Shitai Layered One-Pot 石台一品锅
Shitai Layered One-Pot is featured among the local specialties of Anhui.
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Shitai Layered One-Pot (石台一品锅) is a banquet pot from Shitai County (石台县), Chizhou (池州), in which dried bamboo shoots, pork, tofu, round balls (yuanzi, 圆子) and glass noodles are stacked in layers in one large pan, each layer carrying a wish for the guests who eat it.
How it is made
The Shitai county government describes the dish as carefully built in one large cooking pan. The bottom layer is dried bamboo shoots, for rising step by step like a bamboo's joints; radish slices or dried beans can stand in when there are no shoots. The second layer is large pieces of pork, for wealth. The third is white or pan-fried tofu, for purity. The fourth is a full layer of the balls, for reunion and happiness. The fifth is glass noodles, with 'red-beaked green parrot' (红嘴绿鹦哥) or daylily stuck into the top, for long life.
Five layers is usual, but some pots have seven or nine; the number is always odd.
How it is eaten
Once the pot is on the table the toasts begin: guests are served first, then the others in order of seating, and every cup is filled to the brim and refilled as soon as it is empty. The host keeps urging 'eat, eat' so the guests pick up their chopsticks first, and the pot is eaten layer by layer, with a good wish spoken as each one is reached.
If the bottom layer is radish or dried beans, guests may leave it and the host takes no offence: by a local saying, eating radish makes you long-winded and eating beans means everyone going their own way. After the toasts the table plays a finger-guessing drinking game to a numbered song that runs from 'one, rise for sure' (一定高升) to 'ten, a hall full of red' (十满堂红); the loser drinks a cup.
Where it comes from
A Ming-dynasty legend explains the name. Bi Qiang (毕锵), a Shitai man who served as minister of four ministries, had a wife, Lady She (佘氏), who delivered the empress's baby, the crown prince, during a difficult birth. The emperor made her a lady of the first rank (一品夫人). When he later visited the couple, she cooked him the hometown pot of Qijingshan (七井山), and the emperor, told who had made it, called it 'first-rank pot', yipin guo. From then on the dish spread in Shitai, and people of Qijingshan used it as their highest banquet for honoured guests.
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Hu Shi's one-pot dish 胡适一品锅 →
Hu Shi's One-Pot Dish is another Anhui yipin guo; the Shitai pot has its own legend, set in Qijingshan, and a set order of layers with a wish for each one.
Questions before you order
How many layers does the pot have?
Usually five, sometimes seven or nine, always an odd number: dried bamboo shoots, pork, tofu, round balls and glass noodles in the five-layer version.
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.