Chinese Food

Guangdong (Cantonese) Cuisine


Tasting clean, light, crisp and fresh, Guangdong cuisine, familiar to Westerners, usually has fowl and other meats that produce its unique dishes. The basic cooking techniques include roasting, stir-frying, sauteing, deep-frying, braising, stewing and steaming. Steaming and stir-frying are most frequently used to preserve the ingredients' natural flavors. Guangdong chefs also pay much attention to the artistic presentation of their dishes.


Typical menu items: Shark Fin Soup; Steamed Sea Bass; Roasted Piglet; Dim Sum (a variety of side dishes and desserts)

• Fujian Cuisine
  Combining Fuzhou Cuisine, Quanzhou Cuisine and Xiamen Cuisine, Fujian Cuisine is renowned for its choice seafood, beautiful color and magical tastes of sweet, sour, salt and savory. The most distinct feature is their "pickled taste."
  
  Typical menu items: Buddha Jumping Over the Wall; Snow Chicken; Prawn with Dragon's Body and Phoenix's tail
• Huaiyang Cuisine
  Huaiyang Cuisine, also called Jiangsu Cuisine, is popular in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Using fish and crustaceans as the main ingredients, it stresses their freshness. Its carving techniques are delicate, of which the melon carving technique is especially well known. Cooking techniques consist of stewing, braising, roasting, and simmering. The flavor of Huaiyang Cuisine is light, fresh and sweet and its presentation is delicately elegant.
  
  Typical menu items: Stewed Crab with Clear Soup, Long-boiled and Dry-shredded Meat, Duck Triplet, Crystal Meat, Squirrel with Mandarin Fish, and Liangxi Crisp Eel

• Zhejiang Cuisine
  Comprising local cuisines of Hanzhou, Ningbo, and Shaoxing, Zhejiang Cuisine is not greasy. It wins its reputation for freshness, tenderness, softness, and smoothness of its dishes with their mellow fragrance. Hangzhou Cuisine is the most famous one of the three.
  
  Typical menu items: Sour West Lake Fish, Longjing Shelled Shrimp, Beggar's Chicken
• Hunan Cuisine
  Hunan cuisine consists of local cuisines of Xiangjiang Region, Dongting Lake and Xiangxi coteau areas. It is characterized by thick and pungent flavors. Chili, pepper and shallot are usually necessities in this variation.
  
  Typical menu items: Dongan Chicken; Peppery and Hot Chicken
• Anhui Cuisine
  Anhui Cuisine chefs focus much more attention on the temperature in cooking and are good at braising and stewing. Often ham will be added to improve taste and candied sugar added to gain freshness.
  
  Typical menu items: Stewed Snapper; Huangshan Braised Pigeon

Medicinal Cuisine

Chinese medicinal cuisine is unique in China and has a long history. Based on traditional Chinese herbal medicine practice, it combines strictly processed traditional Chinese medicine with traditional culinary materials to produce delicious food with health restoring qualities. In China, people contend that food tonic is much better than medicine tonic in fortifying one's health. To cook medicinal food, one has a large variety of fine materials to choose from and each material has its own unique flavor. Generally, processed herbal materials are more commonly used in order to avoid strong odors. However, individuals of different physical status need to select different herbs. The selection of herbs will depend on each individual's condition of health. Due to its herbal nature, it is better to take medicinal food according to the doctor's prescription.
In the cooking of medicinal food, slow cooking methods such as stewing, braising and simmering are usually used in order to extract more of the herbs' healing properties.

Typical medicine cuisine:

• Baby Pigeon Stewed with Gouqi (Medlar) and Huangqi (membranous milk vetch);
• Pork Simmered with Lotus Seed and lily;
• Pig's Kidney Stewed with Eucommia Bark.

Symbolism in Chinese Food

Symbolism is a very important part of Chinese people’s life. A lot of Chinese foods are also symbolic, especially during traditional festivals or other special occasions.

For Chinese New Year:

• Black moss seaweed - wealth
• Dried Bean Curd - happiness
• Chicken - happiness and marriage (especially when served with "dragon foods," such as lobster. Family reunion (if served whole)
• Eggs - fertility
• Egg Rolls - wealth
• Fish served whole - prosperity
• Lychee nuts - close family ties
• Noodles - A long life
• Oranges – wealth, luck
• Chicken - part of the symbolism of the dragon and phoenix. At a Chinese wedding, chicken's feet (sometimes referred to as phoenix feet) are often served with dragon foods such as lobster. Chicken is also popular at Chinese New Year, symbolizing a good marriage and the coming together of families (serving the bird whole emphasizes family unity).
• Peanuts - a long life
• Peaches - peacefulness
• Pomelo - abundance, prosperity, having children
• Seeds (lotus, watermelon, etc.) - having a large number of children
• Tangerines - luck

For a wedding:

• Zao (Chinese date), peanut, guiyuan (longan) and sunflower seeds - having a “noble” (precious) son very soon
• Eggs - fertility

Other occasions:

• Snapper’s head or shell - welcome
• Red Boiled Egg - for newborn baby

Using Chopsticks and Table Manners

Chopsticks

Chinese simply choose chopsticks as their tableware rather than knife and fork since Chinese people, under cultivation of Confucianism, consider knife and fork bearing sort of violence, like cold weapons. However, chopsticks reflect gentleness and benevolence, the main moral teaching of Confucianism.
Chinese food seems to taste better eaten with chopsticks which are the special utensil Chinese use to dine. It will be an awkward experience for foreigners to use chopsticks to have a meal. Fortunately, learning to eat with chopsticks is not difficult.
The method of using chopsticks is to hold one chopstick in place while pivoting the other one to pick up a morsel. How to position the chopsticks is the hard part. First, place the first chopstick so that thicker part rests at the base of your thumb and the thinner part rests on the lower side of your middle fingertip. Then, bring your thumb forward so that the stick will be firmly trapped in place. At least two or three inches of chopstick of the thinner end should extend beyond your fingertip. Next, position the other chopstick so that it is held against the side of your index finger by the end of your thumb. Check whether the ends of the chopsticks are even. If not, then tap the thinner parts on the plate to make them be even.
Ok, now you are going to practice. Just place a little pressure on the upper chopstick, the one against your index finger, to make it pivot on the index finger while keep the bottom chopstick stationary. Isn't it easy? After a little practice, you can use them to enjoy your Chinese food. You’ll certainly need to take care in the first few attempts.
Using chopsticks to eat rice is a problem to most foreigners. Generally the tip to eat rice is to bring one's rice bowl close to one's mouth and quickly scoop the rice into it with one's chopsticks. Since this is difficult for foreigners, it is perfectly acceptable simply to lift portions of rice to the mouth from the bowl held in the other hand.
There are superstitions associated with chopsticks too. If you find an uneven pair at your table setting, it means you are going to miss a boat, plane or train. Dropping chopsticks will inevitably bring bad luck. Crossed chopsticks are, however, permissible in a dim sum restaurant. The waiter will cross them to show that your bill has been settled, or you can do the same to show the waiter that you have finished and are ready to pay the bill.

Table manners

In China, since people eat together, usually the host will serve you some dishes with his or her own chopsticks as a show of hospitality. Since this is different than Western customs, you can leave the food alone if you feel too awkward.
There are some other rules you are suggested to follow to make your stay in China happier, though you will be forgiven if you have no idea what they are:

• Never stick your chopsticks upright in the rice bowl, since that is usually done at a funeral and will be seen as an extremely impolite gesture to the host and seniors present.
• Make sure the spout of the teapot is not pointing toward anyone.
• Don't tap on your bowl with your chopsticks, since that will be deemed an insult to the host or the chef.
• Never try to turn a fish over and debone it yourself, since the separation of the fish skeleton from the lower half of the flesh will