Zhengding Eight Great Bowls

Zhengding's "eight great bowls" is a traditional banquet of the old city, made up of eight steamed bowls that pair meat and vegetables—steamed sliced pork, crisp fried pork, meatballs, square pork belly, kelp, tofu, glass noodles and cabbage—steamed until deeply flavoured and served in generous portions, the highest form of folk hospitality.

The eight-bowls tradition runs deep in Zhengding, tied to the street life and temple fairs of the old city; its form is said to reach back to the northern countryside custom of serving "eight bowls" at weddings and funerals, embodying the honest abundance with which the central Hebei plain feasted its guests in good years, a living fossil of the old city's food culture.

The eight bowls are brought out as a whole table, all eight set together and steaming, usually with mantou, rice and local white liquor, for weddings, funerals and new-year reunions—Zhengding's most solemn way of receiving guests.

The grand tableau of eight bowls set together, the hearty steamed-and-seasoned taste, and the deep tie to the rites of passage of the old city are the marks of Zhengding's eight great bowls.