Pingxiang Cured Pork 萍乡腊肉
Pingxiang Cured Pork is featured among the local specialties of Jiangxi.
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Pingxiang Cured Pork (萍乡腊肉) is pork cured and smoked for the Spring Festival in Pingxiang (萍乡), Jiangxi. In January 2025, at a Pingxiang chilli-food event reported by Xinhua, the city's mayor named it with Lianhua Blood Duck (莲花血鸭) among Pingxiang's famous dishes with a distinctive flavour.
How it is made
Jiangxi Daily describes smoking cured meat for the New Year as a custom in many parts of Pingxiang. A community Party secretary quoted by the paper says that, done the old way, the smoking takes anywhere from seven or eight days to half a month. Many households built a makeshift smoking room from bricks or old oil drums on open ground near home and burned dry branches they had gathered. A 2022 notice from the ecological protection committee of the Pingxiang Economic and Technological Development Zone adds that traditional smoking burns large amounts of firewood, with waste cardboard or kraft paper laid over the meat to hold the smoke in.
In the countryside the custom goes on at home. In January 2024 CNR (China National Radio) found villagers in Xiawan Village (下湾村), Gaozhou Township (高洲乡), Lianhua County (莲花县), using the fine weather before the festival to make cured pork, with golden, glistening pieces dripping fat on wooden racks and a strong cured aroma. A cured-meat business in Shangli County (上栗县) told Henan Business Daily that, with no central heating as in the north, families warm themselves in a fire room before bed and also light fires there to smoke meat.
Where it comes from
Since 2021 Pingxiang has banned 'native-method' smoking in and around the urban area to improve air quality. To keep the custom alive, the Danjiang (丹江) and Baiyuan (白源) street offices in Anyuan District (安源区) each bought a smoke oven and in January 2022 began smoking residents' fish, meat and sausages free of charge, each batch going in at ten in the morning and coming out at five in the afternoon. To give the meat the texture particular to Pingxiang cured pork, staff fuel the ovens with tea-tree branches and rice husks. By 18 January 2022 the two machines had smoked more than 5,000 kilograms. A Pingxiang market regulation official told Henan Business Daily in 2023 that the city does not oppose all smoking, and some food factories smoke meat in ventilated workshops built like brick kilns.
How it is eaten
Jiangxi Daily writes that without cured pork the New Year loses much of its festive flavour. One Baiyuan resident smoked more than 50 kilograms in 2022, partly for her own table and partly to give to relatives and friends.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.