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The Chinese cookbook also contains quite an extensive list of foods, including just about anything edible with very few taboos. The Chinese, who see eating as a fortune and life as an art, not only created various kinds of regional food styles in its own vast lands, but have also spread Chinese food culture to far across the seas. Today, in this world where even the farthest corners can seem as close as one’s backyard, Chinese food can be enjoyed in each and every metropolitan throughout the world. Like many other countries with a vast territory, Chinese cuisines are differentiated largely by its northern and southern regional tastes.

Although the best quality rice in China is grown in its northeastern regions, people in those regions, however, just as other northerners, prefer to eat pasta or pastry instead. In the north, classic dishes include Beijing’s lamb hotpot (fondue) and roast duck, and Shandong province’s Lu style cuisines. In the south, the principal foods (foods that are the main source of carbohydrates and dietary fibers, e.g. bread and cereal in the west) are rice-based. A relatively greater variety of dishes are found in the south. There you can find the hot and heavily spiced Sichuan food, Xiang (Hunan) food, sweet and delicate Huaiyang food and the Yue (Cantonese) style which are mosdy seafood and soups. Thus foreigners who have been to China are often pleasandy surprised by the great differences in taste and food types by region. Having Chinese food not only indulges people’s sense of taste, the sense of sight is also entertained. The Chinese culinary arts rely on the canon of “color (aesthetic beauty), aroma, and taste,” missing any one element would not make a good dish.

To make the food pleasing to the eye, usually the appropriate meat and non-meat ingredients are selected; it would include a single main ingredient and two or three secondary ingredients of different colors. Blue, green, red, yellow, white, black and brown sauce colors are to be mixed inthe right combination. Through proper cooking techniques, aestheticism in food is achieved. “Aroma” is achieved by using the right spices, such as scallion, ginger, garlic, cooking wine, aniseed, cassia bark, black pepper, sesame oil, shiitake mushrooms and so on, to stimulate the appetite with the aroma from the cooked food. When preparing food, techniques such as fry, stir-fry, roast, steam, deep-fry, quick-fry, simmer and others are put to use, with the goal of preserving the natural taste and juices of the food. One can also add the right amounts of soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, spices, spicy pepper and other seasoning, making the dishes taste salty, sweet, sour, hot and much more.

With tomatoes, turnip, cucumber and other sculptural vegetables to create elegant and intricate decorations to the plate, and the use of exquisite fine china for dining ware, Chinese cuisines really become a true art form complete with aesthetic beauty, wonderful aroma, and great taste. Americans rely on calculating calories and cholesterol content from food to maintain good health and a shapely figure. The Japanese are into trying various health foods to preserve an everlasting youth. Different from both, the Chinese way of looking at health lies in its philosophy of “food and medicine sharing the same roots.” The firm belief that food has healing powers and therapeutic effects has led to the introduction of many edible plants and herbs. And with the benefits of disease prevention and health preservation, they have become regular dishes in Chinese homes. At the same time, there is the pursuit of refinement in cooking. The amount of food and mixing of ingredients is very essential, and it is recommended that meats and non-meats be used in combination. Whether making dishes or soups, foods with suited nutritional contents are put in combination so as to achieve the goal of balanced nutritional intake.