Wula Manchu Hotpot 乌拉满族火锅
Wula Manchu Hotpot is featured among the local specialties of Jilin.
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Wula Manchu Hotpot (乌拉满族火锅) is the Manchu-style hotpot of Jilin City (吉林市), cooked over charcoal in a copper pot. Guangming Daily (光明日报) explains that it takes its name from Jilin Wula (吉林乌拉), the old city where it flourished; People's Daily Online (人民网) glosses the Manchu name as "along the river" and calls the hotpot the signature food of Jilin City.
Where it comes from
Today it is served in Wulajie Manchu Town (乌拉街满族镇), which Chinese Wikipedia places about 30 km north of Jilin City beside the Second Songhua River (第二松花江); the town was transferred from Yongji County (永吉县) to Jilin City's Longtan District (龙潭区) in 2000, and Manchu hotpot is among its local foods. Guangming Daily reported diners crowding the town's century-old hotpot restaurants over the 2025 Spring Festival.
In winter the dish is paired with rime ice (雾凇). A Jilin City political consultative conference historian quoted by Guangming Daily cites the saying that a winter visit means "one sight, one taste": the rime-ice spectacle and Wula Manchu hotpot. People's Daily Online describes the same pairing at Hantun Village (韩屯村), a Manchu village in Wulajie known as a rime-ice viewing spot.
Ingredients
The two reports describe different bases. Guangming Daily lists a stock of beef and pork shank bones with local free-range chicken, plus a seafood base of crab, dried small shrimp and oysters. People's Daily Online describes a chicken broth simmered for a long time with Chinese medicinal ingredients such as ginseng, gastrodia, goji berries, red dates, longan, hawthorn, cordyceps and angelica, and a dipping sauce of sesame paste, fermented tofu, sesame oil and chive-flower relish mixed with wild mushrooms.
The prized item is pianhu rou (片糊肉), meat that is selected, roasted, scrubbed, boiled, frozen and sliced. Guangming Daily describes slices three or four cun (Chinese inches) long and paper-thin that curl into a saw-tooth edge in the pot, with fat that is not greasy and lean that is not dry.
How it is eaten
A saying about the traditional hotpot, quoted by both reports, sets out the pot: "birds in front, beasts behind, fish on the left, shrimp on the right, and a ring of chopped spring onion around it". People's Daily Online links the ingredients and preparation methods to the everyday customs of the Manchu and their ancestors.
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.