Chinese cuisines

Chinese cuisines

Chinese cooking is one of the greatest methods of cooking.Cooking Chinese food requires more time and effort, and is considered a very sophisticated art. As a result, many travelers who have visited China consider Chinese cuisines one of the best.

A meal in Chinese culture is typically seen as consisting of two general components:

main food - a carbohydrate source or starch, typically rice (predominant in southern parts of China),noodles, or buns (predominant in northern parts of China), and accompanying dishes - of vegetables, fish, meat, or other items.

Chinese from different regions have different cooking ways, styles & tastes. For example, Sichuan cuisine is very spicy while Cantonese cuisine isn't spicy at all. People in the north eat wheat noodles or steamed buns while people from the south eat rice or rice noodles.

As China is a geographically huge country, it is diverse in climate, ethnicity and subcultures. Not surprisingly therefore, there are many distinctive styles of cuisine. Traditionally there are eight main families of dishes, namely

* Hui (Anhui)

* Yue (Cantonese)

* Min (Fujian)

* Xiang (Hunan)

* Yang (Jiangsu)

* Lu (Shandong)

* Chuan (Szechuan)

* Zhe (Zhejiang)

Today there are mainly four main styles of food in China, namely the Beijing Style, the Shanghai Style, the Sichuan Style and the Cantonese Style. The Cantonese style is the most popular style in overseas restaurants. When you are traveling in China, you would find it extremely hard to resist the Peking duck, the Shanghai pork bun, or the Cantonese dim sum.