were a relatively late addition to the Sichuan palate, having been imported by Spanish traders in the late Ming or early Qing Dynasty (ca. 1600) from Mexico via the Philippines. The chili's journey on the Pacific Spice Route is a reminder of how plants, as well as ideas, can cross oceans and enrich the lives of the recipients. Sichuan's own taste-tingling spice. Sichuan pepper (the dried berry of an ash tree) still adds its distinctive flavor to many of the province's dishes.
The taste for piquant food is sometimes explained by Sichuan's climate. The fertile agricultural basin is covered with clouds much of the year and there is enough rain to permit two crops of rice in many places. Strong spices provide a pick-me-up in cold and humid weather and are a useful preservative for meat and fish.
When the Grand Canal was built in the Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581-618), it gave rise to several great commercial cities at its southern terminus, including Huaian and Yangzhou. after which this regional cuisine (Huaiyang) is named. The region's location on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China's "land of fish and rice" (synonymous with the Western "milk and honey") gave it a distinct advantage in terms of agricultural products, and it was renowned for aquatic delicacies such as fish, shrimp, eel and crab, which were shipped up the canal to the imperial court in Beijing. The cooking of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai generally falls into the category of Huaiyang cuisine, which was developed by the great families of the imperially appointed salt merchants living in Yangzhou.
Huaiyang cuisine is not well known outside of China, perhaps because it rejects all extremes and strives for the "Middle Way." Freshness (xian) is a key concept in the food of this region, but xian means more than just fresh. For example, for a dish of steamed fish to be xian, the fish must have been swimming in the tank one hour ago. it must exude its own natural flavor, and must be tender yet slightly chewy.
Xian also implies that the natural flavor of the original ingredients should take precedence over the sauce, and Huaiyang chefs achieve this by careful cutting and paying close attention to the heat of the wok. which is. after all. merely a thin and sensitive membrane of cast iron separating the ingredients from the flames of the stove. Chinese chefs, and Huaiyang chefs in particular, have an uncanny ability to control the flames of their stoves. Some of the best-known Huaiyang dishes are steamed or stewed and thus require less heat and a longer cooking time than most fried dishes; examples include chicken with chestnuts, pork steamed in lotus leaves, duck with an eight-ingredient stuffing, and "lion head" meatballs.
Beijing and the North
The cuisine of Beijing has perhaps been subjected to more outside influences than any other major cuisine in China First came the once-nomadic Mongols, who made Beijing their capital in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). They brought with them a preference for mutton, the chief ingredient in Mongolian Lamb Hotpot (see page 85), one of Beijing's most popular dishes in the autumn and winter.
And then there were the Manchus, who, as the rulers of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), introduced numerous ways of cooking pork. As the capital of China for the last eight centuries, Beijing became the home of government officials who brought their chefs with them when they came from the wealthy southern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang But the most important influence comes from nearby Shandong Province; in the 19th century, the restaurant industry in Beijing was monopolized by entrepreneurs from Shandong.
Chicken, duck and pork are roasted in wood-fired ovens in specialty shops and restaurants
Three generations sit down to a meal in the courtyard of an old house in Fujian Province, southern China.
Shandong food has a pedigree that goes back to the days of Confucius, who was a Shandong native. Shandong cuisine features the seafood found along China's eastern seaboard: scallops and squid, both dry and fresh, sea cucumber, conch, crabs, bird's nests and shark's fins. Shandong cuisine is also famous for its use of spring onions and leeks, both raw and cooked.
Beijing's most famous dish, Beijing Roast Duck, owes as much to the culinary traditions of other parts of China as to the capital itself. The ducks, now raised in the western suburbs of Beijing, are said to have swum up the Grand Canal in the wake of imperial grain barges, dining on rice that blew off the boats The method of roasting the duck is drawn from Huaiyang cuisine, while the pancakes, raw leek and salty sauce that accompany the meat are typical of Shandong.
Beijing is also famous for its steamed and boiled dumplings (jiaozi), which are filled with a mixture of pork and cabbage or leeks, or a combination of eggs and vegetables. Dipped in vinegar and soy sauce and accompanied with a nibble of raw garlic, they are one of the simplest but finest pleasures of Chinese cuisine.
Regional cuisine is so popular in China today that in Beijing and Shanghai, for example, there are many more restaurants serving Cantonese and Sichuan food—or advertising that they do—than there are establishments serving local cuisine. Western fast food restaurants have made an impact, but more as a novelty than as a staple of the diet. Chinese food, in all its glory, is here to stay.
All the Tea in China
Tea is a critical ingredient in Chinese life. Tea is drunk before a meal and after a meal, but rarely during a meal. Tea is drunk all day at work, at rest, when alone or with friends. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a situation in which tea is not present. Tea drinking is a Chinese invention, although the plant may have first been grown in Southeast Asia. In any case, the written record suggests that tea has been cultivated and drunk in China since the Han Dynasty (220 B.C.-A.D. 200).
The Japanese tea ceremony, which makes use of powdered tea and a bamboo brush to beat the tea until a froth appears on the surface, was inspired by Chinese tea customs in the Tang Dynasty. But the custom of drinking steeped leaf tea. as we know it today, began only during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). This accompanied the emergence of fine white porcelain that showed off the color and shape of the leaves to their best advantage.
There is only one tea plant, but many types of tea. Variations in color and flavor are obtained by the picking, fermentation, rolling and roasting time. Generally speaking, there are three types of tea: unfermented green tea, such as Longjing (Dragon Well); semi-fermented tea, such as Oolong; and fermented tea, such as the "black tea" (in Chinese, it is called "red tea") most popular in India and the West. Green tea is further mixed with jasmine blossoms to make jasmine tea. a favorite summer drink in North China. In South China, from Guangdong west to Yunnan, musty-rusty Pu'er tea is the most common drink.
Tea can be steeped in a pot or a cup. Fastidious drinkers discard the first, brief steeping as a way of cleaning the leaves and dilating them for the second steeping, regarded by many as the best. Good tea can be steeped as many as ten times. Judging from wine vessels found in archeological sites, it is likely that wine was first made in China from grain using the method of yeast fermentation around 5,000 years ago. when it was offered to the God of the Sun and the ancestors in rituals. The technique of distilling wine from kaoliang, a form of sorghum, became popular around 800 years ago.
Tea is more than just a drink in China, and the teahouse, where men gather to gossip, occupies much the same social role as a pub in England or a bar in France.
A surprising range of wines and spirits are found in special wine shops in China's towns and cities Cooking wines made from glutinous rice are found in regular provision shops.
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