Zhen Bu Tong Luoyang Water Feast Technique

The Luoyang Water Feast technique centers on the Zhen Bu Tong restaurant as its representative bearer. The cooking of its dishes reaches back to the Eastern Zhou and its banquet structure to the Tang, handed down unbroken over a thousand years in Luoyang, capital of thirteen dynasties — the oldest and most complete banquet craft to survive. In 2008 it became national ICH as an entire banquet's technique, a case unique in China.

The craft runs through the whole process — selecting ingredients, knife work, broth-making and the order of service: twenty-four courses come as cold openers, anchoring dishes, eight mains and closing courses, alternating hot and cold, meat and vegetable, with stock setting the keynote and soups threading the feast together. The signature peony yan cai, turning radish threads to a bird's-nest texture, best reveals the knife and broth skills.

The Zhen Bu Tong Luoyang Water Feast technique is a national-level item of intangible cultural heritage. Preserving the banquet etiquette of palace and people since the Tang as a complete living craft, it is the culmination of Heluo food culture and the continuation, at the table, of Luoyang's ancient-capital spirit.

In Luoyang, the full ceremonial rhythm of the feast can be experienced at the old water-feast houses and the water-feast museum, where the flowing succession of dishes conveys the Tang-era flavor and the depth of Heluo food culture.