If you don’t speak Chinese, it’s difficult to order food in China. That is understandable. Chances are that you have hardly touched what Chinese food is all about. With 1.4 billion people and being the fourth largest country in the world, it would take a lifetime to order all the different dishes China has to offer. What’s really magical about China is that every province has its own specialty which sometimes can’t be found anywhere else. The food you eat in Guangdong province will be vastly different from the food you’ll eat in Xinjiang province. It’s a suspicious claim to make when you’ve hardly discovered their food. It’s the most broad term. Not liking Chinese food is basically like saying you don’t like ANY vegetables or meat.
There’s a HUGE variety of dishes in China. Look at the menu in many of the restaurants and you’re handed a book of what they offer. The selection is more than you could possibly imagine in China. Spicy, sweet, buttery, cold, hot, crunchy, deep-fried, nutty, oily, peppery, rich, sour, toasted – you’ve got it all. The selection is so big that really Chinese food can fit anyone's tastes. Every time I handed the menu to a local, they took long to order because it was difficult to decide what to get because it was too much. It’s like someone saying “I don’t like Australian food.” It’s so general that it doesn’t make sense.
Although there is much debate and confusion over just how many styles there are, most would agree that there are at least four major regional styles: Cantonese, centred on the southern Guangdong province and Hong Kong; Sichuan, based on the cooking of this western province’s two largest cities, Chengdu and Chongqing; Huaiyang (also known as Jiangsu or simply Yang), the cooking of eastern China (Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai); and Beijing or ‘Northern’ food, which takes its inspiration from the coastal province of Shandong. Some would add a fifth cuisine from the south-eastern coastal province of Fujian.
Each of these styles have developed over time as a result of factors such as the geography, climate, history, lifestyle and cooking preferences of the region, and all have their own distinct flavour. What distinguishes them is not only their cooking methods, but particular combinations of ingredients. All regions use ginger, garlic, spring onions, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and sesame oil and bean paste, but combine them in highly distinctive ways, using a variety of different cooking techniques.
For example, Sichuan (also known as Szechuan or Szechwan) cuisine, is known for its bold, hot, pungent flavours, derived from the liberal use of garlic and chillies, whereas Jiangsu cuisine has a strong emphasis on matching ingredients according to season, colour and shape, and so-called ‘red braised’ dishes are popular (in which meat is braised in soy sauce, fermented bean paste and sugar to give it a caramelised flavour and reddish brown hue).
Rice is an essential part of any Chinese meal, no matter the region, and the Chinese table is always a shared one. A typical meal would combine several small dishes to be served at the same time and shared. Each dish should complement the other in terms of taste, texture, flavour and the overall visual effect. Tea is drunk before and after a meal, but rarely during.
No matter what Chinese culinary delights you have tasted in the past, know that there are so many more flavours to experience and you should aim to indulge yourself in them all.
No matter what Chinese culinary delights you have tasted in the past, know that there are so many more flavours to experience and you should aim to indulge yourself in them all.
References for this blog are Michael Tieso who is the Editor-in-chief of Art of Adventuring and some other information gathered from the sbs site.
RSS Feed
