Cantonese Cuisine · FFET10017
Sliced Raw Fish (Yusheng)
The Qing Guangdong Xinyu says sliced raw fish was served at feasts as a mark of respect, and the Qingbai Leichao records the Cantonese taste for it.
A woman cuts a roast goose into pieces on a round wooden block beside a small dish of sauce, a clay pot of slow-cooked soup steams nearby, a basket holds ginger, scallion and coriander, and a lake and hills lie beyond.
The regional cooking of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, prized for live, fresh ingredients and light flavours.
The food chapter of the Qing writer Qu Dajun's Guangdong Xinyu says that at a feast sliced raw fish must be served as a mark of respect, and that it is eaten at dawn on an empty stomach. The Qingbai Leichao, published in 1916, has a separate entry on the Cantonese eating of raw fish, which defines yusheng as thinly sliced raw fish and says the Cantonese have a taste for it.