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Cantonese cuisine (粵菜, pinyin: Yuecai) originates from the region around Canton in southern China's Guangdong province. There is a Cantonese saying: "We eat everything on the ground with four legs except tables and chairs. We eat everything in the sky except airplanes." Cantonese cuisine includes almost all edible food in addition to the staples of pork, beef and chicken -- snakes, snails, insects, worms, chicken feet, duck tongues, ox genitals, and entrails. A subject of controversy amongst Westerners, dogs are raised as food in some places in China, though this is not a common food one finds in restaurants, and is illegal in Hong Kong and will soon be in Taiwan. Despite the countless Cantonese cooking methods, steaming, stir frying and deep frying are the most popular cooking methods in restaurants due to the short cooking time, and philosophy of bringing out the flavor of the freshest ingredients. Guangdong cooking is one of China's four major regional styles and, despite northern critics decrying it as too uncomplicated to warrant the term "cuisine", it's unmatched in the clarity of its flavours, the attention paid to the ingredients' natural characteristics, and its appealing presentation. The style itself can be subdivided into Cantonese , emanating from the Pearl River Delta region; Chaozhou , from the city of the same name in the far east of Guangdong; and Hakka , from the northeastern border with Fujian, named after the Han subgroup with whom it originated. Though certain Chaozhou and Hakka recipes have been incorporated into the main body of Guangdong cooking - sweet and sour pork with fruit, and salt-baked chicken, for instance - it's Cantonese food which has come to epitomize its principles. With many Chinese emigrants leaving through Guangzhou, it's also the most familiar to overseas visitors, though peruse a menu here and you'll soon realize that most dishes served abroad as "Cantonese" would be unrecognizable to a local resident. Spoiled by good soil and a year-round growing season, the Cantonese always demand absolutely fresh ingredients . To prove the quality of their product, restaurants keep their ingredients alive and kicking in cages, tanks or buckets at the front of the restaurant for diners to select themselves. Westerners can be repulsed by the collection of wildlife outside some Guangdong establishments, and even other Chinese comment that the Cantonese will eat anything with legs that isn't a piece of furniture, and anything with wings that isn't an aeroplane. The cooking itself concentrates on the natural aspects of the food, designed to keep textures distinct and flavours as close to the original as possible, using a minimum amount of mild and complimentary seasonings to prevent dishes from being bland. Fast stir-frying in a wok is the best known of these procedures, but roasting , and slow-simmering in soy sauce and wine are other methods of teasing out the essential characteristics of the food. No full meal is really complete without a simple plate of rich green and slightly bitter choisam , Chinese broccoli, blanched and lightly dressed with oyster sauce. Also famous is fish and seafood , often simply steamed with ginger and spring onions, and nobody cooks fowl better than the Cantonese, always juicy and flavoursome whether served crisp-skinned and roasted or fragrantly casseroled. Guangzhou's citizens are also compulsive snackers, and outside canteens you'll see roast meats, such as strips of cha shao pork, waiting to be cut up and served with rice for a light lunch, or burners stacked with claypots , a one-person dish of steamed rice typically served in the cooking vessel with vegetables and slices of sweet lap cheung sausage. Cake shops selling heavy Chinese pastries and filled buns are found everywhere across the region. Some items like custard tartlets are derived from foreign sources, while roast pork buns and flaky-skinned mooncakes stuffed with sweet lotus seed paste are of domestic origin. Perhaps it's this delight in little delicacies that led to the tradition of dim sum ("snacks"; dian xin in Mandarin) really blossoming in Guangdong, were it has become an elaborate form of breakfast most popular on Sundays, when entire households pack out restaurants. Also known as yum cha - literally, "with tea" - little dishes of fried, boiled and steamed snacks are packed inside bamboo steamers or displayed on plates, then wheeled around the restaurant on trolleys, which you stop for inspection as they pass your table. On being seated you're given a pot of tea which is constantly topped up, and a card which is marked for each dish you select and later surrendered to the cashier. Try rice porridge juk, spring rolls, buns, cakes and plates of thinly sliced roast meats, and small servings of restaurant dishes like spareribs, stuffed capsicum, or squid with black beans. Save most room, however, for the myriad types of little fried and steamed dumplings which are the hallmark of a dim sum meal, such as har gau, juicy minced prawns wrapped in transparent rice-flour skins, and shao mai, a generic name for a host of delicately flavoured, open-topped packets.
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eating in Guangzhou
Guangzhou is universally known for its excellent food. Cantonese cuisine is one of the Famous Eight in China with different flavors and styles, by using diverse and delicate materials, exotic spices and various cooking skills. Cantonese cuisine, as epitome of Chinese food culture, is a mixture of tradition and modern, east and west. Basically, it is also a combination of local dishes from the different prefectures of Guangdong Province, or even from other provinces and abroad. Cantonese dishes are often characterized with various unusual ingredients and materials. Apart from seafood, animals, insects and worms, flowers and weeds are all made into dishes. There is a variety of Cantonese dim sum, sweet or salty. The delicious Cantonese-style dim sum served with tea offers a fresh flavor in leisure time. It is estimated that there are over 1000 ways of making desserts in Guangzhou. Most locals are gourmets and love varieties. Scattered all over the city there are over 5 000 restaurants, teahouses and snack eateries, offering service around the clock. "It is not always possible to translate Chinese menus because many of the ingredients are either unknown or unmentionable to Western barbarians", a British magazine once commented on the Chinese dishes. If you want to enjoy authentic Cantonese dishes, you may visit any of the following traditional long-standing local restaurants (Laozihao in Chinese). They are popular for different sorts of Guangzhou dishes, which represent, probably, the essence of Cantonese cuisine:
A recent survey shows that
there are now fewer than 50 famous old brand names with a
history of over 50 years left in Guangzhou. The Laozihao
constitute a crucial part of the city's unique history and
Lingnan culture of the over 2200-year-old city. As part of the
rescuing and protecting program of the city's historic and
cultural relics, the municipal government of Guangzhou has
certificated a first round of 27 "Laozihao" (Old
Brand Names), in order to preserve the city's historic
well-known brand names, buildings and trademarks. In this
program, the "Laozihao" are seen as an integral part
of the city's cultural heritage. The special craftsmanship and
recipes, the brands and trademarks should be taken as valuable
invisible assets. The Cantonese came to the teahouse for different reasons. The real tea-drinkers, for instance, preferred to kill time with one pot of fragrantly hot tea and two plates of snacks. Businessmen came here to exchange information as well as to enjoy life a little bit over a cup of tea with some snacks in the old days. But thousands of ordinary urbanites would rush to the teahouse in the early morning for a moment of relaxation before starting the daily routine work. Most would like to go to the same teahouse as usual, where they would take the same seat to meet with their friends and fellows, inform each other of community gossips, or just have small talk among themselves. Sometimes, they simply talked of the hard life they endured. With time passing by, teahouses have prospered ever since they appeared in Guangzhou. Drinking tea has become an inseparable part of the local life. Nowadays, life here starts with the morning tea for many Guangzhou urbanites. So, if you are staying in Guangzhou and want to know about the local customs, better join the Cantonese in their passion for morning tea. In the midst of the crowds of Cantonese teahouse goers, you may get a better idea of what life is like in Guangzhou. |
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Noted people in history |
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-Hongxiannv -Huangfeihong |
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People and Life |
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| For foreigners | |
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Marriage |
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Chinese Visa |
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other info |
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| Guangzhou News | |
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