Chinese often greet with "Have you eaten?" There are also many common sayings about eating, such as "food is the most important thing for the people", "what rice to human is what steel to iron ", etc. Obviously, eating has a high status in the hearts of the Chinese people.
I often hear foreigners say "Haidilao(a kind of hot pot) is delicious" or "I like Chongqing spicy chicken best". But when asked where these Chinese dishes are from, most people shake their heads. Therefore, it is also very important to popularize knowledge about food to foreign friends.
China has a vast territory and numerous nationalities, with delicious food varying from one region to another in taste. As the saying goes, "southern cuisine is sweet; northern one is salty; eastern is spicy; western is sour." In other words, in total, dishes in southern China tend to be sweeter, while in northern China salty, in eastern China spicier, in western China sourer. Nowadays, many people say this statement is not quite right, so they change it to " southern cuisine is sweet; northern cuisine is salty; western cuisine is spicy; eastern cuisine is fresh". The word "fresh" here refers to seafood. This sentence means that the food in southern China tends to be sweet; in northern China salty; in western China spicy and in eastern China residents tend to eat seafood.
Northern cuisine, represented by cuisine in northeast of China and northern China, is mostly salty. Representative dishes include northern dishes such as fried pork, local delicacies, pickled cabbage rice noodle and other famous Beijing dishes such as Peking duck and Zhajiang Noodles. Compared with southern dishes, the amount of salt used is indeed quite large.
Southern cuisine in eastern and southern China, represented by cuisine in Shanghai and Guangzhou, is generally sweet. Wuxi, for example, is known for having "China's sweetest dishes". The representative dish of Wuxi, sweet and sour pork ribs, is unacceptable to northerners. The soup and snacks in Guangdong are light and tasty, which are very popular with Japanese and Koreans.
Most dishes in western China are spicy. The most representative is Sichuan cuisine, which is spicy. Representative dishes include spicy hot pot, malatang, boiled fish, etc. Because it is spicy, many foreigners cannot bear it. However, people who like spicy food enjoy it and eat it almost every day. In fact, besides Sichuan, Hunan and Guizhou are also regions characterized by spicy, but they are not as famous as Sichuan.
Finally, the eastern acid food(the seafood in eastern China ) is in the eastern coastal area. Because seafood is easy to catch at the seaside, various seafood dishes are very famous. Fried clams of Qingdao and fried sea clams of Fujian are all famous snacks. In addition, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other places in the central plains are famous for loving sour food. Shanxi's aged vinegar is said to be good for your health if you have it often.
