Cutting Up a Whole Bird Chinese-Style

When you are faced with a whole cooked chicken or duck and the question is how to cut it for serving, the answer will differ if you are Chinese, Western, or—like me—something in between. In the West, we typically carve poultry from the bone, and any bone lovers are exiled to the kitchen to vent their passions in private. In China, the norm is to chop the entire bird, bones included, into small rectangular pieces that can be managed with chopsticks and then to reassemble them into the shape of the original bird. The head is anchored in place and the tail is arranged perkily at the appropriate end. In addition to being tricky to master, the final picture isn’t, to Western eyes, terribly attractive.