Fotiaoqiang (Monk Jumps over the Wall)

Fotiaoqiang, a traditional famous dish of Fujian Province, is a kind of thick soup cooked with more than 30 kinds of ingredients including shark's fins, sea cucumber, chicken breast, duck meat, tendons of pork, mushroom, abalone and dive eggs, and many other condiments.


Why it is called "Fotiaoqiang (Monk jumps over the wall)"

This dish focuses on the selection of ingredients and cutting way and the order of adding ingredients while the soup is being cooked.

Before cooking, all the ingredients should be put into a pot which is once used to store Shaoxing wine, then sealing it with a piece of paper before putting on the lid.

While cooking, the big fire should be used first and then the small fire for boiling.

This dish is delicious and refreshing. A poem writes that, opening the lid, fragrance of meat can be smelled by the neighbors and even the monk will jump over the wall in order to try it. Hence the name.


A legend of this dish

Fotiaoqiang, translated into English, means "a monk jumps over a wall". Folklore has it that a monk went to Fujian Province to spread Buddhism during theTang Dynasty (618-907). There was a restaurant near the temple in which he stayed, and the monk could always smell the unique scents from the eatery. Eventually, he couldn't resist any longer, and he jumped over the wall, between the temple and the restaurant, and sampled a dish.