Songyunze and the Sichuan Banquet: The Rongleyuan Line
World Travel 编辑部 · 2026-09-10 · 7 min read
Songyunze and the Sichuan Banquet: The Rongleyuan Line
On Chengdu's Michelin list, Songyunze stands not for a dish but for a way of running a restaurant that has almost disappeared: the bao xi, or booked banquet.
What a bao xi is
A bao xi is an entire table ordered or provided in advance. In Chinese usage the term carries two senses — the act of a customer booking a whole table of dishes, and the type of service a restaurant offers as a complete banquet. It is both a purchase and a service: the diner buys a standardised full-table experience, the kitchen supplies eating at scale, and it is common for family celebrations and festive groups.
This was the vehicle for Sichuan's banquet cuisine. From the late Qing, Sichuan cooking matured into a full regional system of five categories — banquet dishes, everyday dishes, home cooking, the "three steamings and nine bowls", and snacks. The booked banquet is the first of them.
Rongleyuan: 1911 to today
To understand Songyunze's lineage, look at Rongleyuan.
Rongleyuan is a celebrated old Chengdu Sichuan restaurant, founded in 1911, now under the Sichuan Chengdu Catering Company and located at 27 Wenshuyuan Street in Qingyang district. It is known for high-grade banquets and home-style dishes. In 2006 the Ministry of Commerce named it a China Time-Honoured Brand, as did the Sichuan trade department; it passed the brand review in 2023.
Its predecessor, Zhengxingyuan, was opened by Guan Zhengxing in 1861, the final years of the Xianfeng reign. In 1911 three chefs from Zhengxingyuan — Qi Lezhai and the brothers Lan Guangjian — founded Rongleyuan. Since then the line has broken and resumed several times:
- 1933: moved to Buhou Street
- 1948: closed
- 1980: reopened on Luomashi in Chengdu, and that June a Sino-American Rongleyuan opened in New York — the first catering venture China sent abroad after reform and opening
- After further moves and restarts, it reappeared in the Wenshuyuan quarter in 2017
What Songyunze carries on is this line's Sichuan banquet culture.
Four to order
Songyunze's signatures are all traditional banquet dishes:
- Lion's head with cress — a banquet test of technique
- Pocket tofu — counted among the great non-spicy Sichuan dishes, and ingeniously made
- Snowflake chicken — the classical "nao" style
- Twice-cooked pork — the headliner of Sichuan home cooking, and the standard by which a kitchen is judged
A word on the other side of Sichuan food: it is not only chilli. The repertoire without chilli runs to wine-lees, lychee, sweet-and-sour, pepper-salt, crystal, gentle-braise, soy-glaze, red-braise, white sauce, clear-simmer, clear soup, milk soup, pan-fried, "hibiscus", crisp-fried, douzha, three-fresh, steamed, rock-sugar and honey methods. Famous non-spicy dishes include Dongpo pork knuckle, yellow-braised duck, sizzling rice with pork, camphor-smoked duck, pocket tofu and "boiling water cabbage" — the last the most delicate of all.
Practical
- What it is: a place for a whole banquet, not a two- or three-dish dinner
- Order: lion's head with cress, pocket tofu, snowflake chicken, twice-cooked pork
- Group size: banquet dishes suit four or more; a small table cannot do them justice
- Book ahead: for a bao xi, reserve in advance and state your numbers and budget
- Expect: orthodox old-line Sichuan cooking — technique and structure, not novelty
Related
- Yu Zhi Lan: Lan Guijun and the Knife-Cut Golden Thread Noodles
- Chen Mapo Tofu: The Pot by Wanfu Bridge Since 1862
Photos
Sources
- Baidu Baike: Rongleyuan; bao xi
- Wikipedia: Sichuan cuisine