Abstract: The bean paste-flavored sausage made by natural air-drying in Sichuan area,China,was taken as the research object,and the product features were analyzed and compared with industrial baking-dried sausage and western fermented sausage. The result showed that the moisture activity(a_w)was 0.68~0.85,pH5.84~6.01,NaCl content was 2.80%~3.52％,the peroxide value(POV),acid value(AV)and thiobarbituric acid(TBA)values were 0.55~0.66,2.28~3.71 and 0.23~0.74 mg/kg,respectively.The results of sodium nitrite residue showed that the naturally air-dried sausage was 2.21~2.71 mg/kg,the baked and dried sausage was(10.37±1.14) mg/kg,and the western-style fermented sausage was(9.51±1.06) mg/kg. In terms of microbial characteristics,very few microorganisms were detected in bake-dried sausage,while the content of lactic acid bacteria in western fermented sausage was high.The variety and quantity of microorganisms in the natural air-dried soy-flavored sausage in Sichuan were abundant,but the total number of colonies,micrococcus and lactic acid bacteria were lower than that of western fermented sausage,while the contents of yeast and mold were higher. Based on the principal component analysis(PCA)and hierarchical cluster analysis(HCA),the sausages of Chengdu plain in central part of Sichuan and the northern part of the province earned the highest scores.The results indicated that the natural air-dried sausage,baking-dried sausage and western fermented sausage were significantly different from each other in terms of physicochemical and microbial characteristics,and the Sichuan-style natural dried sauce-flavored sausages had significantly different characteristics from traditional sausages and western-style fermented sausages.