Fuyuan Kaluga Sturgeon Banquet 抚远鳇鱼宴

Fuyuan, the fish capital

Northeast Net (东北网) calls Fuyuan China's "far east" (东极) and places it where two China-Russia border rivers, the Amur (黑龙江) and the Ussuri (乌苏里江), join. That position is why it is known as the "fish capital" (鱼都), and Northeast Net adds that every season is a good time for eating fish there.

Fuyuan's fish museum displays a kaluga sturgeon specimen, photographed by the Guangming Daily (光明日报) for a feature on the Hezhen (赫哲族), whose home is the basin of the three rivers (三江流域). The paper says the Hezhen love fish, especially raw fish, and eat skin, roe, flesh and cartilage raw.

What comes to the table

Describing the Fuyuan whole-fish banquet (抚远全鱼宴), Northeast Net lists the one-fish-many-ways dishes to try in Fuyuan: sha shengyu (刹生鱼), a raw-fish dish; talaha (塔拉哈) grilled fish; dressed sturgeon sinew (拌鲟鳇鱼筋); pan-fried chum salmon; sturgeon caviar (鲟鳇鱼子酱); roasted dried fish; and fried fish pieces. The sturgeon courses in that list are the dressed sinew and the caviar.

The fish

The kaluga is a large bottom-dwelling freshwater sturgeon of the middle and lower Amur, the Ussuri, and the lower reaches of the Songhua (松花江) and Nen (嫩江) rivers. Chinese Wikipedia gives its maximum size as 5.6 metres and one tonne, among the largest freshwater fish alive, and its lifespan as up to a hundred years. It has no scales, only five rows of bony plates along the back and sides. Its roe is made into caviar.

Heavy fishing for the caviar trade has pushed the wild population close to extinction. The IUCN assesses the kaluga as critically endangered, and since the end of 2018 it has been on China's list of wild animals under first-class state protection.

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