Linwu Duck 临武鸭
Linwu Duck is featured among the local specialties of Hunan.
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Linwu Duck (临武鸭) is a duck breed from Linwu County (临武县) in Chenzhou (郴州), southern Hunan, which Sanxiang Metropolis Daily (三湘都市报) describes as one of China's eight famous ducks and a former imperial tribute.
The bird
Sanxiang Metropolis Daily picks out the Linwu Duck by a white ring around its curved neck, a hard bill with a hooked tip and large, broad feet. The paper describes a Linwu farmer driving his flock between hill ponds and reservoirs, and notes that Shunhua Duck Industry (舜华鸭业), a duck-raising and processing company in Linwu, has developed a way of raising the birds on pasture grass.
Where it comes from
Linwu has a saying, "无鸭不成宴" ("no banquet without duck"), and raising Linwu Duck is a traditional livelihood handed down in families for generations. A packing worker quoted by the paper puts it simply: Linwu people have raised ducks for generations. The advertising line "临武山水鸭天下" (roughly "from Linwu's hills and waters, ducks for all under heaven") helped make the bird known.
The duck is no longer only a table ingredient. Linwu Duck is now processed into packaged products sold across China as snacks and gifts, and the paper tells of a Linwu native working in Changzhou (常州), more than 1,000 km from home, who found it on a supermarket shelf there.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.