The top of the four great freshwater fish, Emperor Qianlong's favorite food when he toured the south, wild ones cost a hundred yuan per jin and are hard to buy

Many people like to eat fish. When I was a child in the countryside, whenever my father had time he would take me to the river to catch fish. Back then there were lots of wild fish in the countryside. Besides the most common carp, crucian carp and snakehead, the most surprising one was a very imposing fish with a mighty look. We called it "aohua fish." In the water it liked to eat small fish and shrimp, and back then it was easy to catch; we often caught ones weighing several jin. Now this fish is almost impossible to find in the wild, and even farmed ones are rarely seen on the market.

Aohua fish is also called mandarin fish or jihua fish. It has a very distinctive appearance: a small head, a fairly thick body, and no scales. Don't underestimate this aohua fish. It is one of the four great freshwater fish of China, and people even call it the top one among fish. The wild mandarin fish from the Songhua River is the most famous, which shows how much people love the aohua fish. In the water the aohua fish also counts as a rather ferocious fish, mainly surviving by hunting other fish and shrimp in the water. Unlike carnivorous fish, the aohua fish eats in a very "elegant" manner.

After swallowing fish and shrimp, it spits out all the bones and shrimp shells, keeping only the meat in its belly to digest and absorb. It really is a very clever fish. The aohua fish has few bones and plenty of meat, and the flesh is very tender, smooth and fresh, truly a top-grade fish. Besides being delicious, the aohua fish is also rich in nutrients that are very easy for the human body to absorb, which is probably one reason it is so popular.

There is also an interesting legend about this aohua fish. It is said that when Emperor Qianlong toured the south, one day he happened to walk into a restaurant. Qianlong was traveling incognito, and the restaurant's waiter, seeing that he was plainly dressed, paid him little attention. Qianlong flew into a rage and made a scene in the restaurant, which brought the local prefect over to apologize. To calm Qianlong's anger, the restaurant owner personally brought out his specialty dish, squirrel-shaped mandarin fish, which finally soothed Qianlong's anger, and he praised the dish endlessly. Later, on several tours of the south, he always wanted to eat this dish, and the mandarin fish (aohua fish) became famous because of it.

It is precisely because the aohua fish is so precious that even in the past, ordinary people rarely got to eat it. Now, due to water pollution and people's fishing, the number of wild aohua fish has become very rare, so naturally the price of aohua fish is very high. Wild aohua fish can now sell for 100 yuan per jin, and even so it is hard to buy the genuine article. Most of the aohua fish we see now come from artificial farming, and even these farmed aohua fish cost 30 yuan per jin. At this price, ordinary people probably wouldn't be willing to buy them. Have you ever eaten them?