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To people who enjoys food: you never know what you've missed if you never been to Sichuan or Chongqing.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
The weird thing about Chengdu is that they don’t have kungpao chicken, which is actually just Beijing-style Sichuan food. You can have inauthentic Chinese food even China.
- justicezyx 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/-AZ87qyHQ88 https://youtu.be/-AZ87qyHQ88 The video is a Sichuan master chef showing the cooking procedure. He speaking of Sichuan accented mandarin. Gongbao jiding is traditional Sichuan dish. You might simply did not see that on menu at chengdu. Sichuan has 80million people, chengdu 16million, it’s expected to see highly clustered food style even in a city.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    宫保鸡丁 was invented by a Beijjng chef serving a mandarin on assignment in Sichuan, they had some visitors but didn’t have much time to prepare something, so they came up with that at the last minute, which impressed the visitors and became popular “back home.” Truly the definition of transplanted food (like how lemon chicken is popular in the states as canonical hunan food but is not anything of the sort). There are dishes that resemble it that are authentic Sichuan (eg laziji), so you are more likely to find something similar with a different name. I’ve been through much of Sichuan province, though much of that (Eg Daocheng) was actually Tibetan where Sichuan food was considered transplanted by default.
    - justicezyx 6y ago
      So you are saying a dish should be named after the chef who cooked it? A beijing chef cook in Sichuan, using the local cooking style and technique, are still considered a Beijing dish, that's what you implied here. I am not saying it's wrong. But that's not how Chinese people think about the dish...
      - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
        That’s the story the Chinese go with, and it seems pretty reliable since it happened relatively recently during the Qing dynasty. It wasn’t named after the chef, but his boss of course. The fact that some food is more popular outside of the regions they represent isn’t really weird. You see that a lot with Chinese food inside and outside of China.
        justicezyx 6y ago
        Thanks for “educating” myself, a Chinese, about how a story goes by Chinese. I wonder how many non Chinese people holding the same analytic rigorous as yours, claiming a story as authoritative over other interpretations, which were held by actual Chinese... That’s manifested in popular culture, like in the well received, yet awkwardly dismissive to many Chinese people, movie “The farewell”. It has this line of thought that the life of a Chinese belongs to his/her family, and so the old granny were deprived of knowing her cancer diagnose. A hilariously nonsensical idea. People were hiding from cancer diagnosis, because cancers were thought to be death sentence, and for many who were deemed financially impossible to afford the treatment, or is in a terminal state that death was inevitable, people were hidden from that to help them live a relatively less stressful last stage of their life. The nonsense of “life belongs to family” is such a fitting story goes by Chinese, according the western perspective...
        seanmcdirmid 6y ago
        > Thanks for “educating” myself, a Chinese, about how a story goes by Chinese. You welcome? I mean, its not like you can't find plenty of documentation on this if you are Chinese, it was only invented in the 19th century, its not like it was invented during the Qin dynasty where documentation is hard to come by and largely via folk tails.
        justicezyx 6y ago
        Sorry for being sarcastic. I meant to say that foreigner should respect the local view. Not blindly apply scientific judgement based on the data. Your tone of comments appears assuming a stance of authority over a local person (a Chinese here). That makes me uncomfortable. And finally, I did not see your references of proof. And I have given the youtube video with the Sichuan chef.
- baybal2 6y ago
  North China cuisine is itself a reverse adaptation of Mongol/Manchu adaptation of Chinese cuisine.

The weird thing about Chengdu is that they don’t have kungpao chicken, which is actually just Beijing-style Sichuan food. You can have inauthentic Chinese food even China.

justicezyx 6y ago
https://youtu.be/-AZ87qyHQ88 https://youtu.be/-AZ87qyHQ88 The video is a Sichuan master chef showing the cooking procedure. He speaking of Sichuan accented mandarin. Gongbao jiding is traditional Sichuan dish. You might simply did not see that on menu at chengdu. Sichuan has 80million people, chengdu 16million, it’s expected to see highly clustered food style even in a city.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  宫保鸡丁 was invented by a Beijjng chef serving a mandarin on assignment in Sichuan, they had some visitors but didn’t have much time to prepare something, so they came up with that at the last minute, which impressed the visitors and became popular “back home.” Truly the definition of transplanted food (like how lemon chicken is popular in the states as canonical hunan food but is not anything of the sort). There are dishes that resemble it that are authentic Sichuan (eg laziji), so you are more likely to find something similar with a different name. I’ve been through much of Sichuan province, though much of that (Eg Daocheng) was actually Tibetan where Sichuan food was considered transplanted by default.
  - justicezyx 6y ago
    So you are saying a dish should be named after the chef who cooked it? A beijing chef cook in Sichuan, using the local cooking style and technique, are still considered a Beijing dish, that's what you implied here. I am not saying it's wrong. But that's not how Chinese people think about the dish...
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      That’s the story the Chinese go with, and it seems pretty reliable since it happened relatively recently during the Qing dynasty. It wasn’t named after the chef, but his boss of course. The fact that some food is more popular outside of the regions they represent isn’t really weird. You see that a lot with Chinese food inside and outside of China.
      - justicezyx 6y ago
        Thanks for “educating” myself, a Chinese, about how a story goes by Chinese. I wonder how many non Chinese people holding the same analytic rigorous as yours, claiming a story as authoritative over other interpretations, which were held by actual Chinese... That’s manifested in popular culture, like in the well received, yet awkwardly dismissive to many Chinese people, movie “The farewell”. It has this line of thought that the life of a Chinese belongs to his/her family, and so the old granny were deprived of knowing her cancer diagnose. A hilariously nonsensical idea. People were hiding from cancer diagnosis, because cancers were thought to be death sentence, and for many who were deemed financially impossible to afford the treatment, or is in a terminal state that death was inevitable, people were hidden from that to help them live a relatively less stressful last stage of their life. The nonsense of “life belongs to family” is such a fitting story goes by Chinese, according the western perspective...
        seanmcdirmid 6y ago
        > Thanks for “educating” myself, a Chinese, about how a story goes by Chinese. You welcome? I mean, its not like you can't find plenty of documentation on this if you are Chinese, it was only invented in the 19th century, its not like it was invented during the Qin dynasty where documentation is hard to come by and largely via folk tails.
        justicezyx 6y ago
        Sorry for being sarcastic. I meant to say that foreigner should respect the local view. Not blindly apply scientific judgement based on the data. Your tone of comments appears assuming a stance of authority over a local person (a Chinese here). That makes me uncomfortable. And finally, I did not see your references of proof. And I have given the youtube video with the Sichuan chef.
baybal2 6y ago
North China cuisine is itself a reverse adaptation of Mongol/Manchu adaptation of Chinese cuisine.