Rui Family Hand-torn Chicken

Item name and level

Rui Family Hand-torn Chicken appears in Appendix 2, the district-level ICH list, of the third batch of district-level ICH material; the appendix states that the list contains 22 items in total.

According to a reply of 28 November 2023 from the Lishui District Culture and Tourism Bureau, eight projects were reported as entering the municipal-level representative ICH list in January 2023, among them Tiger-head Shoes, Hand-torn Chicken, Mingjue Pickled Greens, Helinfang Twin Dragons, Shrimp Lantern Dance and Shiqiu Fishing Songs. In the reply the project is written as Hand-torn Chicken, which differs from the wording of the district list; this entry takes the full name as recorded in the district list as its title and reproduces both wordings without merging them.

The reply gives no project number and no serial number for the gazette batch. It is a working statement of the bureau, and the formal list is subject to the municipal gazette; this entry records the level as municipal and leaves the batch number pending verification.

Bearer

Appendix 3 of the same third-batch material, the list of representative bearers, contains 19 persons in total and records Rui Yongmei as a bearer of that batch, under the project wording Rui Family Hand-torn Chicken.

To be added

The cited sources do not give the selection of ingredients and the cooking process, what the hand-torn method of serving refers to, the area and the number of generations through which the craft has passed, the project number and gazette batch number in the municipal list, or the guardian unit. Both cited documents record the project name and the name of its bearer; neither describes the craft itself. Until further sources are found, this entry records no detail of the craft or its history.