Weishan Lake Fish Banquet 微山湖鱼宴

Weishan Lake Fish Banquet (微山湖鱼宴) is a banquet built around fish from Weishan Lake (微山湖) in Jining (济宁), Shandong, often called the whole-fish banquet (全鱼宴). The Jining city government names the lake's four-nostril carp (四鼻孔鲤鱼) as the fish most of the banquet is made from, and a 2026 Dazhong (大众网) report says the dishes use live wild fish from the lake as the main ingredient, cooked in lake water.

How it is made

Cooks work through the fish part by part, making different dishes from the head, tail, belly, lips, stomach and belly flap. The fish is cut into shreds, slices, dice, strips or minced paste, and cooked by stewing, deep-frying, quick-boiling in broth, simmering in a thickened broth, braising, sautéing with a thickened sauce, cooking with fermented rice lees and pan-frying. Dazhong sums up the flavour as salty, savoury and spicy together, with freshness as the point, and notes that the menu follows the season.

How it is eaten

A banquet can run to 12, 14, 20 or 24 dishes, and some spreads reach a hundred. Dishes listed by the Jining government and Dazhong include sweet-and-sour carp (糖醋鲤鱼), roast white eel (烤白鳝), five-spice smoked fish (五香薰鱼), salt-and-pepper fish backbone (椒盐龙骨), flower-basket mandarin fish (花篮鳜鱼), rolled crucian carp (如意鲫鱼卷), fish balls floated in soup (漂汤鱼丸) and boatman's fish (船夫鱼). Some dishes carry plain descriptive names; others take theirs from historical stories, such as Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬) and Carp Leaping the Dragon Gate (鲤鱼跳龙门).

Where it comes from

People around the lake often eat fish as food therapy: a 2013 Dazhong report cites crucian carp with fennel, carp with red beans and soft-shelled turtle stewed with garlic, remedies it says are recorded in the book Chinese Food Therapy (中国食疗学). The same report found restaurants signed "Weishan Lake fish restaurant" (微山湖鱼馆) in Beijing, Jinan (济南) and smaller cities, and credits the recurring China Grand Canal (Weishan Lake) food festival and its freshwater-fish cooking contest with spreading the lake's fish-eating culture further.