Shisancun (Thirteen Villages)

The Thirteen Villages pickle workshop was founded in 1922 in Yanglousi town, Linxiang, within greater Yueyang. Its name comes from a Three-Kingdoms legend in which the Wu general Huang Gai set up thirteen village-camps here; his soldiers farmed vegetables in peacetime and pickled them in sealed earthen jars by a local secret method, giving rise to a craft the workshop has carried under this name for generations, incorporated as Hunan Shisancun Food Co. in 2007.

In 2024 the Ministry of Commerce and four other bodies published the third batch of China Time-Honoured Brands, and Shisancun was listed alongside Changle Street as Yueyang's first such brands, making it a representative name carrying the city's food culture nationwide. Its pickle-making craft had already entered the Hunan provincial intangible heritage list in 2009.

Shisancun pickles use fine local vegetables sealed in earthen jars and buried in cellars for about seven months of natural fermentation, then seasoned with eighteen fresh spices, yielding more than twenty products such as beef-and-shiitake sauce, fragrant fermented bean curd and garlic-chilli sauce, a craft built on cellar fermentation and time-honoured recipes.

Shisancun is a third-batch China Time-Honoured Brand recognised by the Ministry of Commerce, and its pickle-making craft is a Hunan provincial intangible heritage item.