The Eight Major Cuisines of China | 中国八大菜系 | Chinese Food Culture

What is China's food? It's much more than dumplings, stir-fried noodles or other side dishes in your local restaurants. China is best with different climates, geography and culture, making ingredients, cooking techniques, tastes and eating styles vary from region to region. In this video, let's dig a little deeper into China's food and the 8 great cuisines of China. First, to briefly know how the 8 cuisines divide up. Northern China is cold with long rainfall, so it's suitable for growing. People largely rely on flood-based food, such as steamed buns, noodles and dumplings. The food in the north is heavy on meat like beef and mutton because of the cold climate. People prefer salty and strong flavors. The south is warm and rainy enough for rice, making locals eat rice as the staple food. There is a great variety of ingredients, such as fruit, vegetables, fish and poultry. Eastern China has a mild climate, and the flavor of dishes is mainly sweet and salty. Coastal areas are full of seafood, which people cook a lot. Southwest China is rainy and humid. People eat spicy and strong-flavored food to remove dampness. According to the different cooking styles and regional flavors, Chinese cuisine has rapidly developed in many schools for thousands of years. In the early Qing Dynasty, the four major cuisines of Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong and Jiangsu were formed. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, four new cuisines, Fujian, Zhejiang, Hunan and Anhui became famous. Together with the former ones, they have learned 8 great cuisines. Now, let's learn about the 8 cuisines one by one according to the ranking of the most popular cuisines. Chuan cuisine is the food of Sichuan province, the home of pandas, and Chongqing, one of the ports of the Yangtze River Cruises. It's known for its hot spicy taste, using a lot of spicy chilies, garlic, ginger, black pepper and a particularly numbing Sichuan peppercorns. You may be sweating profusely after just a few bites of the dish, but you still can't stop eating, it's so addictive. That's why Chuan cuisine has quickly gained popularity around the world. It's easy for you to name some well-known dishes, like Sichuan hot pot, Hongbao chicken, rice cookie pork, Mapo tofu and Fuqi feipian. But the Sichuan cuisine we know now is very different from the one in ancient times. A long time ago, Sichuan cuisine was made of ginger, Sichuan pepper and other seasonings, without chili peppers. Chili peppers were introduced to China in the later Ming Dynasty. Since then, Chuan cuisine has gradually developed into the cuisine we eat now. Next is the Cantonese cuisine, also known as Yuecai. The cuisine covers the areas of Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macau. Without a doubt, it's the most popular Chinese cuisine outside of China, as many of the early Chinese who immigrated and set up restaurants overseas were Cantonese. The Englishmen saw some traditional Chinese food came from Cantonese, such as chow mein and dim sum. They are full of abundant ultra-fresh ingredients in this area. Most Cantonese dishes taste fresh, mild and slightly sweet, preserving the natural taste of all ingredients. If you want to try some classic dishes, there are various options, such as wild-caught chicken, dim sum, small pan rice, dry fried beef and noodles and Cantonese steamed sea fish. Let's move to the Hunan province, located in south-central China. The cuisine in Hunan is Xiangcai. If you like spicy food, Xiang cuisine is good for you as it's hotter than Sichuan food. It's heavy on oil, salt, spicy chilies and garlic like Chuan cuisine. But without Sichuan peppercorns, Hunan food tastes less nutty and sour. It's also famous for smoky meats, like smoky pork and smoky fish. There are some classic dishes that like steamed fish head with diced spicy red peppers, mouth-breathing pork belly and steamed smoked meat. With the longest history, Wu cuisine originated in Shandong province in northeastern China. It's a place famous for Qingdao beer and the birthplace of Confucius. It used to be the imperial cuisine for its complexibility, difficulty, freshness and the quality of ingredients. Shandong cuisine has had the biggest influence on northern China's cooking traditions in Beijing, Tianjin and northeastern. Shandong cuisine tastes salty, tender and crispy, favoring greasy and seafood. Green Chinese onion is a specialty of Shandong province that is allowed to enhance the flavor. Popular dishes include braised colon in brown sauce, fried carp with sweet and sour sauce, scallion braised sea cucumber and Dezhou grilled chicken. Now, go to the Yangtze River Delta region of eastern China. Huizhou cuisine originated from the ancient Huizhou in the Southern Song Dynasty. Including the area of the famous Huangshan Mountain, Hui cuisine is famous for using ham and rock candy to give flavor to its dishes. It mainly tastes salty and fresh. To name a few Hui cuisine dishes, smelly mackerel fish, Huizhou fried tofu, Fuji Li red pork chicken. Next is the Ming cuisine, which is from Fujian, a province on the southeast coast of China. It's famous for the use of delicacies from the mountains and sea as the main ingredients. The food is light and fresh, sweet and sour. Fujian cuisine also uses red rice wine to make Zhongtong dishes, which offers a distinctive flavor to that region. There are lots of famous dishes like Fudiaoqiang, a soup filled with seafood, poached chicken and mushroom, sweet and sour lychee mix and red rice wine fish. Zhe cuisine comes from Zhejiang province, a coastal province with many rivers. This place is bountiful, including the famous Jinhua ham, Hangzhou Longjing Qi and Shaoxing yellow wine, which make Zhejiang cuisine have its unique flavor. The food looks exquisite and tastes light and fresh, crispy and tender. The long-established dishes include West Lake fish in vinegar gravy, Dongpo pork, fried shrimps with Longjing Qi and baguette chicken. The last is the Su cuisine, which is one of the less famous of the eight great cuisines among foreigners. But one of the Su cuisine, Huaiyang cuisine, was once the imperial cuisine. It's still chosen for today's state banquet in China for its good looks and taste. Su cuisine is renowned for its intricate knife skills and elegant and delicate looks. It tastes fresh, mild, natural and slightly sweet. You could try some famous dishes like sweet and sour mandarin fish, Nanjing salty duck, lion's head meat balls. Which cuisine do you like the most? There are many other cuisines in China, such as Shanghai cuisine, Beijing cuisine and Chinese-Korean cuisine. If you want to know more about food and culture, leave your comments below and subscribe to ChinaTravel channel. See you next time, bye bye!