Wenzhou lies at roughly 120°E, 28°N — the southernmost city in Zhejiang province. Hills enclose it on three sides; the East China Sea opens to the east; the Ou, the Feiyun and the Ao rivers run down from the mountains into the sea. Bays, islands, mudflats, plains and hills are stacked within one city — putting entirely different ingredients on the same table. This is where Ou cuisine's basic flavour begins.
The sea: the first menu on the table
Near-shore fishing grounds and wide mudflats made fish, crab, shellfish and laver part of daily life. Large yellow croaker anchors a Wenzhou banquet — "no banquet is complete without croaker" — and in the eighth lunar month the returning fish are at their fattest. On Lingkun Island, a rhyme still tells you what to eat when; along the Cangnan coast, farmers tend a "garden on the sea", where the first cut of laver, from late November, is the tenderest and most intensely flavoured of the year.
Rivers and hills fill the calendar
Plains laid down by the rivers bring rice and wetland produce — rice noodles, New Year cakes and glutinous rice dishes form the backbone of daily meals — while the Sanyang Wetland has grown Ou mandarins, "bitter first, sweet after", for over a thousand years. In the hills, Chashan bayberries reach market in early June, Yongjia's Wuniuzao tea arrives about a month before West Lake Longjing, Wencheng has grown glutinous yam for nearly a thousand years, and Taishun's Sanbeixiang tea keeps its fragrance through cloud above 800 metres.
