DgcityThe mountain county of Jixi in eastern Anhui province hosted the opening of the 11th Huizhou Cuisine Culture and Tourism Festival on Thursday, pairing the celebration with Anhui’s sixth Golden Hui Chef cooking competition. Jixi carries unusual weight in Chinese food history: it is recognized both as a hometown of Huizhou cooking, one of China’s eight best-known cuisines, and as a county of chefs.
Organizers, including the Xuancheng city government, the Anhui Cuisine Association and the Anhui Huizhou Studies Society, framed the event as an effort to show how a historic cuisine can adapt while keeping its roots. The morning ceremony opened with the Kantou old drum, a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage performance, before new local product lines were unveiled, including gift sets and a county guide series.
The cooking competition drew skilled hands from across Anhui, turning the festival into a trade stage as much as a tourist pageant. After the opening, visitors moved through display areas for competition dishes, tasting zones and stalls showcasing regional ingredients, a layout designed to link what is cooked on the plate to what is grown and foraged in the surrounding hills.
Huizhou cuisine itself grew out of a merchant culture. As Huizhou traders traveled across China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, they carried home-country flavors with them and brought back ingredients and techniques. The food is known for its braising, stewing and attention to local produce, from bamboo shoots and stone frogs to cured hams and river fish.
Jixi has spent years turning that heritage into an economy. County officials describe cooking as a pillar industry, with restaurants staffed by Jixi chefs spread across Chinese cities and cooking used as a calling card for tourism. Festivals like this one serve two audiences at once: domestic travelers looking for a mountain weekend and restaurant owners scouting chefs, ingredients and brand partnerships.
The competition winners add luster to restaurants that increasingly market themselves through titles, short videos and regional certification. For visitors, the appeal is more immediate: the chance to taste slow-cooked dishes in the villages where the recipes developed rather than in distant hotel banquet halls.
