Pork Ball Soup 贡丸汤
Pork Ball Soup is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
Pork Ball Soup (贡丸汤) is a soup of gongwan (贡丸), the pounded pork balls for which Hsinchu (新竹) is the best-known producer in Taiwan. Chinese Wikipedia illustrates it with pork-ball rice-noodle soup, a bowl that combines two Hsinchu specialties: the pork balls and rice vermicelli (米粉).
How it is made
The name comes from the key step. The meat is beaten, and in Taiwanese Hokkien the word for beating, kòng, is written with the character "扛", which sounds like gong (贡), so the balls are called kòng-uân. In Hsinchu the meat is pounded with wooden sticks or by machine, and the balls must be made from freshly slaughtered, unchilled pork. The main ingredient is pork, sometimes with shiitake mushrooms, and the usual seasonings are salt, pepper, MSG and sugar.
Chinese Wikipedia notes that pork balls are made in many places and that Hsinchu's contribution is technical: using machines so the balls can be produced in large quantities.
Where it comes from
On the Ministry of Economic Affairs creative-life industry site, Jinyi Gongwan (进益摃丸) is described as the longest-established pork-ball making family in Hsinchu, started in 1938 at the entrance of the Hsinchu City God Temple (新竹城隍庙). Its culture hall on Beimen Street (北门街) serves bowls of pork-ball soup cooked to order and runs pork-ball making sessions in the old hand-made style, with its old pork-ball machines on display.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- Gong wan tang, pork ball soup with cilantro and scallions, the Hsinchu specialty · 贡丸汤，猪肉丸清汤配香菜葱花，新竹名产Photo: Terry Su from Sapporo, Japan · CC BY 2.0 · taken 2006-05-03Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited. Thumbnails may show a cropped view.
