiangshan saying goes: 'When the son-in-law comes to his mother-in-law's house, she brings out sixteen bowls.' Among fishing families sixteen is a lucky number, and the seafood sixteen bowls (海鲜十六碗) are the highest grade of meal for honoured guests and wedding feasts. Xiangshan people have developed a version for each season, built on seasonal ingredients.

The summer set on the Songlanshan (松兰山) resort's list includes mud crab cooked with potatoes, salt-and-pepper mudskippers, Shipu (石浦) fish-cake noodles and mud snails cooked with aubergine. The winter set includes salted Xiangshan crab, mullet jelly, white goose steeped in fish sauce, white shrimp boiled in salt water, clams quickly blanched in boiling water and Bombay duck fried in a batter with seaweed.

The haicuo banquet

The haicuo banquet was recreated at a 2025 promotion of Xiangshan seafood in Hangzhou, organised by the Xiangshan county commerce bureau. For it, the Xiangshan catering association made tasting portions of five of the banquet's classic dishes: haicuo fish balls, a tureen of 'eight sea treasures', crab in fermented rice-wine lees, fried Bombay duck and fried prawn balls coated in breadcrumbs.

A second menu, the 'thousand-year fishing village feast' (千年渔乡宴), has dishes such as mullet jelly, salted raw crab, braised cuttlefish, dressed sea snails, sliced fish rinsed in hot broth and baked pomfret. The first characters of the dish names spell out a line in praise of Xiangshan's coast and fishing villages.