Mengshan Pounded Pork Meatballs 蒙山肉丸

Mengshan Pounded Pork Meatballs (蒙山肉丸) are the meatballs of Mengshan County (蒙山县) in Wuzhou (梧州), Guangxi, made from lean pork beaten with a teak mallet on a stone slab; the craft is listed as intangible cultural heritage of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

How it is made

The heritage item is the making technique, recorded as Mengshan mallet-beaten meatball making (蒙山棰打肉丸制作技艺). The Wuzhou municipal culture, radio, sports and tourism bureau describes it this way: fresh lean pork is the raw material, and it is beaten again and again with a teak mallet on a large stone slab. The meat is then stirred, squeezed into balls and cooked. The bureau says the craft makes strict demands on the choice of meat, the order of the steps, the timing, the force of the blows and the heat.

Flavour and texture

According to the Wuzhou bureau, the finished meatballs are springy and crisp in the bite, with a fresh, fragrant flavour.

Where it comes from

The Mengshan county government lists the meatball-making technique on the Wuzhou municipal intangible cultural heritage list, alongside items such as Mengshan puppet theatre (蒙山木偶戏) and the Mengshan Yao songs (蒙山瑶歌). In a report dated 12 October 2023, the Wuzhou bureau announced that the regional government had published the ninth batch of autonomous-region-level representative intangible cultural heritage items, and that the Mengshan meatball technique was one of eight items from Wuzhou on it. The other Wuzhou entries in that batch include Wuzhou chicken-biscuit making (梧州鸡仔饼制作技艺) and the Wuzhou morning-tea custom (梧州早茶习俗).