Tǔ jī yī wǎn, shān quán yī guō; bù fàng yī wù, quán píng yī huǒ. — One bowl of free-range chicken, one pot of mountain spring; nothing added but water, all resting on one fire.
The high-mountain free-range chicken soup (高山土鸡汤, Gāoshān Tǔjī Tāng) is the county’s plain dish: a mountain-raised chicken — slow-grown, walked hard on the plateau’s slopes — cooked in spring water with nothing else, until the broth is chicken rather than seasoning. In a cuisine that can run to smoke and chilli, this is the reset course, and the mountain households that raise the birds treat it as the measure of their own poultry.
There is no technique to describe because there is no technique: the dish is an argument about the chicken. Free-range highland birds grow slowly on a diet of scratch, grass and whatever the Daba slopes offer, and their meat and bones carry enough flavour that water and fire suffice. The autumn upgrade is the county’s other mountain product — wild mushrooms (野菌) gathered in the wooded slopes go into the same pot, and the resulting stew, 野菌炖土鸡, is the seasonal version locals wait for.
Order it by the whole pot for the table, never by the bowl, and let it come at the end of a chilli-heavy meal rather than the start — the locals’ sequence is fire first, then this. The soup’s surface carries a bead of fat; that is the point, and skimming it is the one adjustment outsiders always regret. County-seat kitchens source birds from the plateau households; the farmhouse version, cooked in the household that raised the bird, is the one to ask for if you have the introduction.
flowcloud would say that the county’s chilli does the talking and this soup does the listening — and that a mountain that can grow a chicken this slow has already told you everything about its altitude.
Where to find it: county-seat kitchens source the birds from the plateau households; the farmhouse version is cooked in the household that raised the bird. All checked October 2026.
Words and Names
土鸡 tǔjī — “local chicken”, free-range poultry · 高山 gāoshān — high-mountain, the altitude claim on the bird · 山泉 shānquán — mountain spring water · 野菌 yějūn — wild mushrooms, the autumn addition · 炖 dùn — to stew, the pot’s method