The Four Famous Chinese Cuisines
People regard food as their prime want, and food safety is a top priority.
Cooking is an ancient Chinese art. Some 3,000 years ago, the Chinese people already knew how to “deliciously” blend the five flavours—pungent, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty and today Chinese cuisines is ranked among the world’s best and Chinese restaurants can be found in many countries and regions throughout the world.
Chinese cooking places great stress on the colour, fragrance, taste, form and nutrition of the food and is very particular about cutting and temperature control. According to the rough estimates, there are more than 5,000 different local cooking style in China. The most popular cooking styles in China are those of Sichuan, Guangdong, Shandong, and Huaiyang(Jiangsu).
As early as the Qing Dynasty(1644-1911), some overseas Chinese opened Chinese restaurants in England and other countries and regions. Since then, Chinese cuisine has been popular the world over.
The Chinese cooking is very delicate and has a great variety. It is agreeable to different races of people all over the world.
Diet is a kind of civilization of humanity and cooking is a superb art. With the development of social productive forces, and the increase of international exchange, the Chinese cookery art is sure to be further improved. But it is a pity that only a few books were written about the Chinese cuisine in ancient times.
Sichuan style
Distinc  t features of Sichuan Style: They prefer steaming, simmering, and smoking. The cooking is elaborate and meticulous and the flavouring highly varied and mixed. The taste of each dish is very distinct. A common Chinese saying about Sichuan cuisine is that each meal has its own unique taste, and no two dishes have the same flavour. Sichuan cooking employs scores of condiments giving all the different tastes—salty, sweet, sour, hot, aromatic, peppery or bitter, of which a prickly pepper is the climate, the chefs there lean heavily on such warmth-giving ingredients as chilli pepper, black pepper, the mild red huajiao pepper, and ginger. Of hundreds of varieties of Sichuan dishes, it is said that only 20 per cent have a hot and numbing effect on the palate. In fact, the art of Sichuan cooking emphasizes the aesthetic of food. It offers everything pleasant and inviting to colour, aroma, and appearance, while flavour and is the top priority. What Sichuan cuisine boasts is an abundance of flavour and diversified methods of cooking.
Guangdong Style
Guangdong food is a representative of Guangdong foods, including all the delicacies of Guangdong, Chaozhou, Dongjiang, and Hainan Island. Guangdong food has absorbed some elements of Beijing, Suzhou, Yang  zhou, and Hangzhou cuisine, while keeping its south China flavour. In preparing the Guangdong cuisine, dozens of varieties of ingredients are often involved and more than 30 different kinds of cooking methods employed, such as frying, grilling, simmering, deep-frying, roasting, and braising, etc. Freshness is everything to the Guangdong cuisine. So is quick cooking: there is not much long broiling or barbecuing as North China. Also, there is no simmering for hours with spices and herbs like in the West. The objective is freshness, tenderness, smooth texture, and piquant flavour. These qualities are especially evident in another Guangdong specialty—roast suckling pig. A piglet is gutted and coated inside with fermented bean curd, sesame paste, fen liquor, and garlic-flavoured sugar, and then roasted until its skin is golden-red and shiny as lacquer. The custom is to eat the crisp, crackling skin first, and then the tender, smooth-textured flesh.
Shangdong Style
Shandong cuisine is known for its light seasoning, and delicacy. Its chefs make a point of retaining the original flavour, freshness, crispness, and tenderness of the ingredients. Among its specialties are Sweet-sour Huanghe(Yellow Riv  er) carp, fried crisp on the outside but tender that the meat can be shaken off the bones and melts deliciously in the mouth. Chefs in the coastal cities of Qingdao and Yantai excel in the preparation of seafood. Shandong cuisine is also known for its soup, both the clear and milky-white kinds. One clear type, prepared with materials, extracted from swallow’s nests, is often thr first major course at banquets.(soup uaually comes at the end of most Chinese meals) White soup made with wild rice stems or dandelion greens is famed for colour, fragrance, taste, and appearance.
Shandong food consists of Jinan and Fushan food. Jinan food makes good use of soup seasoning, frying in deep oil and sreaming. Shandong roast chicken is especially good with wine and the chicken is tasty and tender. Tasting it is guaranteed to make the diner believe.
 Huaiyang(Jiangsu) Style The origin of Huaiyang cuisine can be traced to pre Christian times. The clear-simmered soft-shelled turtle, a Huaiyang specialty, was listed in the famous delicacies mentioned in an ancient verse by Qu Yuan(c.340-c.278BC), one of the greatest poets in Chinese history. Yangzhou, where Huaiyang cuisine originated, remained an important economic and salt-trading center for more than 1,000 years, as the famous Beijing-Hangzhou Canal passed through there. The traders and men of letters from the North and South gathered there. They became patrons of the many local restaurants, which competed with each other for customers. The most important patron of the Huaiyang cuisine was Zhu Yuanzhang(1328-1398, reigned 1368-1398), founder of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Impressed by the local cuisine when he took control of Yangzhou as the leader of a peasant rebellion, Zhu Yuanzhang designated it as the imperial court kitchen master in Nanjingm the first capital Ming Dynaaty.
When the third Ming emperor Yongle(1360-1424, reigned 1403-1424) moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421, he brought the Huaiyang chefs with him.
Huaiyang specialties are lightly flavoured, whether they combine sweet-and –sour or sweet-and-salty tastes. Soy sauce and spices are mild and used sparingly, although the use of rich-flavoured broth is extensive.
Special Cuisine
Impe rial Court Cuisine
Imperial Court Cuisine(or Imitation Imperial Cuisine), as the name suggests, consists of dished once prepared exclusively for the imperial family. Every dynasty in Chinese history had an “imperial kitchen” to prepare meals for the emperor and his consorts, The dished were not only meticulously prepared, but also include rare and expensive foodstuffs, such as bear’s paws, birds’ nests, shark’s fins, venison, sea cucumbers, duck webs and other delicacies of land and sea. The Imperial Cuisine of today is based on the dishes prepared by the Qing imperial kitchens but further developed ever since. The imperial refreshments are especially palatable and unique in flavour, such as wandouhuang(pea flour cake), yundoujuan(kidney bean roll),xiaowotou(small steamed corn bread) and roumoshaobing(sesame seed cake with meat fillings)
Beijing Roast Duck
Beijing Roast Duck has the reputation of being the most delicious food Beijing has to offer. A Beijing duck dinner is uaually a fixed item on any Beijing tour itinerary. The earliest Beijing Roast Duck restaurant was the Bianyifang(Shop of Convenience and Pleasure or Cheap Restaurant), founded more than four hundred years ago,  in Rice Market hutong in the old Vegetable Market area in the southern city of Beijing. The place that offers the best Beijing Roast Duck is the Quanjude(Complete Collection of Virtues/Repository of All Virtues) Restaurant, opened in 1864 outside Qianmen(Front Gate). It has outlets at Hepingmen and Wangfujing. The founder of the Quanjude was Yang Quanren. It is said that he came to Beijing from nearby Jixian County, Hebei Province in 1835 and started up a duck and chicken stall(consisting of a plank across two stools) in the Meat Market outside Qianmen. At Quanjude, ducks are immersed in condiments unique to the restaurant and are roasted directly over flames stoked by fruit tree wood. The best roast duck is date-red, shining with oil, but with a crisp skin and tender meat. The chef then cuts the meat into thin pieces, each having a piece of skin. Then the meat is served with very thin pancakes, Chinese onions and special sauce. The way to savour it is to coat the thin pancakes with sauce, slap on a few pieces of meat and roll up the pancake. Chopsticks are optional: it is much easier just to grab the thing with tour bare hands.
Mongolian Hot Pot
Mutton Hot Pot(or Rinsed Mutton) is a Muslim specialty. all the year round, the family, relatives, and friends would gather round the fire and eat in intimacy and warmth. It has now spread to people of all nationalities including foreign diplomats and overseas visitors in Beijing and become one of the capital’s most celebrated dishes. The hot pot used to be a
brass pot with a wide outer rim around a chimney and a charcoal-burner underneath. Nowadays electric pot is used. Water containing mushrooms and dried shrimps is boiled in a pot. Thin pieces of raw mutton are cooked with chopsticks in a self-service pot of boiling water. Diner dip thin slices of raw mutton into the water, where the meat cooks rapidly. The cooked slices are then dipped into a sauce. This cooking method ensure that the meat is both tender, and tasty. Cabbage, noodles and pea starch noodles are gradually added to the boiling water, which becomes a very rich broth drunk at the end of the meal. The piquant sauce is individually mixed by each diner from an array of more than a dozen condiments such as sesame paste, rice vinegar, chopped green onion and minced coriander. Only raw meat, vegetables and seasoning are provided, and the diners cook and serve themselves. This makes for a rather active meal. Rinsed Mutton has a history of more than a thousands years, when beef, chicken, fish, shrimp, prok were also cooked in hotpots. Covering an area of 1,200 square meters, the new Donglaishun(Success Comes from the East) Restaurant can serve 350 customers at one time. Because of its reputation, the restaurant has established 62 chain restaurants in 19 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities throughout China.
Tan Cuisine Tan Cuisine originated in the household of Tan Zongjun, a bureaucrat of the late Qing Dynasty(1644-1911). Tan Zongjun was born into a famed scholar’s family in Guangdong Province and worked his way up to a senior official at a young age. He had been appointed as sheriff in many places and finally got a position in Beijing during his 30s. Since Tan was a cooking enthusiast, he looked to prefer his skills and learn about local dishes wherever he went. After moving to Beijing, he was even more intrigued by food. He made efforts to fuse Beijing cooking with cooking style of other places, especially of his hometown in Guangdong Province. Tan’s attempts were successful.
Suiyuan Cuisine
Suiyuan Cuisine, the Confucian Cuisine and the Tan Cuisine have been reputed as the three imperial official foods in feudal China. The Suiyuan Cuisine The Suiyuan Cuisine uses local delicacies in Nanjing as the principal dishes, incorporatin  g the local official cooking excellence of Jingsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. Yuan Mei(1716-1798), a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations of Qing Emperor Qianlong, Jiangning County magistrate, and poet of the Qing Dynasty, resigned and lived in Jiangning, near Nanjing, and built a garden at Xiaochuang hill, named Suiyuan Garden, hired a very skiful chef named Wang Xiaoyu and cooked for the Yuan family. Due to various reasons, for more than one hundred years, the type of cooking was lost completely and fortunately, for more than 20 years hard work, Mr Xue Wenlong, especially in 1980s, when he was in charge of the Chinese Kitchen in Jinling Hotel(a five-star hotel) in Nanjing and worked together with famous gourmet Mr Li Enhua and finally reproduced and perfected the Suiyuan dishes. Because of Yuan Mei’s talent, social status, position and influence, the Suiyuan Cuisine exerted the most influential and the most salient official style of food in South China.
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