Porcelain-Clay Baked Chicken (Cini Weiji)

Cini weiji is a celebrated Jingdezhen dish rich in history and local character: a whole chicken is marinated, wrapped in lotus leaf, then encased in a layer of Jingdezhen's distinctive porcelain clay and slow-baked. It brings the porcelain capital's own craft of 'clay and fire' to the table.

The dish is said to come from the ingenuity of Qing-dynasty Jingdezhen kiln workers, who used the residual heat of the porcelain kilns to bake clay-wrapped chickens buried in the embers—wasting no fire while gaining a fine meal. Akin to Jiangnan beggar's chicken but stamped with the porcelain capital, its clay is taken from the local porcelain raw material.

Once baked, the hardened clay shell is cracked open and the lotus leaf peeled away to reveal chicken so tender the meat falls from the bone, carrying the fragrance of lotus leaf and earth-baked clay mingled with wine and a soil-like aroma; the whole bird is served hot and shared.

The ritual of cracking open the clay shell, the lotus-leaf fragrance and the meltingly tender meat are what make this dish unforgettable, and it best embodies Jingdezhen's culinary wit of 'cooking with clay'.