Chinese Cuisine

China is world-renowned “epicurean kingdom”. Few visitors leave this country without being smitten by the Chinese culinary art, and quite a few of them regard Chinese dishes as the best in the world. Chinese restaurants are a dime a dozen nowadays around the world, but for a taste of the authentic fare, China is definitely the place to be.

Chinese cuisine by and large falls into six schools:

1)Imperial Dishes

These dishes originated in the kitchen of the imperial palace for the exclusive enjoyment of the emperor and empress in bygone days. Graceful names that give wing to imagination, impeccable selection of ingredients，and state-of-the-art cooking techniques designed to preserve natural hue, aroma and taste are the major hallmarks of these imperial dishes. Peking Duck is one of such dishes.

2)Mansion Kitchen Fare

High officials and famous personages who cared so much for what they ate in bygone days went out of their way to hire famous chefs with handsome pay. With superb culinary skills, these chefs become a school of their own behind the walls of the mansions of the rich and powerful, and eventually their styles of cooking found their way to the public.

The ConfucianMansion and the Tan Family are representative of the mansion-style of Chinese cuisine. The Confucian fare is being dished out in the Confucian Restaurant at Beijing's Liulichang, and the Tan Family Kitchen has opened shop in Beijing Hotel.

3)Local Cuisine

Regional differences in resources, climate and folklore have given rise to a variety of cooking schools in China. The Shandong, Sichuan, Yangzhou and Canton are the four major schools. Another theory puts the number at eight, with the addition of Hunan, Fukien, Anhui and Shanghai so that the nation has ten major schools of Chinese cooking. Shandong, Sichuan, Yangzhou and Cantonese cooking, however, are generally regarded as the most influential of all schools of Chinese cuisine – the others are simply regarded as branches.