Chinese Zhejiang Cuisine - Dong Po Meat

In the previous post, we knew a very famous Yunnan local food called “Guo Qiao Mi Xian”. Today, we will introduce to you another well-known local food in Southern China – a Zhejiang cuisine named 东坡肉 or “Dong Po Meat”. The pinyin pronunciation for this cuisine is “dōnɡ pō ròu”. The Chinese character 肉 means “meat”, which here refers specifically to pork, but we can’t say “Dong Po Pork”. Just sound a little bit weird, right? Then comes its first name “Dong Po”, a giant poet which people believe to be the inventor of this delicious cuisine.

His representative works include 《水调歌头》，which is so famous that some of its lyrics are still being read and quoted nowadays in China. Check out this great piece of work and see how many of them have you ever heared.

　　明月几时有，把酒问青天。

　　不知天上宫阙，今夕是何年？

　　我欲乘风归去，又恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒。

　　起舞弄清影，何似在人间！

　　转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。

　　不应有恨，何事长向别时圆？

　　人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。

但愿人长久，千里共婵娟 。

This poem may sound very hard for those who are beginners in learning Chinese. Now we come back to the cuisine. It is said that Su Dongpo invented the dish by cubing pork and simmering it for a long time in a broth that contained more wine than water. The meat absorbed the taste and color of the wine, making it very delicious. The tricky part was controlling the fire.

The story says it: When Dong Po was the mayor of the nowadays city Xu Zhou. During his four-month government, the town had a great flood. The brave Dong Po lead the towns people to fight against the flood, making embankments, dirt walls and canals. They succeed in preventing the flood from causing great damages. The people of Xu Zhou were so grateful that almost every person in town sent Dong Po some pork, because it was widely known he loved to eat it. It was far too much for him to eat alone, so he ordered the cooks to use his secret recipe and cook all of the meat. Then he gave all of it back to the people in his town. Everyone enjoyed the secret-recipe-cooked dish and it gradually gained a wider fame all across China.

Do you like eating pork? If so, this dish “Dong Po Meat” is a must for you to try when you come to China. If you also love poetry and want to explore deeper into the poem, you can join our mandarin tutor. Stay with us to learn more about Chinese food and its history.