Visitors who travel to jiayu county, Xianning city, in Central China's Hubei province for the first time are often impressed with its food offerings, especially the fish and lotus roots (莲藕). Almost every restaurant offers dishes (feature) these ingredients (原料).
Xiao Wo, a poet from Beijing, once remarked on how amazing it is that some restaurants can make an entire table of dishes either ingredient.
Located in the south of Hubei, (know) as a province of a thousand lakes, Jiayu covers an area of 1,017 square kilometers, and about one-third of that (cover) in water. It is home to 15 types of fish and produces 60, 000 tons of lotus roots a year.
Jiayu, literally means "good fish" in Chinese, is one of two counties named after the water creatures. other is Yutai in Shandong province.
Jiayu (get) its name from the following lines of the poem The South Produces Good Fish from The Book of Songs, the (old) existing collection of Chinese poetry, dating back to between the 11th and 6th century BC．
"The south produces good fish, and the fish swim and wag their tails. There is fine wine at the (gentlemen) large impressive meals, and guests feast and drink ⑩ (merry)."
Aside from its delicious dishes, Jiayu is also famous for its lotus roots, wudu (a clay instrument) and culture of the Three Kingdoms (220-280) period.
