Shiling Chicken 什玲鸡

Shiling Chicken (什玲鸡) is a local chicken breed from Shiling Town (什玲镇) in Baoting Li and Miao Autonomous County (保亭黎族苗族自治县), Hainan, and the dish cooked from it. Because the birds roost in trees at night, they are also known as 'the chicken that climbs trees' (会上树的鸡).

Ingredients

China News Service describes the bird as small-bodied and long-winged, with bright plumage, a loud crow and a fast run. Villagers tell of it arising over several hundred years of natural selection, after hens in the Li and Miao villages at the foot of Qixianling (七仙岭) mated with wild fowl from the mountain. The chickens grow up in woodland and in areca-palm and rubber plantations, scratching for insects, wild fruit, grain, sweet potato and cassava, and drinking from streams and springs.

Flavour and texture

Cooked, the skin is thin, orange-yellow and glossy, and the meat is tender, smooth and sweet. Hainan Daily adds that even the bone marrow is fragrant.

How it is eaten

Li and Miao households in Baoting count it among the finest dishes to serve guests, and Hainan Daily calls it the dish visitors to Baoting always order. In July 2011 the paper found Shiling chicken sold out in hotels in the county town, as restaurants stocked up ahead of Baoting's Water-Splashing Festival (嬉水节). In 2021 the county put Baoting Shiling chicken among the seven products of its 'Baoting Qixian' (保亭柒鲜) farm brand, alongside rambutan, jackfruit, passion fruit, durian, okra and Liugong goose.