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Zuo zhuo, the cooking end

The giving of a banquet from the kitchen side: a cook engaged, the ingredients bought to the number of tables, a menu for each kind of occasion.

Pronunciation　zuò zhuō｜Rites of life｜One entry in the Chaoshan glossary

Ingredients for kueh filling laid out in separate piles: chives, diced shiitake, shelled shrimp, peanuts, diced pork — Ingredients for the filling laid out in separate piles: chives, diced shiitake, shelled shrimp, peanuts, diced pork. Buying in is the first job of the cooking end; once the tables and the dishes are fixed, the ingredients follow by the portion. Photograph: @富兴发红桃粿, Douyin.

What it means

Zuo zhuo is to put on the feast: engage the cook, at home or from a restaurant, buy in to the number of tables, settle the menu. Square tables sit two to a side with the head as the seat of honour, and weddings, birthdays and funerals are each arranged differently; within one table there are guests of honour and guests who accompany them.

The ingredients are bought the day before and the fire is lit before daylight. Tables, dishes and the order of serving are fixed in advance, and on the day the list is simply followed.

Two things are settled before the date is: how many tables and how many dishes. The tables follow the circle of kin — so many for the clan, so many for the wife’s family, so many for friends — and the host holds that list in his head first. The dishes follow the tables and the purse; both figures go to the cook together and the buying follows the tables. Tables, benches, bowls and plates are hired from someone else and set out the day before.

When you see it

Weddings, funerals, birthdays, house-warmings, thanks to the gods. A village cook takes work by the occasion, from a few dozen tables to a hundred or more; in the city a restaurant is usually engaged and the rules simplify.

The first thing moving on the day is the fire: everything bought in the day before, the fire lit before dawn, and cutting, braising, steaming and stewing each with someone in charge. As guests arrive they are met at the door, offered a cigarette, their gift recorded, and then shown to a seat at a square table.

Words easily confused

Zuo zhuo is the giving side, shi zhuo the eating side; they are the two ends of one feast. Bai gong is something else again — a table for the gods, with no guests invited.

Same group: the banquet, the village cook, the square table, birthday rites.

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Last revised: 4 November 2026