With a piece of big land and 5000 years of history, Chinese cuisine is extremely complicated. Different regions have different cultures, climates and ingredients so that people have formed different types of cuisine. The most basic types are these four: Lu, Chuan, Su, Yue which presents four major regions in China.
I am trying to introduce my own understandings of the four cuisines, in brief, not in details, otherwise I won’t get any sleep tonight. If you are interested, please wiki ‘Chinese cuisine’ and find more about it.
So firstly, the Lu cuisine. ‘Lu’ means Shandong province in Chinese. It is on the east coast of north China and basically represents north Chinese cuisine, that means, including the national capital Beijing. Typical Lu cuisine has a quite heavy taste: salty, oily, loads of sauce and rich colours. It also uses all sorts of ingredients including sea food, red meat, and earthy ingredients.
The picture shown above is heavy soy sauce flavoured pork shank surround with poached baby pak choi. Still quite balanced, ha?
Next is the Chuan cuisine. If you tell me you’ve never heard of it, have you ever heard of the ‘famous’ Sichuan pepper then? Yes, Chuan as Sichuan province, in the middle of China, is the icon representative of hot spicy cuisine. Because the weather in southwest China is quite chilly and damp (misty mountains and panda’s hometown), so people in this region need chili (not chilly) and hot food to fight against the cold. Chongqing hot pot, for example, has become the nation’s favourite in the last 20 years.
In above picture it is a giant bowl of freshwater fish, sliced and boiled in dried chili sauce. If you are brave enough, dig in!
The third one is Su cuisine, which represents the region on the east coast of China, Jiangsu province, Zhejiang province and Shanghai. My lovely hometown (so for sure my cooking are heavily influenced)！People in this region like fresh and mild taste, somehow more strangely, a sweet taste. For example, the world’s well-known dish, sweet and sour pork/fish is original from here. It is also famous of freshwater ingredients, such as hairy crab, if not sounds too scary to you. Chinese people pay good money for them, at least £50/kg for decent ones.
The picture above is quick stir fried freshwater prawns called crystal prawns. They are very small, about 5mm in diameter each.
Last but not least, the Yue cuisine. Maybe this is the one you are most familiar with because thanks for the Hong Kong people, their restaurants are all over the world. ‘Yue’ simply means Canton (Guangdong) province and the cuisine is famous of using a wide range of fresh ingredients. There is a saying that Cantonese eat everything but flights in the sky, everything but submarines in the water! So don’t make me mention those snakes……anyway, the Yue dishes normally have a light taste and have brought the most western elements into Chinese cuisine.
In the above picture is the roast baby pork, big occasions’ must for transitional Cantonese party. I had one in my ‘first breakfast’ because I married to a Cantonese!
Note: all the pictures in this post are from internet.
I am not rattling superb with English but I line up this very easygoing to interpret.
I lived in Hong Kong for three years and my second daughter was born there. My oldest was four when we moved and she grew up speaking Cantonese. We love the Chinese food and culture and now back home in New Zealand we are all learning to speak Mandarin. I miss Hong Kong and was so sick when I had to leave. I was home sick so bad when we came back here! I am an egg! White on the outside but inside yellow. Thanks for the lovely recipes you shared. I enjoy them. But I have to tell you that your English is very cute. I love it. ONe thing you might like to correct though is in your description of the “Su cuisine.” You say that they like to use fresh water ingredients such as “hairy crap.” I’m not brave enough to eat that one but I think you mean hair crab? Or maybe hairy carp? My family were rolling on the floor laughing. I’m sure if you heard my Mandarin you also will be rolling with laughter too! Don’t worry we enjoyed the laugh and we didn’t laugh in an unkind way. Thanks so much for sharing all the wonderful things on your site.
Hi, Sarah. Really nice to hear from you and thanks for your comments. I have correct the ‘crap’ immediately when I saw your note…never trust those self checking tools again as they hide crap! My husband’s family is in Hong Kong and we go back to see them every year or so. Food over there is fab…and night life of course. Your ‘egg’ theory is so cute, it’s the first time I heard about it…before I always say my husband is a ‘banana’, yellow outside and white inside…so when I told him about ‘egg’ we both bursted to laugh. Thank you again and I will carry on writing.