Dongzhi Maiyu Small Fish 东至麦鱼

Dongzhi Maiyu Small Fish (东至麦鱼) is a small freshwater fish from Dongzhi County (东至县) in Chizhou (池州), Anhui, prized as a local delicacy. Dongzhi lies on the south bank of the lower Yangtze, and maiyu is counted among the county's specialties alongside kudzu starch and salted duck eggs from Shengjin Lake (升金湖).

The fish

Anhui News (中安在线) describes maiyu as a small, rare and highly valued aquatic product, of the same kind as the better-known stone fish of Mount Lu (庐山石鱼). The name means 'wheat fish': the fish are small enough to look like grains of wheat, and they are most plentiful at the time of the wheat harvest. Two species are caught in Dongzhi, named in Chinese as wenhu fish (吻虎鱼) and Ke's wenhu fish (克氏吻虎鱼). They live in rivers and lakes with gravel or sandy beds and feed on tiny fish, small insects and diatoms. The catch is small.

Where it comes from

Maiyu is a long-standing specialty of the county. The flesh is tender and the flavour fresh, and the gazetteer of the old Dongliu County (东流县), in its 1818 edition from the Jiaqing reign (嘉庆), already records that local people treasured it. Dongliu was merged with Zhide County (至德县) in 1959 to form today's Dongzhi County.