FOOD trip

Chinese cooking is one of the greatest methods of cooking. Since ancient time, many factors that have influenced its development. Confucius once said: "Eating is the utmost important thing in life." Cooking Chinese food requires more time and effort, and is considered a very sophisticated art. As a result, many travelers who have visited China consider Chinese cuisines one of the best.

A meal in Chinese culture is typically seen as consisting of two general components:

main food - a carbohydrate source or starch, typically rice (predominant in southern parts of China),noodles, or buns (predominant in northern parts of China), and
accompanying dishes - of vegetables, fish, meat, or other items.

This cultural conceptualization is in some ways in contrast to Western meals where meat or animal protein is often considered the main dish. Chopsticks are the primary eating utensil in Chinese culture for solid foods, while spoons are used for drinking soups. Food is usually prepared in bite-sized pieces (except fish, crabs and so on), ready for direct picking up and eating. Traditionally, Chinese culture considered using knives and forks at the table "barbaric" due to fact that these implements are regarded as weapons. It was also considered ungracious have guests work at cutting their own food.

As China is a geographically huge country, it is diverse in climate, ethnicity and subcultures. Not surprisingly therefore, there are many distinctive styles of cuisine. Traditionally there are eight main families of dishes, namely

* Hui (Anhui) 

* Yue (Cantonese) 

* Min (Fujian) 

* Xiang (Hunan) 

* Yang (Jiangsu) 

* Lu (Shandong) 

* Chuan (Szechuan) 

* Zhe (Zhejiang)

Today there are mainly four main styles of food in China, namely the Beijing Style, the Shanghai Style, the Sichuan/Szechuan Style and theCantonese Style. The Cantonese style is the most popular style in overseas restaurants. When you are traveling in China, you would find it extremely hard to resist the Peking duck, the Shanghai pork bun, or the Cantonese dim sum.

This is the foods of China

Usual food in China

CHINESE TEA

China is the homeland of tea. Different types of tea such as Wulong (Wu-long or Oolong), green te and black tea are consumed by it's population on daily basis. It is believed that China has tea-shrubs as early as five to six thousand years ago, and human cultivation of tea plants dates back two thousand years. Tea from China, along with her silk and porcelain, began to be known the world over more than a thousand years ago and has since always been an important Chinese export. At present more than forty countries in the world grow tea with Asian countries producing 90% of the world's total output. All tea trees in other countries have their origin directly or indirectly in China. The words for tealeaves or tea as a drink in many countries are derivatives from the Chinese character "cha." The Russians call it "cha'i", which sounds like "chaye" (tea leaves) as it is pronounced in northern China, and the English word "tea" sounds similar to the pronunciation of its counterpart in Xiamen (Amoy). The Japanese character for tea is written exactly the same as it is in Chinese, though pronounced with a slight difference. The habit of tea drinking spread to Japan in the 6th century, but it was not introduced to Europe and America till the 17th and 18th centuries. Now the number of tea drinkers in the world is legion and is still on the increase.

People throughout China drink tea daily. Because of the geographic location and climate, different places grow various kinds of tea. The most conspicuous content in China's tea culture is the popular phrase "Ke Lai jin Cha" which means when a guest arrives, a cup of tea will be brewed for him. In the past dynasties, people not only formed a special way of tea-drinking, but also developed an art form called tea-drinking. This art form comprises of many aspects. The most noticeable ones are the making of tea, the way of brewing, the drinking utensils such as tea pot. Tea drinking is so popular in every part of the country that there is a museum specially dedicated to the tea culture in China. It is located in Hangzhou, the hometown of Longjin Tea (dragon well tea). In Hangzhou, there is a tea museum, the only national museum of its kind. In it, there are detailed description of the historic development of tea, making and brewing methods and the like.

BEIJING FOOD

Beijing is the Capital city of many dynasties in the history of China, and many nomadic populations once lived in Beijing. Today, Beijing cuisine is refined from a combination of Shangdong cuisine and the Imperial cuisine, and formed its unique characteristics. Many Beijing dishes primarily comprise of meat, as a result of eating habits of the royals. For example, the Mongolian rulers during the Ming dynasty favored mutton, while the Qing dynasty rulers preferred pork. Bejing chefs generally put more effort into the method of cooking, and uses very common ingredients. Deep-frying, roasting, instant-boiling, stir-frying and stewing are among the most common methods of cooking. Because of its more northerly location, instead of rice, which is the staple diet in southern cuisines, noodles, buns, or jiaozi(dumplings), are preferred by the local people.

CANTONESE FOODS

Cantonese food is the most popular style outside China. Cantonese cuisine originates from the region around Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China's Guangdong province. One Cantonese saying goes that anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies is edible. Another says that the only four-legged things that Cantonese people won't eat are tables and chairs. Cantonese cuisine includes almost all edible food in addition to the staples of pork, beef and chicken, such as snakes, snails, insects, worms, chicken feet, duck tongues, and entrails. As a trading post, Canton (Guangzhou) had access to a large range of imported food, which resulted in the huge variety of Cantonese dish we can enjoy today.

Unlike other Chinese cuisines, the Cantonese usually serves soup before a meal. The soup is usually a clear broth prepared by simmering meat and other ingredients, and cooked on mild fire for hours. Chinese herbal medicines are sometimes added to the clay pot, to make the soup nutritious and healthy. Cantonese normally only consume the liquid in the pot, the solids are usually thrown away unless they are expensive such as abalones or shark fins. There's also a Cantonese saying that to "secure" a husband, a Cantonese woman needs to first cook good soups.

Due to Guangdong's proximity to the south China sea, cooking live seafood is a specialty in Cantonese cuisine. Prawns, shrimps, scallops, lobster and crab are in plentiful supply. Many Chinese restaurants maintain live seafood tanks. The freshest seafood is odorless, and is best cooked by steaming. Less fresh ones will be fried or even deep fried. When cooking a fresh fish, only a small amount of soy sauce, ginger, and spring onion is added to a steamed fish, while loads of garlic and spices will be added to cook an unfresh fish.

JIANGSU FOODS

A journey through Jiangsu is not only a chance to experience beautiful river town scenery and some of the most brilliant achievements in Chinese culture, but also a great chance to try one of the major components of Chinese cuisine - Jiangsu Cuisine. Jiangsu Cuisine, also called Huaiyang Cuisine, consists of the styles of Yangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou and Zhenjiang dishes. Known as "a land of fish and rice" in China, Jiangsu Province has a rich variety of ingredients available for cooking. Using fish and crustaceans as the main ingredients, it stresses freshness and aliveness freshness. Its high carving techniques are delicate, of which the melon carving technique is especially well known. Due to using the methods of stewing, braising, quick-frying, warming-up, stir-frying, wine sauce pickling and adding some sugar as condiments, Jiangsu dishes taste fresh, light and mellow. In Huaiyang cuisine, ingredients are strictly chosen and carefully prepared to maintain the original flavor. Huaiyang cuisine also pays special attention to the seasonally of each ingredient so that each ingredient is in its prime state for eating. For example, Yangzhou Cuisine is light and elegant; Suzhou Cuisine is slightly sweet; and Wuxi Cuisine is fairly sweet. Light and tasty soups are also a key part of Huaiyang cuisine and perfectly in tune with the latest health food trends.

In 1949, Huaiyang cuisine was the selected cuisine for the first state banquet of the new People's Republic and, in 1999, Huaiyang cuisine was also featured on the menu of the People's Republic's 50th anniversary state dinner. In 2002, Huaiyang cuisine was also selected for the dinner hosted by President Jiang Zemin for visiting US President George W. Bush.

Jiangsu dishes can be classified into that of Suzhou-Wuxi style and Zhenjiang-Yangzhou style. The feature of Suzhou-style dishes is their natural flavor in original stock and a mixture of salty and sweet taste. The characteristics of Zhenjiang-Yangzhou style food are best described by the saying that "the soup is so clear that you can see the bottom of the bowl and the sauce is so thick that it turns creamy white".

Typical courses of Jiangsu cuisine are Jinling salted dried duck (Nanjing's most famous dish), Squirrel with Mandarin Fish, Yangzhou Style Fried Rice, "Lion-Head" Meatball with Crab Roe, Wuxi Sweet and Salty Spare Ribs. Crystal meat (pork heals in a bright, brown sauce), clear crab shell meatballs (pork meatballs in crab shell powder, fatty, yet fresh), Yangzhou steamed Jerky strips (dried tofu, chicken, ham and pea leaves), triple combo duck, dried duck, and Farewell My Concubine (soft-shelled turtle stewed with many other ingredients such as chicken, mushrooms and wine), etc.

HUNAN FOODS

Also known as Xiang Cai, Hunan cuisine has already developed into a famous culinary school in China. Hunan dishes consist of local dishes from the Xiangjiang River area, Dongting Lake area and Western Hunan mountain area.

While similar to Szechuan cuisine, Hunan Cuisine is often spicier and contains a larger variety of ingredients. Other characters distinguish Hunan cuisine from Szechuan cuisine is that in general, Hunan cuisine utilizes smoked and curing food in its dishes much more frequent than Szechuan cuisine. Hunan cuisine dishes are often more oily and look darker than Szechuan cuisine dishes. Hunan is known for its liberal use of chilli peppers, shallots and garlic. Many Hunan dishes are characterized by a strongly flavored brown sauce. Some rely on sweetness from ingredients such as honey; sweet and sour sauces are also characteristic of the style.

Hunan cuisine make extensive use of chiles, to cleanse the palate and to cope with the humid climate. (Hot foods such as red chili peppers dry out and cool down the body, making it easier to handle the heat and dampness). Hunan dishes are normally made with fresh chile peppers, including the seeds and membranes which contain most of the heat.

Hunan food takes curing, simmering, steaming and stewing as the main cooking methods. Dishes of this style are usually tinged with a sour and spicy flavour. Popular Regional Dishes: Hunan's culinary repertoire consists of more than 4,000 dishes, including Dong'an Chicken, Crispy Duck, Orange Beef, and Spicy Frog's Legs.

SHANGHAI FOODS

Shanghai, being a relatively new city in China, does not really have a cuisine of its own, but successfully refines all the work of the surrounding provinces such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Through years of culinary practice and the assimilation of the art in other styles of cuisine, Shanghai chefs have also created a style of cuisine peculiar to the region. Shanghai dishes are usually characterized by the use of heavy and highly flavored sauce.

The use of sugar is another uniquness found in Shanghainese cuisine and, especially when used proportiaonally with soy sauce, the taste created is not so much sweet but rather savory. My chef friend told me that this is mainly due to the fact that sugar neutralized the sourness found in soy source. Household in Shanghai would consume as much soy source as sugar. Visitors are often surprised when the "secret ingredient" was revealed by local Shanghainese.

ZHEJIANG FOODS

One of the major eight schools of cooking in China, Zhejiang cuisine offers combined flavors of Hangzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou. Each of the three sub-cuisine traditions is noted for its special flavor and taste, but they are all characterized by the careful selection of ingredients, emphasizing minute preparation, and unique, fresh and tender tastes. Zhejiang cuisine specializes in quick-frying, stir-frying, deep-frying, simmering and steaming, obtaining the natural flavor and taste. Special care is taken in the cooking process to make the food fresh and tender. Thanks to exquisite preparation, the dishes are not only delicious in taste and but also extremely elegant in appearance. Zhejiang cuisine is best represented by Hangzhou dishes, including Hangzhou Roast Chicken (commonly known as the Beggar's Chicken, which is especially delicious with a pleasant aroma of lotus leaves), Dongpo Pork, West Lake Vinegar Fish, Sistern Song's Shredded Fish Soup.