烹 (pēng): to boil

Meanings

1 to boil
2 to cook (especially by quickly stir-frying then dressing with sauce)
3 (archaic) to boil to death (an ancient form of execution)

Characters

烹

pēng

to boil; to cook (fire 灬 + sound 亨)

Examples

厨师用慢火烹了一锅鸡汤。

Chúshī yòng mànhuǒ pēngle yì guō jītāng.

The chef slowly boiled a pot of chicken soup.

治大国若烹小鲜。

Zhì dà guó ruò pēng xiǎo xiān.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish.

Tips

history

Laozi's 《道德经》章 60 famously says 治大国若烹小鲜 — 'governing a large country is like cooking a small fish'. Both demand a light touch: prod a frying minnow too much and it falls apart, just as too much meddling ruins a state. Ronald Reagan quoted it in his 1988 State of the Union address.

usage

In modern Chinese, 烹 mostly survives in compounds: 烹饪 (cooking, culinary art), 烹调 (to cook), 烹饪学校 (culinary school). Rarely used alone except in literary/classical contexts. The grim historical sense — 烹刑 (boiling alive) — was a real punishment in pre-imperial and early imperial China and shows up in 史记 stories about figures like 郦食其 boiled by Tian Heng.