Nixi Clay Pot Chicken 尼西土锅鸡
Nixi Clay Pot Chicken is featured among the local specialties of Yunnan.
Nixi Clay Pot Chicken (尼西土锅鸡) is chicken stewed in a black-pottery pot made in Nixi Township (尼西乡), in the north-west of Shangri-La (香格里拉) in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (迪庆藏族自治州), Yunnan. The pots come from Tangdui Village (汤堆村), where more than 100 households make Tibetan black pottery.
How it is made
The chicken is stewed in a black clay pot. Earthenware cooking pots, butter-tea pots and braziers were what the older Tangdui potters made most often. The potters dig and dry clay, shape the pots and fire them, a craft the national intangible cultural heritage list has included since 2008 as Tibetan black pottery firing (藏族黑陶烧制技艺), with Diqing among the listed areas. The pot was shown in the 'Secrets of the Kitchen' episode of the food documentary A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国) as one that stews a flavourful chicken soup.
Ingredients
The bird is the Nixi chicken (尼西鸡), a local breed. Diqing's prefecture government names it alongside the Zhongdian yak (中甸牦牛) and the Diqing Tibetan pig (迪庆藏猪) among the livestock breeds it plans to develop through breeding and moderate-scale farming.
How it is eaten
Yunnan Daily reported that one multi-ethnic family in Shangri-La also stews a pot of Nixi chicken over the fire pit in the evening. In 2020 a businessman who had come home to Tangdui told China News Service that viewing peach blossom, eating Nixi chicken, learning to make black pottery and watching the Nixi love dance (尼西情舞) would make Nixi Township a new name in Shangri-La tourism. Guangming Online photographed Nixi chicken cooked in a black-pottery pot in Tangdui in November 2023.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.