Chinese cuisine: Encyclopedia - Chinese cuisine

Chinese cuisine

Chinese cuisine

• Anhui
• Cantonese
• Fujian
• Hunan
• Jiangsu
• Shandong
• Sichuan
• Zhejiang

• Chinese Buddhist
• Chiuchow
• Hakka
• Historical Chinese
• Hong Kong
• Huaiyang
• Chinese Islamic
• Macanese
• Mandarin
• Northeastern
• Shanghai
• Taiwanese
• Yunnan

• American Chinese
• Australian Chinese
• Canadian Chinese
• Caribbean Chinese
• Filipino Chinese
• Indian Chinese
• Indonesian Chinese
• Korean Chinese
• Malaysian Chinese
• Peranakan
• Singaporean Chinese
• Thai Chinese

The cuisine of China or Chinese cuisine is widely regarded as representing one of the richest and most diverse culinary heritages on Earth. It originates in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and has been developed around the world, South east Asia, North America, and Western Europe.

A meal in Chinese culture is typically seen as consisting of two general components: (1) a carbohydrate source or starch (Chinese: 主食, pinyin: zhǔshí, lit. "main food")—typically rice, noodles, or mantou (steamed buns) and (2) and accompanying dishes (菜, cài) of vegetables, fish, meat, or other items. (This cultural conceptualization is some ways in contrast to Western meals where meat or animal protein is often considered the main dish.)

As is well known throughout the world, rice is a critical part of much of Chinese cuisine. However, in many parts of China, particularly North China, wheat-based products including noodles and steamed buns predominate, in contrast to South China where rice is dominant. Despite the importance of rice in Chinese cuisine, at extremely formal occasions, it is sometimes the case that no rice at all will be served; in such a case, rice would only be provided when no other dishes remained. Soup is usually served at the end of a meal to clean the rice bowl and satiate one's appetite. Due to western influences, serving soup in the beginning of a meal is also quite normal in modern times.

Chopsticks are the primary eating utensil in Chinese culture for solid foods, while soups and other liquids are eaten ^[1] with a wide, flat-bottomed spoon (traditionally ceramic). It is reported that wooden chopsticks are losing their dominance due to recent logging shortfalls in China and East Asia; many Chinese eating establishments are considering a switch to a more environmentally sustainable eating utensil, such as plastic chopsticks. On the other hand, disposable chopsticks made of wood/bamboo have all but replaced reusable ones in small resturants, an environmentally irresponsible practice that is occasionally targeted by the government's timid environmental awareness campaigns. In most dishes in Chinese cuisine, foods are prepared in smaller pieces (e.g. vegetable, meat, tofu), ready for direct picking and eating. Traditionally, Chinese culture considered using knives and forks at the table "barbaric" due to fact that these implements are regarded as weapons. Fish are usually cooked and served whole, with diners directly pulling pieces from the fish to eat, unlike in some other cuisines where they are first filleted.

Spoon and fork are most often used by Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese eating at home, and are provided in many restaurants—especially "coffee houses" or kopi tiam. Some Chinese prefer to eat white rice with a spoon, even while eating other dishes with chopsticks. Many school cafeterias (canteens) in China provide only spoons for students eating, not chopsticks, for reusability and ease of washing.

In a Chinese meal, each individual diner is given their own bowl of rice while the accompanying dishes are served in communal plates (or bowls) which are shared by everyone sitting at the table. In western cultures, this communal style of service is known as "family style". In the Chinese meal, each diner picks food out of the communal plates on a bite-by-bite basis with their chopsticks. This is in constrast to western meals where it is customary to dole out individual servings of the dishes at the beginning of the meal. Many non-Chinese are unaccustomed in allowing a person's individual food utensils (which might have traces of a person's saliva) to touch the communal plates. For this hygienic issue, some Chinese families use additional serving spoons (or chopsticks) to move the pieces of the food from the communal plates to the persons' rice bowl. The food selected is often eaten together with a mouthful of rice.

Vegetarianism is not uncommon or unusual in China, though, as is the case in the West, is still only practiced by a relatively small proportion of the population. Most Chinese vegetarians are Buddhists. Western vegetarians eating Chinese cuisine will note that a large number of vegetable dishes may actually contain meat, as meat chunks or bits have been traditionally used to flavor dishes in Chinese cuisine, to some degree in contrast to the prevalence of meat dishes in Western cuisine or Chinese cuisine in the West, whose main ingredient is meat.

Desserts as such are less typical in Chinese culture as in the West. Chinese meals do not typically end with a dessert or dessert course as is common in Western cuisine. Instead, sweet foods are often introduced during the course of the meal with no firm distinction made. For instance, the basi fruit dishes (sizziling sugar syrup coated fruits such as banana or apple) are eaten alongside other "savoury" dishes that would be considered "main course" items in the West. However, many sweet foods and dessert snacks do exist in Chinese cuisine. Many are fried, and several incorporate sweet bean paste (dousha). (Bean paste is also used in Japanese cuisine). The matuan is filled with dousha and fried; it is often eaten for breakfast. Some steamed bun items are filled with dousha; some of these are in the shape of peaches, an important Chinese cultural symbol. Another dessert is Babao Fan (八寶飯) or "Eight Treasure Rice Pudding."

Chinese cuisine - Varieties

Due to the large and varied characteristics of China itself, a multitude of different regional and other (e.g. religious) styles can be identified in the larger complex of Chinese cuisine:

Chinese cuisine - Regions of mainland China

• Northwestern Chinese cuisine
• Mandarin cuisine
• Jiang-Huai cuisine
• Northeastern Chinese cuisine
• Cantonese cuisine (Guangdong province)
• Chiuchow cuisine (Chaozhou region, Guangdong)
• Hakka cuisine (Hakka ethnic group)
• Hunan cuisine
• Shanghai cuisine
• Sichuan cuisine
• Fujian cuisine
• Yunnan cuisine
• Hainan cuisine

Chinese cuisine - Other regions

• Cuisine of Hong Kong
• Macanese cuisine
• Taiwanese cuisine
• Nanyang Chinese cuisine (cuisine of the Nanyang region or Southeast Asia Chinese diaspora)

Chinese cuisine - Other categories

• Historical Chinese cuisine
• Chinese Islamic cuisine
• Chinese Buddhist cuisine

Chinese cuisine - Typical dishes

• Fried rice
• Potsticker (a kind of dumpling)
• Jiaozi (steamed dumpling)
• Noodles
  • Fried noodles
  • Noodle soup
• Kung Pao chicken
• Hotpot
• Fried pancakes (including green onion pancakes)
• Zongzi (rice balls, wrappedi in leaves)
• Peking Duck - the trademark dish of Beijing
• Baozi (filled steamed buns)
• Dim sum - originated in Guangzhou (Canton) and Hong Kong
• Steamed fish
• Tofu dishes

Breakfast foods

• Century egg (皮蛋; pi2 dan4; lit. leather egg), Hundred-year old egg, or preserved egg
• Tea egg (茶葉蛋; cha2 ye4 dan4): hard boiled egg soaked or stewed in tea
• Congee (粥; zhou1): rice porridge
• Pickled vegetables (醬菜; jiang4 cai4; lit. sauced vegetables)
• Soy milk (豆奶; dou4 nai3 or 豆漿; dou4 jiang1) in either sweet or "salty" form
• Youtiao (油條), "Cow tongue pastry" (牛脷酥), or other fried chinese doughfoods
• Shaobing (燒餅): a flaky baked or pan-seared dough pastry.
• Rice balls (飯糰; fan4 tuan2) with savory fillings or coatings

Starches

• Mantou (steamed bread)
• White rice
• Noodles

Chinese cuisine - Other East Asian cuisines

China shares much with the culinary heritage of other regions of East Asia, in addition to some contrasts; compare Japanese cuisine, Singaporean cuisine, and Vietnamese cuisine, among others.

Chinese cuisine - Chinese cuisine in diaspora

See American Chinese cuisine and Canadian Chinese cuisine for the development of Chinese cuisine in North America. Chinese cuisine is also highly developed in Western Europe. Within the United States, the cuisine of Hawaii contains many Chinese foods and Chinese influences, due to the high number of Chinese and Asian immigrants. However, Chinese-originated or -inspired foods are often combined with those of other cuisines in novel ways.

Chinese cuisine - Contemporary trends

The incidence of nutrition-related disease and overweightness, including obesity (especially among children) has risen dramatically in mainland China over the last 10-15 years. [2] The phenomenon has increased along with the increased popularity of Western foods, especially fast food, and other culinary products and habits. Many Western, especially American, fast food chains have appeared in China, and are highly successful economically. These include McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). These trends and health-related issues are widely documented in the Chinese and international news media.

Chinese cuisine - Note

^  Note: In most varieties or dialects of Chinese, the verb for consuming soup is actually translatable literally as "drink."

Chinese cuisine - Reference

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, Buwei Yang Chao, first ed. 1945.

See also

• Chinese American cuisine
• List of Chinese dishes

Category: Chinese cuisine

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Chinese cuisine", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki