Baling Whole-Fish Banquet

The Baling whole-fish banquet is a Yueyang original whose every dish is made from fish—silver fish, mandarin fish, bream, grass carp, black carp, crucian carp, eel and more than a dozen Dongting freshwater kinds—paired with lake-edge ingredients such as artemisia, lotus, lotus leaf, reed shoots and Junshan tea, yielding over forty dishes of strikingly varied flavour on a single table.

Yueyang rose by Dongting Lake, long a land of fish and rice, and its kitchens grew skilled with lake fish, devising a banquet in which fish fills every course and is matched with Junshan tea and lakeside produce, becoming the signature of the city's food culture.

Served as a full banquet, the squirrel-mandarin-fish, lotus-silver-fish, steamed bream and lotus-leaf-steamed fish come forth in turn, the hallmark being many treatments of one fish and a hundred flavours in one feast, the centrepiece of banquets and celebrations.

That every dish is fish yet none tastes the same, the deft pairing of lake-edge produce, and the pure taste of Dongting fish are what set the Baling whole-fish banquet apart.