When you think of Chinese food you think of rice, and
rice was the first grain that was farmed in China. There is archaeological evidence of rice farming along the Yang-tse River as early as about 5000
BC. People cooked rice by boiling it in water, the way they do today. Or they made it into
wine. Rice wine has been popular in China since prehistory. But rice doesn't grow in northern China, which is much drier and colder. People in northern China gathered wild
millet and sorghum instead. By 4500 BC, people in northern China were farming millet. They ate it boiled into a kind of porridge.Another food people associate with China is tea. Tea grows wild in China. By about 3000 BC (or it could be much earlier), people in China had begun to drink tea. Soon everybody drank tea.
Wheat was not native to China, so it took much longer to reach China. People in northern China first began to eat wheat in the
Shang Dynasty, about 1500 BC. Wheat was not native to China, but people brought it to China from
West Asia. People in China boiled it like millet, to make something like Cream of Wheat. These were the main foods of China - rice, millet, sorghum, and wheat. In northern China, people mostly ate millet, wheat, and sorghum. In southern China, people mostly ate rice. Poor people ate almost nothing but these foods.
When people could afford it, they bought or grew vegetables to put on their rice. Soybeans, for instance, are native to China. So are cucumbers. For fruits, the Chinese had oranges and lemons, peaches and apricots. The native flavorings are ginger and anise (Americans use anise to make licorice).On special occasions, people also put little pieces of meat on their rice. By 5500 BC, the Chinese were eating domesticated chicken, which came originally from Thailand. By 4000 or 3000 BC, they were eating
pork, which was native to China.
Sheep and
cattle, which were not native, reached China from West Asia also around 4000 BC.
Since meat was so expensive, and because
Buddhists didn't eat meat, starting around the
Sung Dynasty (about 1000 AD) people also put
tofu, or bean curd, in their food as a source of protein. Because China doesn't have big
forests, it was always hard to find fuel to cook with. Chinese people learned to cut up their food very small, so it would cook quickly on a very small fire. During the
Han Dynasty, millet wine became very popular and was even more popular to drink than tea. Also beginning in the Han Dynasty, about 100
AD, Chinese people began to make their wheat and rice into long noodles. Marco Polo, a visitor to China from
Venice, wrote that by the time of
Kublai Khan, about 1200 AD, Chinese people ate millet boiled in milk to make porridge. Even as late as 1200 AD, Chinese people did not bake bread.
Ancient Chinese Food
Ancient Chinese food is full of flavor, aroma, and color along with all the wisdom of cooking methods learnt over a long period of time that goes back to about 5000 years.
Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher who lived in the 6th century BC and is considered the founder of Taoism, said: ‘Governing a great nation is much like cooking a small fish.’ What he meant was, in order to govern successfully, one required just the right adjustments and seasonings. This metaphorical allusion to food illustrates quite clearly how important it has always been in Chinese culture.
The Culinary History of Ancient Chinese Food The culinary history of ancient Chinese food dates back to about 5000 years. And over this vast period of time, the Chinese have developed and mastered a complex system of preparing food, such as: identifying ingredients that make compatible combinations; making use of cooking techniques that are multi-phased such as first steaming and then deep frying or stir frying, then boiling; and administering multi-phased flavoring like marinating between the stages of roasting, or after steaming, or before stir frying.
Some Ancient Chinese Food Cooking Styles Ancient Chinese food can be divided roughly into the Northern style of cooking and the Southern style of cooking.
Generally, Northern Chinese dishes tend to be oily, although they are not cloyingly so, and garlic and vinegar flavouring are more pronounced. Northern Chinese food also includes a lot of pasta; some of the favorite flour-based treats being steamed bread; fried meat dumplings; steamed stuffed buns; dumplings resembling ravioli; and noodles. The best known cooking styles of Northern Chinese food are perhaps the methods used in Shantung, Tientsin, and Peking. The Chinese wish for satiation and plenitude is symbolized by an elaborately made stuffed chicken. Some of the distinguishing Southern styles of cooking are: Hunan and Szechwan cuisine which are well known for the liberal utilization of chilli peppers; the Chekiang and Kiangsu styles of cooking with their emphasis on tenderness and freshness; and Cantonese cuisine which has a tendency of being a little sweet and includes a lot of variety. Rice as well as rice products like rice cake, rice congee, and rice noodles usually accompany Southern main dishes.
Flavor, Aroma, and Color in Ancient Chinese Food The Chinese always laid a lot of emphasis on satisfying the olfactory, visual, as well as the gustatory senses, which they did by giving equal importance to incorporating aroma, color, and flavor. Entrees usually have a combination of 3-5 colors, which are chosen from ingredients that are caramel, black, white, yellow, red, dark green, and green in color. Typically, a vegetable and meat dish is cooked using one principle ingredient and then including 2-3 ingredients of secondary importance which have contrasting colors. It is then prepared according to ancient methods of cooking, adding sauces and seasonings, resulting in an aesthetic dish full of aroma, color and flavor. The Methods of Cooking Ancient Chinese Food Some of the main methods of cooking are: pan-frying, flash-frying, deep-frying, steaming, stewing, and stir-frying. Since the Chinese always knew that the fragrant aroma of a dish whets the appetite, they used various flavoring agents like black, dried Chinese mushrooms, sesame oil, pepper, cinnamon, star anise, wine, chili peppers, garlic, fresh ginger, and scallions. One of the most important aspects of cooking any dish was to preserve the natural, fresh flavor, and remove all unwanted game or fish odors, which ginger and scallion served to do. Ingredients like vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce were used to enhance the richness of a dish without smothering the natural flavors. Hence, in ancient Chinese cooking, a well made dish would be: hot and spicy for those with a penchant for piquancy; sweetish for people with a predilection towards sweet flavor; for those with a preference for blander tasting food it would not be over-spiced; and for those who revel in strong flavors it would be rich. The Chinese were of the opinion that if a dish comprised of all these features and satisfied all these tastes, it was indeed a successful one.
