Wow, food in China can be so hyperlocal that I thought surely this wonât include stuff thatâs not know outside China, like Guilin Noodles, but its there just under a different name than what I expected.
In particular, going to Hangzhou and trying the food there opened my eyes to how varied Chinese food is. There were a lot of lightly cooked vegetables and thinly sliced meats with subtle flavoring and sauces, the opposite of what I thought of saucy heavily cooked stir fry.
This is insanely detailed and (mostly) accurate.
Itâs a great guide for Chinese-focused foodies.
If you want to cook Chinese food at home, you can check out this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chefwang
Please note that he mainly focuses on Sichuan cuisine, which is a bit spicy.
More interesting is to research the history and development of regional cuisines
For example, Xinjiangâs representative dish, Big Plate Chicken, was actually invented by a Sichuanese chef in the 1980s, primarily to serve truck drivers
Another example is that both Beijing and Nanjing have roast duck as a signature dish. This is because in the 14th century, the Ming Dynasty emperor moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, bringing roast duck along with it.
Really in-depth and great article!
As with some other commentors, I was surprised to not see a lot of dishes that I thought were staples, and quite a few were under different names.
Nonetheless, really amazing---and made me quite hungry at well-past midnight!
this is amazing. Definitely going to use this when I visit China again. Level of detail and accuracy is incredible I definitely learned a lot while reading about which cuisines I missed when I visited China
> Shaxian Wontons (æČćżäșć). Top left. Similar in many ways to Cantonese style wontons
The locals always use the term bianrou æè even though it was the Shaxian delicacies chain that popularized it outside of Fujian. I was a little confused when I saw my favorite dish called this.
Wait, where is General Tso's Chicken?
My wife is from a small town just 50 km southeast of Nanjing, that is now folded into Nanjing proper, with metro and all. The town's language has nothing to do with Nanjing, they cannot understand each other at all. The town's cuisine is completely different, there's no duck at all, no similarities besides focus on rice as a staple.
I applaud the author of the article. Living and traveling China for 13 years drove me to understand that, to me, there's really no "X Chinese Cuisines", every little town has something unique and some cooking methods that are totally different from the next little town. Same with the language.
It's a shame that it's now being destroyed.
Dang this is crazy level of detail
> And yet, there is regionality. Jilin - around the city of Changchun - hues to my personal stereotype of âNortheasternâ food the closest, with their hearty stews and love of fermented cabbage.
Hahah yuuuup. Every other day we have sauerkraut mixed with something. Literally just ate some random Jilin style sauerkraut dish a couple of hours ago.
> In Yanbian along the North Korean border, there is a large group of ethnic Koreans called the Joseon, which have Korean food similar to what is found in North Korea.
And yes, wow. If you pop down to Yanbian from Jilin/Changchun, you can get really good North Korean food, which is harder to find like anywhere else.
Stopped watching after 10 minutes due to it being a detailed discussion of methodology and not about food. Would like to see a video of "Top 20 Chinese Dishes You've Never Heard Of." And here it is - don't watch this on an empty stomach!
There's so much to wonder and discover, this is a great post. I have been many times to China and it's always a delight for my tastebuds.
I have known since I was a child that China must have more than eight major cuisines, but the exact number of cuisines has always been a controversial topic. This work puts an end to this controversy.
What a great post, I'm so stunned.
This is fantastic! Now do India.
> One country, one cuisine.
A professor whose research focused on China (social sciences, not food) told me that Americans also tend to imagine China as similar to the US - one large country. They said it was more like Europe, if Europe was all one federal country - different languages, different cultures, different cuisines, etc.
Holding China together has long been a preoccupation of imperial government. You can see the current regime gradually working to do that, from defeating the Nationalists finally in 1949, and trying to bring into the fold Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, .... For decades, the People's Liberation Army's main focus was internal, on its own people as in many dictatorships.