Regina Troy Barrios

That Bowl Of Intestines In Pursuit Of Jade Is Not What You Think It Is

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Xie Zheng, Marquis of Wu&#x27;an and hero of Pursuit of Jade , is a powerful man brought very low. He is injured, in hiding, living under a false name in the house of a butcher&#x27;s daughter who could snap him over her knee. He has survived battlefield wounds and a 17-year blood feud. He has maintained his composure through every humiliation the universe has thrown at him.Then Fan Changyu sets a bowl of noodles in front of him. He eats it, tells her it&#x27;s good. Then she tells him what&#x27;s in it.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779937567162Workbench Thumbnail.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Xie Zheng loves the noodles, until he discovers what&#x27;s in it | Photo: Pursuit of Jade | Netflix</div>His face collapses in a way that<a href="https://www.instagram.com/zhanglinghe__1230/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Zhang Linghe&#x27;s</a> face has never collapsed before, and it is the funniest thing to happen in a 2026 drama. The screenshot has been shared across every Filipino cdrama group on the internet. The memes are everywhere. But here is what the memes are missing: Changyu wasn&#x27;t feeding him scraps. That bowl was the best she had to give. The entire class dynamic of Pursuit of Jade is in that one bowl.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779937803781POJ4(4).jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Zhang Linghe&#x27;s &quot;I ate what?!&quot; face | Photo: Pursuit of Jade | Netflix</div><h3>What she actually cooked</h3>The dish is <a href="https://guide.michelin.com/en/chengdu-municipality/chengdu/restaurant/gan-ji-fei-chang-fen" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">feichangfen</a>—肥肠粉, or féi cháng miàn—fatty intestine noodles, a celebrated street food from the Sichuan and Chongqing regions of China. Actress <a href="http://news.mydramalist.com/article/pursuit-of-jade-actress-tian-xi-wei-on-portraying-fan-chang-yu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tian Xi Wei, who plays Changyu, confirmed in an interview that the dish in the drama is characteristic of that area</a>, and that filming the scene made her genuinely want to eat it. (Note: some writers have categorized the dish differently depending on how the drama&#x27;s fictional geography is interpreted, but we&#x27;re sticking to Tian Xi Wei&#x27;s own words here.)<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779937969481POJ1(1).jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Feichangfen: Sichuan’s rich, spicy, deeply misunderstood fatty intestine noodles | Photo: Pursuit of Jade | Netflix</div>The dish is braised pork intestine over noodles in a heavily spiced broth. The noodles are wide and smooth, handmade from sweet potato or rice flour. The broth is what Sichuan cooking calls mala: tongue-numbing from Sichuan peppercorns, layered with chili oil, fragrant and slightly sour at the edges. The intestines are braised long and slow until they become soft and glutinous, with a depth and richness that regular pork cuts simply don&#x27;t have. It is a serious dish, not in the fine dining sense but in the craft sense — the kind that takes real knowledge to make well, and is a real pleasure to eat, as long as you don&#x27;t spend too long thinking about it.Xie Zheng spent too long thinking about it.<div> </div><h3>Why the Marquis reacted the way he did</h3>It’s a question of class.In the world Pursuit of Jade evokes, the nobility ate muscle meat and prized cuts. Offal was the food of the market, the wharf, the household that could not afford to discard any part of the pig. This wasn&#x27;t merely economic — the novel makes it explicit: the wealthy didn&#x27;t eat pig offal, and the poor often didn&#x27;t know how to prepare it properly, so braised intestines were in fact a rare and valued thing even in Changyu&#x27;s world.Here is where it gets interesting. Changyu is a butcher&#x27;s daughter, and in their village, offal came to her as payment. When she was hired to slaughter a pig, the custom was to receive a bucket of offal alongside her wages. Yes, her customers would give her the parts the pig they didn&#x27;t want. She took it home, braised it well, and it became, in her life, a treat.So what Xie Zheng is recoiling from is not disgusting food—after all, he said the dish was good before he knew what it actually was. He is recoiling because it is food he believes to be beneath his station. A reflex of class conditioning rather than taste. Meanwhile, Changyu and her sister finish the rest without complaint, because for them, the food was a small celebration.<div> </div><h3><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779938016861POJ3(1).jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>To Changyu and Ning, the noodles are a special treat | Photo: Pursuit of Jade | NetflixIs there a Filipino version?</h3>Yes. It&#x27;s goto.Goto is rice congee—glutinous rice, slow-cooked with beef tripe in broth infused with ginger, garlic, and onion, served hot and garnished with toasted garlic, scallions, black pepper, and chicharon. You add calamansi or a splash of toyo or patis, just before eating. Like feichangfen, goto exists because people who could not waste a single part of an animal figured out how to make those parts worth eating. That the dish they made from these parts became genuinely good—so that people now order goto by choice—is the whole pointThe same logic applies to batchoy, which comes from the La Paz district of Iloilo and has been there since at least the 1930s. It&#x27;s a rich beef and pork bone broth, served over round egg noodles and topped with pork innards, crushed chicharon, toasted garlic, and scallions. The broth runs salty and slightly sweet; some versions finish with a raw egg cracked in at the table. The best are at the original stalls in La Paz Market — Ted&#x27;s, Deco&#x27;s, Netong&#x27;s — where market vendors and tricycle drivers have been eating it for generations before anyone decided it was worth a food trip.Neither of these is feichangfen, exactly. But they are built from the same logic: take the parts nobody wants, cook them with patience and care, and make something that people come back for.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779938070320POJ1(3).jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Every culture turns humble cuts into something worth craving | Photo: Pursuit fo Jade | Netflix</div><h3>Where to find fatty intestine noodles in Manila</h3>The closest thing to the actual dish, Sichuan-Chongqing style with the mala broth and braised offal, is at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/chongqingrestaurantmanila/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chongqing Restaurant</a> on Malugay Street in Makati. The origin story is simple: a Chinese owner missed his hometown in Chongqing and decided to make its accessible here. All the chefs are from Chongqing. The menu runs toward the authentic end of the spectrum. This is the place to go if you want numbing heat and deep pork broth closest to what Changyu cooked. It is a no-frills spot, which is entirely appropriate.For something more Taiwanese in approach, lighter and cleaner but still pork intestine, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shilinph/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Shi Lin</a> carries Crispy Pork Intestines Rice at their branches in Binondo, BGC, and Power Plant Mall. Not the same dish, but the close enough.<a href="https://chuankeefastfood.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chuan Kee Chinese Fastfood</a> on Ongpin Street in Binondo does braised pork offal in the Cantonese tradition—lü da chang, the braised large intestine, soft and yielding, served over rice. It has less fire than the Sichuan version, and more depth in the braising.And if you want to start with something more familiar, find the nearest goto house and order the especial, with all the offal. Eat the whole bowl while it’s hot, and unlike Xie Zheng, don’t ask what&#x27;s in it.

Why Zhang Linghe’s viral noodle scene in Pursuit of Jade is really about class, offal, and the food we already love.

Why Zhang Linghe’s viral noodle scene in Pursuit of Jade is really about class, offal, and the food we already love.

That Bowl Of Intestines In Pursuit Of Jade Is Not What You Think It Is

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That Bowl Of Intestines In Pursuit Of Jade Is Not What You Think It Is

Troy Barrios

Published May 26, 2026 11:30 AM PHT

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Updated May 28, 2026 11:29 AM PHT

Read More:

pursuit of jade

zhang linghe

tian xi wei

cdrama

chinese food

sichuan cuisine

feichangfen

mala noodles

intestine noodles

chinese street food

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