Huangpu Cured Meats

Huangpu Cured Meats

Huangpu Cured Meats are a protected geographical indication product.

　　Traditional Cantonese people have a saying: "When the autumn wind blows, it's time to eat cured meats." This means that after the Start of Autumn in the lunar calendar each year, when the cool northern winds arrive, it’s the season for making cured meats. In the market stalls, strings and rows of various cured meat products hang under the glow of lights, shining like agate, radiant and dazzling, with the rich aroma of cured meats attracting people to linger around the stalls. Among these cured meat stalls, the most eye-catching are those labeled with the “Huangpu Cured Meats” trademark.

　　Huangpu is a famous town located in the northernmost part of Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province. It borders Shunde City to the northwest and faces Panyu City across the river to the northeast. Legend has it that during a military disaster in the Song Dynasty, ancestors from Zhujixiang in Nanxiong fled on rafts and settled here upon seeing fields covered with yellow flowers, beautiful as a garden—thus naming the place Huangpu, meaning "Yellow Garden."

　　For thousands of years, the beautiful Pearl River has brought vast fertile alluvial plains to the delta. The people of Huangpu, with their hard work and great wisdom, have developed an agricultural production system of crop-livestock-fish cyclic farming that even earned praise from the United Nations agricultural development sector: fruit and vegetables are grown on pond dikes, pigs and ducks are raised under sheds by the ponds, while pig and duck waste feeds the fish, and the mud from fish ponds fertilizes the fields for growing crops. Advanced agricultural techniques enhanced the commercial viability of agricultural products. To this day, Siqimai rice, freshwater fish and shrimp, sugarcane, fragrant bananas, and seasonal vegetables are renowned far and wide. Historically, the Zhongshan duck, used for both eggs and meat, and the fatty and thickly-intestined Dahua White pig were local specialties. These products inspired Huangpu merchants to devise ways to turn these basic agricultural goods into premium commodities—thus, the method of making cured meats was born.

　　Legend has it that the first person to make cured sausages was a porridge stall owner from Greater Huangpu named Wang Hong (also known as Old Mr. Hong). One day in the winter of the 12th year of the Guangxu reign (1886), the weather turned extremely cold with snow and rain falling. The meat Wang Hong had prepared—pork, pork liver, and sausage intestines—would not sell. So Wang Hong decided to cure the meat with salt, sugar, soy sauce, and other seasonings. With continuous rainy days, Wang Hong had no choice but to peel the casings off the sausage intestines, chop the pork into small pieces, stuff them into the casings, and tie them up in sections with water plants. When the sun came out, after several days of wind and sun exposure, Wang Hong’s creation had a uniquely delicious taste and was also highly preservable. Wang Hong continued making them in the same way and set up a stall to sell them. Because the product was made of pork stuffed into casings and shaped like pig intestines, it was called “cured sausage.” The cured sausage, with its unique flavor and long shelf life, quickly gained fame, with demand far exceeding supply. People in Greater Huangpu rushed to imitate it. Later, following the same curing method used for sausages, cured pork was made using streaky pork.

　　Due to the hot and humid climate of the delta, the clever people of Huangpu developed a method of curing by salting, sugaring, soy-saucing, and wine-marinating the meat before drying it in the sun, producing cured meat that was delicious in color, aroma, and taste. They later applied this method to various parts of the pig. Gradually, they summed up a set of curing recipes and methods for creating a variety of styles. Since then, the art of making cured meats among the people of Huangpu became world-renowned. As early as the 1930s and 1940s, people from Huangpu opened charcuterie shops such as “Cangzhou” and “Babai Zai” in Guangzhou. The famous Guangzhou shop “Huangshanghuang” and the Hong Kong shop “Wah Wah” also specifically hired Huangpu chefs to prepare their cured meats, passing down the craft through generations. Huangpu cured meats have now become a renowned brand product famous both in China and abroad.

　　The protected geographical indication area for Huangpu Cured Meats is based on the scope proposed in the “Reply on Determining the Protected Geographical Indication Area for ‘Huangpu Cured Meats’” (Zhongfu Ban Han [2004] No. 443) issued by Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, covering the current administrative region of Huangpu Town, Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province.