Guangzhou Wenchang Chicken 广州文昌鸡
Guangzhou Wenchang Chicken is featured among the local specialties of Guangdong.
Guangzhou Wenchang Chicken (广州文昌鸡) is a Cantonese dish of poached chicken taken off the bone and served with ham, chicken liver and vegetable. It was created in Guangzhou (广州) in the 1930s by the chef Liang Rui (梁瑞) at the restaurant that became Guangzhou Restaurant (广州酒家).
Where it comes from
In 1935 the tea merchant Chen Xinghai (陈星海) opened Xinan Restaurant (西南酒家), the forerunner of Guangzhou Restaurant, on a plot where Wenchang Road (文昌路) meets Shangxiajiu (上下九). When it opened, Zhong Quan (钟权), known as the 'King of Chefs of the South', ran the kitchen, and Liang Rui created this chicken dish. The birds came from what was then Wenchang County (文昌县) in Hainan, and the restaurant stood on Wenchang South Road, so it was named 'Xinan Wenchang Chicken'.
The restaurant was destroyed in the war in 1938 and rebuilt. In 1940 Liang Rui refined the recipe and the dish took its present name, Guangzhou Wenchang Chicken. In 1993, when Guangdong's chefs first chose the province's 'Ten Famous Chickens' (广东十大名鸡), Guangzhou Restaurant's Wenchang chicken was one of them.
How it is made
The chicken is poached until cooked and then plunged straight into cold water. Once the skin has turned crisp, the bird is boned and the pieces are laid back together in the shape of a chicken. The work is done by hand: Mai Zhanfei (麦展飞), a sixth-generation inheritor of Guangzhou Restaurant's Cantonese cooking skills, says even an experienced cook needs twenty to thirty minutes from the moment the chicken is poached to the moment it reaches the table. The chicken is cut and arranged with ham, chicken liver and caiyuan (菜远), the Cantonese word for the middle section of a root or stem vegetable.
How it is eaten
The dish is meant to be eaten in layers: Mai Zhanfei recommends taking one slice of chicken together with one slice of ham and one of chicken liver in the same bite, for a richer flavour.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.