Taihu Lake Hundred-Fish Banquet 太湖百鱼宴

Taihu Lake Hundred-Fish Banquet (太湖百鱼宴) is a Huzhou (湖州) banquet made up of fish dishes. People's Daily Online (人民网) says it was created in the late 1970s and that 'go to Huzhou for the hundred-fish banquet' became a travel slogan among Shanghai people. A 2020 letter to tourists from Huzhou's party secretary and acting mayor, printed in China Tourism News (中国旅游报), lists it with the 'three whites of Lake Tai' (太湖三白) among the city's foods.

How it is made

The banquet is about variety: many kinds of fish, many techniques and many flavours. Fish are deep-fried, glazed, quick-fried, stir-fried, pan-fried, steamed and braised, and served whole or cut into shreds, slices, cubes, strips and rolls, or worked into fish paste, fish balls and thick fish soup. People's Daily Online counts more than 500 dishes in the repertoire and stresses fine knife work.

Where it comes from

Huzhou's crisscrossing waterways connect with Lake Tai (太湖), and the area is a centre of pond fish farming. People's Daily Online recounts that Fan Li (范蠡), a minister of the Spring and Autumn state of Yue, retired to raise fish around Changxing (长兴) and Deqing (德清) and wrote the 'Classic of Fish Farming' (养鱼经). The mulberry-dyke fish-pond (桑基鱼塘) farming system was devised by Huzhou's early inhabitants. Locals have a saying that there is 'no banquet without fish' (无鱼不成宴), and salted, wine-lees-cured fish from Huzhou was sent to court as tribute in the Sui and Tang dynasties. The hundred-fish banquet has won gold medals at home and abroad and has been praised as a 'unique feat of Chinese cooking' (中华烹饪一绝), according to People's Daily Online.