Pengze Crucian Carp 彭泽鲫
Pengze Crucian Carp is featured among the local specialties of Jiangxi.
Image notes
Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited.
Pengze Crucian Carp (彭泽鲫) is a freshwater crucian carp from Pengze County (彭泽县) in Jiujiang (九江), on the northern edge of Jiangxi. It comes from the county's natural lakes, including Dingjia Lake (丁家湖) and Taibo Lake (太泊湖), and is now a farmed variety developed in Jiangxi whose name is a registered geographical-indication certification mark.
Where it comes from
From 1983 the Jiangxi Fisheries Research Institute (江西省水产科学研究所) and the Jiujiang Fisheries Research Institute (九江市水产科学研究所) spent seven years and six generations purifying, restoring and selectively breeding the Pengze fish. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs recommends the result as one of the country's good freshwater fish for farming.
Pengze County registered the 'Luhua' (芦花, 'reed flower') trademark for the fish in 1998. In 2005 the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Association (中国水产流通与加工协会) named Pengze 'China's home of crucian carp', and in 2014 'Pengze crucian carp' was registered as a geographical-indication certification mark. Pond farming is combined with indoor recirculating tanks, temporary holding and rotational harvesting and restocking, so that fish can be supplied evenly all year.
Ingredients
Jiujiang News Net describes the fish as a new crucian carp variety bred in Jiangxi, with stable traits, fast growth, disease resistance, wide adaptability and tolerance of transport. The Tai'an (泰安) city government in Shandong, which began bringing in Pengze parent fish and fry in 1995, notes that it takes a wide range of feed, grows quickly before two years of age and reaches 300 to 400 g or more after two years of farming. In 1996 Tai'an released 1.8 million fingerlings from Jiangxi into Dongping Lake (东平湖) to improve its crucian carp stock.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.