Chinese Food Culture

Chinese food history is as long as Chinese history. In the long period of development, many delicious food keep popping up and many are still enjoyed today. Among them, some are festival foods more frequently eaten on special festivals while some are eaten commonly in everyday life. In Chinese society, people usually treat others with meals in order to make new friends or enhance established relationships. Cantonese breakfast is known as morning tea and lots of people talk about business and exchange information while having morning tea together.

Popular Foods

Varied Flavors

China has a vast territory and abundant resources, and each region has different climate, natural products and folk customs. After a long time, different region has formed its own food flavors. For example, people in southern China take rice as staple food, while people from northern China are used to eat noodles or steamed buns as staple food. As for the flavor, the whole country can be generally divided into four parts: sweet south, salt north, sour east and spicy west.

Different dishes in different seasons

Chinese people will change their menus as the switch of each season, from the raw materials to the cooking methods, each season uses different seasonings and accompany dishes. Winter has a thicker and rich flavor, while summer features in light and cool flavor; cuisines in winter are most braised or stewed, while in summer, they are mostly served as cold and dressed with sauce.

Aesthetic sense

Chinese cuisine puts great importance on the aesthetic sense of the dish, and pursues the harmony in color, aroma, taste, shape and utensil. The aesthetic sense of the cuisine can be expressed from multiple aspects. No matter the raw material is Chinese cabbage or carrot, they can all be cut into different shapes to match the whole dish, which gives people a highly unified mental and physical enjoyment.

Combining Food and Chinese Medicine

Chinese people believe that except providing nutrition to the body, food can also cure disease. When you are not serious ill, you can cure your disease by eating the right food, only after the food doesn’t work, you may turn to the medicine. Medicine is believed to have some toxicity more or less, thus, food is a safer way to maintain health and cure disease (sadly to say, it works slower).