A country of many kitchens
There is no single Chinese cuisine. Chinese cooks traditionally speak of eight great regional styles, from the delicate steamed dishes of Canton in the south to the fiery food of SZECHUAN in the west. Sichuan pepper is not related to black pepper at all; it is the dried husk of a kind of prickly ash. It makes the lips tingle and go numb, and in 2013 scientists found that the tingling feels much like a vibration fifty times a second. Cooks there pair it with chillies for a hot and numbing flavour called mala.
Most of the first Chinese restaurants abroad were opened by people from Guangdong in the south, who emigrated in the 1800s to work in the gold rushes and on the railways of America and Australia. That is why Cantonese cooking, adapted to local tastes, became what much of the world thinks of as Chinese food.
Chopsticks and the wok
CHOPSTICKS have been used in China for more than 3,000 years, first as cooking tools for reaching into hot pots, and later for eating. Because food was cut into bite-sized pieces in the kitchen, there was no need for knives at the table. Small pieces also cook fast, which suits the WOK, a thin, round-bottomed pan that heats in moments over a fierce flame and needs little fuel. A good STIR FRY picks up a smoky taste from the searing heat that Cantonese cooks call wok hei, the breath of the wok.
One rule of chopstick manners is almost universal across East Asia: never leave them standing upright in a bowl of rice. It looks like the sticks of incense placed at funerals.
Dim sum, duck and dumplings
DIM SUM means touch the heart. It grew out of tea houses in southern China, where travellers stopped for tea and small snacks; in Cantonese the meal is still called yum cha, drink tea. PEKING DUCK, from the imperial kitchens of Beijing, is made from ducks raised especially for it. Air is blown under the skin to separate it from the meat, and the duck is glazed and roasted until the skin is thin and crisp, then carved at the table and rolled in pancakes with spring onion and sweet HOISIN sauce.
At the Lunar New Year, families in northern China fold a DUMPLING for every guest, shaped like old silver ingots to bring wealth in the year ahead. Our Lunar New Year page covers the festival. A WONTON is a smaller dumpling, often served in soup, and BAO is a soft, fluffy steamed bun.
Invented far from China
Some favourite Chinese restaurant dishes were created abroad. The EGG ROLL, with its thick, bubbly wrapper, is American, a cousin of the thinner SPRING ROLL. The fortune cookie was most likely invented in California, probably by Japanese bakers. General Tso's chicken was created in Taiwan in the 1950s by a chef who had fled there from mainland China.
The rest of the grid is older. TOFU, curdled soya milk pressed into blocks, has been made in China for well over a thousand years. CONGEE is a soft rice porridge eaten for breakfast. A Tang dynasty emperor is said to have had fresh LYCHEE fruit rushed hundreds of kilometres to his favourite consort by relays of horsemen, because it spoils within days. FRIED RICE, CHOW MEIN, NOODLES, GINGER, SESAME and CASHEW chicken fill in the menu.