China, Stories in Food Rice and Vegetable

Rice is the main food for people living in the southern part of China and flour food for the northern. Wheat was introduced into China from Western Asia four or five thousand years ago. Wheat flour is highly applicable in use. In thousands of years, it influenced the diet of the Chinese, and contributed to China’s diversified food culture. A strong desire for wheaten food has led to the construction of transportation networks by land and by water, such as the Grand Canal built by Emperor Yang of Sui, and all kinds of water conservancy and irrigation projects located far away from the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Th¬ey completed the blood vessels spreading across the vast land of China. ¬rough these vessels, the blood of food flows, and sustains the spirit and culture of the Chinese people.
Cereals and vegetables complete their life cycle in the alternation of the four seasons, contributing to all tastes and flavours. In this book, you will see that when spring comes, Chinese people will have all kinds of delicious fillings rolled up in their golden-brown pancakes, or to make the stir-fried hecai (mixed vegetables), to take a bite of the season. In the hot summer days in South China, people will enjoy mifen (rice vermicelli) or rice noodle salad, which are both excellent food in summer, easy to make, with diverse tastes. When summer ends and autumn comes, wheat waves are rolling in North China, which is the romance of the earth. ¬e newly harvested wheat lends fragrance to “noodles by the knife”. In winter, when the earth is sleeping, Chinese people will have a dish named “braised two winters”, braised mushrooms and bamboo shoots), showing their courage to withstand the bitter cold. In the lunar month, they will use a variety of grains and dried fruits to make laba porridge, a food that will help them welcome the next spring.
Time and life go through one cycle after another in this way. We can’t stop the passage of time. However, the intelligent Chinese people have invented various ways to preserve food, and produced such long-lasting dishes as sausage, tofu skin and fermented tofu, which often accompany those who leave their hometown. ¬e Chinese usually compare the joys and sorrows of life with sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty tastes, and there’re mixed tastes in the life of every single person. Behind the “wife pie”and mapo tofu are the image of tough women; lotus root with sticky rice and osmanthus is a dish representing the sweet and pure love of a naïve girl, while women who have been suffering from annoying troubles in life prefer suanla oupian, sour and spicy lotus root slices) and stuffed bitter melon, or niang kugua. No matter rich or poor, glutinous rice cakes and stinky tofu will always wake up the memory in an instant about the steaming and noisy alley in the morning light of the hometown. Food has little to do with status and wealth, so Emperor Qianlong decided to include popular snacks of the poor, such as rice crispy and the “fry two”, a pairing of two famous snacks), into the menu of the imperial kitchen more than 200 years ago. No matter what life gives, Chinese people will accept it. ¬ey will wrap everything with a piece of dough, and swallow it, whether it’s a small steaming basket bun, or a shaomai ( a type of dumpling).