Do a loose search for ‘Chinese Cuisine’ and often you’ll be directed to books or websites telling you that China has eight distinct cuisines. Unfortunately, this is yet another myth. The repetition of this ‘fact’ comes from the Imperial court stating such hundreds of years ago and it becoming a cliché, both in and out of China. The eight are usually listed as:
鲁菜 (lǔ cài), Shandong cuisine
粤菜 (yuè cài) Cantonese cuisine
川菜 (chuān cài) Sichuan cuisine
苏菜 (sū cài) Jiangsu cuisine
湘菜 (xiāng cài) Hunan cuisine
浙菜 (zhè cài) Zhejiang cuisine
徽菜 (huī cài) Anhui cuisine
闽菜 (mǐn cài) Fujian cuisine
The list was compiled when China’s present day borders were somewhat different. In fact, not only are there many, many more; even within these categories there are distinctly different cuisines.
Hunan, for example has three distinguishably different cuisines, as does Guangxi where I live. Also, the list excludes many more. It only includes the majority Han Chinese cuisines and excludes the ethnic minority cuisines of which there are so many.
It also excludes significant cuisines such as Yunnan cuisine, Guizhou cuisine, Shaanxi cuisine, Xinjiang cuisine, Dongbei cuisine, Inner Mongolian cuisine, Tibetan cuisine and more. It doesn’t even include Beijing or Shanghai, both of which have their own distinct cuisines.
Over the next few posts I will attempt to herd cats and describe some of the eight, but more of the others as they tend to be less well known out of China.
