Pubei Guandong Grass Carp 浦北官垌鱼

Where it comes from

The Qinzhou municipal culture, radio, sports and tourism bureau places Guandong in the heart of the Liuwan Mountains (六万山) and calls it the place of origin of Guandong fish, a national agricultural geographical-indication product. The hills are thickly vegetated, with many wild grasses suited to feeding fish. Spring water runs down the slopes and forms the Kuifeng Waterfall (葵峰瀑布), and pools of all sizes across the hills hold water all year.

The bureau quotes the Pubei County Gazetteer (浦北县志) on an older custom. As early as the Ming and Qing dynasties, a family with a newborn daughter would dig a small pool on the slope by the house, big enough for about ten fish, and raise a few grass carp in it. The fish were kept until the daughter married, then given as part of her dowry and cooked as a whole-fish banquet for relatives and friends. That is why the fish is also called peijia yu (陪嫁鱼), the dowry fish.

How the banquet is made

The whole-fish banquet is a cooking craft that has been handed down in Guandong for more than a hundred years. On 6 October 2023 the Guangxi regional government added the Pubei Guandong fish whole-fish banquet technique to its ninth batch of autonomous-region-level intangible cultural heritage. The banquet needs a Guandong grass carp raised for more than three years and weighing over 10 jin (5 kilograms). The fish is selected, killed, scaled, gutted, boned, cut into shaped pieces, seasoned and cooked.

The bureau lists more than twenty common dishes, each made from one part of the fish. They include fish-head and tofu soup, fried fish scales with pepper salt, pickled-vegetable fish slices, fish intestines fried with egg, Guandong raw fish (官垌鱼生), fish boiled in spring water, sweet-and-sour chrysanthemum-cut fish, fish dumplings in soup, roast whole fish and a boneless fish hotpot.

Flavour and texture

According to the bureau, the fish has firm, fresh and tender flesh, a clean, sweet taste and no muddy smell.