A round white porcelain plate holds a pile of thin, crisp golden-fried pork slices in a clear amber sweet-and-sour glaze, with fine ginger and scallion shreds and a small sprig of cilantro on top.
The regional cooking of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, built on pickled cabbage and stews, generous and strongly flavoured.
Guobaorou is a dish of Northeast China: pork tenderloin is cut into thin slices, coated in a potato-starch batter, fried twice and tossed in a sweet-and-sour glaze, leaving a crisp shell. The Harbin version has a clear glaze with no tomato, the Liaoning version uses a tomato sauce, and Chifeng in Inner Mongolia has a salty garlic version. Traditional and family accounts mostly tie the dish to Zheng Xingwen, a cook at the Harbin Daotai office in the late Qing, but no dated text was found in the listed sources. The Guanpin Shanpu handscroll discussed in a 2024 report records Daotai office dishes and lists guobaorou as a welcome dish; the report gives no date for the scroll.
What
Guobaorou is a dish of Northeast China. Pork tenderloin is cut into thin slices, coated in a thick potato-starch batter and fried twice to a glassy, crisp shell, then tossed in a sugar-and-vinegar glaze. The Harbin version has a clear glaze with no tomato.1,6,7
When
Guobaorou is traditionally credited to Zheng Xingwen, a cook at the Daotai office in late-Qing Harbin. His arrival in Harbin in 1907 is dated by a 2024 feature and family accounts, not documents from the time. The Guanpin Shanpu handscroll discussed in a 2024 report records Daotai office dishes and lists guobaorou as a welcome dish; researcher Zhao Rongguang initially doubted the scroll but later judged it to be Bi Guangzu’s original record. The report gives no date for the scroll, and no dated text was found in the listed sources, so no origin year is given here.1,2,3,4
Where
Harbin, in Heilongjiang. Accounts place the Daotai office in the Fujiadian area and trace the Liaoning tomato-sauce version to Shenyang in 1911. Chifeng in Inner Mongolia has a salty garlic version.1,2,4
How
The pork is sliced thin, marinated with salt and wine, coated in a soaked potato-starch batter, fried through over medium heat and fried again over high heat to crisp the shell, then tossed in the sugar-and-vinegar glaze with shredded scallion, carrot, cilantro or ginger. There are two ways of applying the glaze. The Guanpin Shanpu method uses thick slices of lean pork in a thick batter, fried crisp over alternating gentle and strong heat and finished with sweet hawthorn sauce; this is a reported account, with no amounts given.1,3,6,7
Why
Guobaorou is traditionally said to have developed from the crisp fried pork slices of Beijing and Shandong to suit Russian and other foreign guests’ taste for sweet and sour. The use of tomato sauce in 1911 to keep the dish crisp longer is also a family account. The explanation involving a Russian wife’s accent remains in doubt.1,2,4
Impact and influence
Guobaorou is widely known in the Northeast, with variants in Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. Lao Chujia’s Binjiang Official-Banquet Cooking: Guobaorou is a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage item in Heilongjiang, with a plaque ceremony held in Harbin on June 9, 2018. A 2024 article featured Lao Chujia, a long-established Northeast restaurant known for its signature guobaorou.1,5,8
Legend has it that Zheng Xingwen, a cook at the Harbin Daotai office, turned the crisp fried pork slices of Beijing cooking into a sweet-and-sour dish because foreign guests, and in the tale his Russian wife, liked sweet food and disliked heavy salt. The dish was originally named with the word for flash-frying; in the tale his Russian wife pronounced that word so that it sounded like the word for wrapping, and the name became guobaorou as it is written today.
Told in: A folk and family account told in Harbin, found in Chinese Wikipedia and in the telling of Lao Chujia’s descendants (a 2016 article in China Cuisine magazine); a 2024 Beijing Evening News feature doubts the explanation about the accent.
The Tomato Sauce at the 1911 Shenyang Conference
Legend has it that at the international plague conference held in Shenyang in 1911, Zheng Xingwen cooked for the meeting and changed the glaze to a thickened tomato sauce so that leftovers kept their color and texture longer. That version spread to Liaoning and Jilin, while Harbin kept the clear sweet-and-sour glaze.
Told in: A telling found around Shenyang and Harbin, in Chinese Wikipedia and in the account of Lao Chujia’s descendants; the 2024 feature says only that Zheng’s presence at the conference is reported, and cites Wu Lien-teh’s account that the cook there was a cook from northern China, without knowing whether it was Zheng.
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
In restaurants guobaorou is all about the oil temperature and the glaze. This is how I make it at home: one wok, two fryings, and the clear sweet-and-sour glaze of Harbin with no tomato. The reference recipes differ in their sugar and vinegar, so the amounts and timings below are my own choices at home.
Ingredients
Pork tenderloin 400 g, cut into slices about 3 mm thick
Salt 1/2 teaspoon, plus a pinch for the glaze
Cooking wine 1 tablespoon
Potato starch 175 g
Water for the batter 250 ml
Cooking oil for frying about 600 ml
Sugar 80 g
White vinegar 80 ml
Water for the glaze 30 ml
Light soy sauce 1 teaspoon
Scallion 1 stalk, shredded finely
Carrot 1/4, shredded finely
Cilantro a small handful, cut into short lengths
Steps
Mix the pork slices with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and the cooking wine and let them marinate for 30 minutes.
Stir 175 g of potato starch into 250 ml of water to a thick batter, pour it over the pork and mix until every slice is coated.
Heat the oil in the wok to about 160 degrees Celsius and slide in the slices one by one, frying in batches for about 4 minutes until set. Cut one open: it is cooked when it is no longer pink inside. Lift out and drain.
Raise the oil to about 200 degrees Celsius, return the slices and fry them again for about 30 seconds until the surface is golden and crisp. Lift out and drain.
In a clean pan, put the sugar, vinegar, 30 ml of water, a pinch of salt and the soy sauce. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 to 3 minutes more, until it bubbles finely and thickens slightly.
Turn off the heat, add the scallion, carrot, cilantro and the fried pork, toss quickly and serve at once.
Tips
I add the pork only after the glaze is cooked and the heat is off, toss a few times and eat right away; that is my way of keeping the shell crisp a little longer.
The reference recipes use different ratios of sugar and vinegar, so I start with the amounts above, taste, and add a little of each at a time.
