Introduction:
Chinese food has experienced four or five thousand year’s development history. It is com-posed by the court cuisine from past dynasties, official’s home cuisine and every local cuisine series, and the main body is the every local cuisi- ne. Its superb cooking skills and rich cultural connotation are called world-class.
China is a vast country, as the different natural conditi- ons, people living habits, econom ic and cultural development status forming the different local flavor in the aspect of cooking and dishes category. North and South two major styles had begun to emerge since Spring and Autumn period, and fully formed during the Tang and Song dynasties. By the early Qing Dynasty, Shandong Cuisine (inc-luding Beijing, Tianjin and so on the northern regions’ style dishes), Suzhou Cuisine (inclu- ding Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui regions’style dish- es), Cantonese cuisine (includ- ing Fujian, Taiwan, Chaozhou, Hainan regions’ style dishes), Sichuan Cuisine (including Hunan, Hubei,Guizhou and Yunnan regions’ style dis- hes), had become the most infl- uential local dishes in our country, called "four cuisine."
With the further development of the catering industry, some local cuisines even displayed their unique characteristics and form their own faction, so, at the end of Qing Dynasty, by adding Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan and Anhui local dishes to form the as "eight cuisine." Despite the proliferation of cuisine, people still used to "four cuisines" and "eight cuisines" to represent thousands of local dishes of our country. The fam- ous local style dishes have be- en several thousand, their mat- erials observed and studied choice, fine production, vari- ous varieties, different flav- ors, emphasizing the harmoniz- ation unification of color,aro- ma, flavor, shape, and wares, enjoyed high reputation in the world. These famous dishes most have their own development his- tory, not only embodied the superb traditional craft, and also have kinds of beautiful legends or literary quotation, becoming a key part of our cat- ering culture. |