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63 Chinese Cuisines: The Complete Guide (2024)

202 points by mastax 2y ago

Marlinski 2y ago
There's so much to wonder and discover, this is a great post. I have been many times to China and it's always a delight for my tastebuds.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dyauspitr 2y ago
This is fantastic! Now do India.
- xemoka 2y ago
  Right? I'd love to see an article like this about Indian food.
csa 2y ago
This is insanely detailed and (mostly) accurate. It’s a great guide for Chinese-focused foodies.
dmoy 2y ago
Dang this is crazy level of detail > And yet, there is regionality. Jilin - around the city of Changchun - hues to my personal stereotype of ‘Northeastern’ food the closest, with their hearty stews and love of fermented cabbage. Hahah yuuuup. Every other day we have sauerkraut mixed with something. Literally just ate some random Jilin style sauerkraut dish a couple of hours ago. > In Yanbian along the North Korean border, there is a large group of ethnic Koreans called the Joseon, which have Korean food similar to what is found in North Korea. And yes, wow. If you pop down to Yanbian from Jilin/Changchun, you can get really good North Korean food, which is harder to find like anywhere else.
klik99 2y ago
Wow, food in China can be so hyperlocal that I thought surely this won’t include stuff that’s not know outside China, like Guilin Noodles, but its there just under a different name than what I expected. In particular, going to Hangzhou and trying the food there opened my eyes to how varied Chinese food is. There were a lot of lightly cooked vegetables and thinly sliced meats with subtle flavoring and sauces, the opposite of what I thought of saucy heavily cooked stir fry.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  The Guilin rice noodles you get in Beijing is just a non-local copy of the actual dish. You don’t even have to leave China to eat non-local Chinese food, you will find Kungpao Chicken in more places outside of Sichuan (especially Beijing) than you will find it actually in Sichuan. Hangzhou is very vanilla Chinese food, they like seafood without much spice added, also Ningbo is similar, but you’ll find plenty of Sichuan restaurants in both cities if that doesn’t float your boat. As a foreigner you learn the characters for Sichuan very quickly.
- Bimos 2y ago
  I would assume Guilin Noodles are cousin of Vietnam Pho, based on the similarity of their ingredients and their geographic positions.
- _0ffh 2y ago
  The couple who runs the website is half native Chinese and have lived and traveled there a lot. Source: Been watching their YT channel for a while.
umich2025 2y ago
this is amazing. Definitely going to use this when I visit China again. Level of detail and accuracy is incredible I definitely learned a lot while reading about which cuisines I missed when I visited China > Shaxian Wontons (沙县云吞). Top left. Similar in many ways to Cantonese style wontons The locals always use the term bianrou 扁肉 even though it was the Shaxian delicacies chain that popularized it outside of Fujian. I was a little confused when I saw my favorite dish called this.
gaoryrt 2y ago
What a great post, I'm so stunned.
luyu_wu 2y ago
Really in-depth and great article! As with some other commentors, I was surprised to not see a lot of dishes that I thought were staples, and quite a few were under different names. Nonetheless, really amazing---and made me quite hungry at well-past midnight!
mmooss 2y ago
> One country, one cuisine. A professor whose research focused on China (social sciences, not food) told me that Americans also tend to imagine China as similar to the US - one large country. They said it was more like Europe, if Europe was all one federal country - different languages, different cultures, different cuisines, etc. Holding China together has long been a preoccupation of imperial government. You can see the current regime gradually working to do that, from defeating the Nationalists finally in 1949, and trying to bring into the fold Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, .... For decades, the People's Liberation Army's main focus was internal, on its own people as in many dictatorships.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  PLA garrisons are still organized mainly inwards. However, the PAP (people’s armed police) has picked up much of the internal security slack after 1989, when China realized tanks weren’t a great way to put down a protest (the PAP actually has riot-gear and riot training that China didn’t have much of in 89).
- suraci 2y ago
  > Holding China together has long been a preoccupation of imperial government > You can see the current regime gradually working to do that, from defeating the Nationalists finally in 1949... these two part is not logically connected, PLA's war with KMT army is not about 'holding China together', since at the begining of the war, communits only had about 1/10 of territory, that was a war of __liberation__, it's the Chinese Civil War, it's like a pubg game, winner winner chicken dinner, there're many players, and the one who wins will be the leader of the whole china > different languages, different cultures, different cuisines that's also not true, since the Qin destiny, languages were unified in writing, for speaking, there are only dialects the Qin destiny is the the crossroad of china history made china very different with europe, and that makes westerners hard to imagine china culture, vice versa > For decades, the People's Liberation Army's main focus was internal, on its own people as in many dictatorships. for most Chinese, this is quite a praise to CCP, but it's also not (entirely) true it's complex, in short, the ruler's main goal is to keep its rule, dictatorships do not necessarily need to focus its own people, A simple counterexample: the dictator of the colony.
xuanwo 2y ago
If you want to cook Chinese food at home, you can check out this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chefwang https://www.youtube.com/@chefwang Please note that he mainly focuses on Sichuan cuisine, which is a bit spicy.
- _0ffh 2y ago
  Also, the guide itself is accompanying material to this cooking channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified Interestingly, they have referenced chef Wang a couple of times, among few other YT channels.
  - skyyler 2y ago
    Chinese Cooking Demystified is doing great work. Sometimes they seem like the only English language source talking about a specific thing.
- Lanolderen 2y ago
  This is also good: https://www.youtube.com/@CadenceGao https://www.youtube.com/@CadenceGao It's nice banter and rough cooking instructions. Since it goes over the process in a more chaotic manner it makes it IMO less intimidating/closer to how people cook their normal food. Look for the videos with english in the thumbnail.
hyruo 2y ago
I have known since I was a child that China must have more than eight major cuisines, but the exact number of cuisines has always been a controversial topic. This work puts an end to this controversy.
suraci 2y ago
More interesting is to research the history and development of regional cuisines For example, Xinjiang’s representative dish, Big Plate Chicken, was actually invented by a Sichuanese chef in the 1980s, primarily to serve truck drivers Another example is that both Beijing and Nanjing have roast duck as a signature dish. This is because in the 14th century, the Ming Dynasty emperor moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, bringing roast duck along with it.
dave333 2y ago
Stopped watching after 10 minutes due to it being a detailed discussion of methodology and not about food. Would like to see a video of "Top 20 Chinese Dishes You've Never Heard Of." And here it is - don't watch this on an empty stomach! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwb3SKSLDWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwb3SKSLDWQ
- netsharc 2y ago
  [flagged]
mstaoru 2y ago
Wait, where is General Tso's Chicken? My wife is from a small town just 50 km southeast of Nanjing, that is now folded into Nanjing proper, with metro and all. The town's language has nothing to do with Nanjing, they cannot understand each other at all. The town's cuisine is completely different, there's no duck at all, no similarities besides focus on rice as a staple. I applaud the author of the article. Living and traveling China for 13 years drove me to understand that, to me, there's really no "X Chinese Cuisines", every little town has something unique and some cooking methods that are totally different from the next little town. Same with the language. It's a shame that it's now being destroyed.

202 points by mastax 2y ago

There's so much to wonder and discover, this is a great post. I have been many times to China and it's always a delight for my tastebuds.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dyauspitr 2y ago

This is fantastic! Now do India.

xemoka 2y ago
Right? I'd love to see an article like this about Indian food.

csa 2y ago

This is insanely detailed and (mostly) accurate. It’s a great guide for Chinese-focused foodies.

dmoy 2y ago

Dang this is crazy level of detail > And yet, there is regionality. Jilin - around the city of Changchun - hues to my personal stereotype of ‘Northeastern’ food the closest, with their hearty stews and love of fermented cabbage. Hahah yuuuup. Every other day we have sauerkraut mixed with something. Literally just ate some random Jilin style sauerkraut dish a couple of hours ago. > In Yanbian along the North Korean border, there is a large group of ethnic Koreans called the Joseon, which have Korean food similar to what is found in North Korea. And yes, wow. If you pop down to Yanbian from Jilin/Changchun, you can get really good North Korean food, which is harder to find like anywhere else.

klik99 2y ago

Wow, food in China can be so hyperlocal that I thought surely this won’t include stuff that’s not know outside China, like Guilin Noodles, but its there just under a different name than what I expected. In particular, going to Hangzhou and trying the food there opened my eyes to how varied Chinese food is. There were a lot of lightly cooked vegetables and thinly sliced meats with subtle flavoring and sauces, the opposite of what I thought of saucy heavily cooked stir fry.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
The Guilin rice noodles you get in Beijing is just a non-local copy of the actual dish. You don’t even have to leave China to eat non-local Chinese food, you will find Kungpao Chicken in more places outside of Sichuan (especially Beijing) than you will find it actually in Sichuan. Hangzhou is very vanilla Chinese food, they like seafood without much spice added, also Ningbo is similar, but you’ll find plenty of Sichuan restaurants in both cities if that doesn’t float your boat. As a foreigner you learn the characters for Sichuan very quickly.
Bimos 2y ago
I would assume Guilin Noodles are cousin of Vietnam Pho, based on the similarity of their ingredients and their geographic positions.
_0ffh 2y ago
The couple who runs the website is half native Chinese and have lived and traveled there a lot. Source: Been watching their YT channel for a while.

umich2025 2y ago

this is amazing. Definitely going to use this when I visit China again. Level of detail and accuracy is incredible I definitely learned a lot while reading about which cuisines I missed when I visited China > Shaxian Wontons (沙县云吞). Top left. Similar in many ways to Cantonese style wontons The locals always use the term bianrou 扁肉 even though it was the Shaxian delicacies chain that popularized it outside of Fujian. I was a little confused when I saw my favorite dish called this.

gaoryrt 2y ago

What a great post, I'm so stunned.

luyu_wu 2y ago

Really in-depth and great article! As with some other commentors, I was surprised to not see a lot of dishes that I thought were staples, and quite a few were under different names. Nonetheless, really amazing---and made me quite hungry at well-past midnight!

mmooss 2y ago

> One country, one cuisine. A professor whose research focused on China (social sciences, not food) told me that Americans also tend to imagine China as similar to the US - one large country. They said it was more like Europe, if Europe was all one federal country - different languages, different cultures, different cuisines, etc. Holding China together has long been a preoccupation of imperial government. You can see the current regime gradually working to do that, from defeating the Nationalists finally in 1949, and trying to bring into the fold Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, .... For decades, the People's Liberation Army's main focus was internal, on its own people as in many dictatorships.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
PLA garrisons are still organized mainly inwards. However, the PAP (people’s armed police) has picked up much of the internal security slack after 1989, when China realized tanks weren’t a great way to put down a protest (the PAP actually has riot-gear and riot training that China didn’t have much of in 89).
suraci 2y ago
> Holding China together has long been a preoccupation of imperial government > You can see the current regime gradually working to do that, from defeating the Nationalists finally in 1949... these two part is not logically connected, PLA's war with KMT army is not about 'holding China together', since at the begining of the war, communits only had about 1/10 of territory, that was a war of __liberation__, it's the Chinese Civil War, it's like a pubg game, winner winner chicken dinner, there're many players, and the one who wins will be the leader of the whole china > different languages, different cultures, different cuisines that's also not true, since the Qin destiny, languages were unified in writing, for speaking, there are only dialects the Qin destiny is the the crossroad of china history made china very different with europe, and that makes westerners hard to imagine china culture, vice versa > For decades, the People's Liberation Army's main focus was internal, on its own people as in many dictatorships. for most Chinese, this is quite a praise to CCP, but it's also not (entirely) true it's complex, in short, the ruler's main goal is to keep its rule, dictatorships do not necessarily need to focus its own people, A simple counterexample: the dictator of the colony.

xuanwo 2y ago

If you want to cook Chinese food at home, you can check out this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chefwang https://www.youtube.com/@chefwang Please note that he mainly focuses on Sichuan cuisine, which is a bit spicy.

_0ffh 2y ago
Also, the guide itself is accompanying material to this cooking channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified Interestingly, they have referenced chef Wang a couple of times, among few other YT channels.
- skyyler 2y ago
  Chinese Cooking Demystified is doing great work. Sometimes they seem like the only English language source talking about a specific thing.
Lanolderen 2y ago
This is also good: https://www.youtube.com/@CadenceGao https://www.youtube.com/@CadenceGao It's nice banter and rough cooking instructions. Since it goes over the process in a more chaotic manner it makes it IMO less intimidating/closer to how people cook their normal food. Look for the videos with english in the thumbnail.

hyruo 2y ago

I have known since I was a child that China must have more than eight major cuisines, but the exact number of cuisines has always been a controversial topic. This work puts an end to this controversy.

suraci 2y ago

More interesting is to research the history and development of regional cuisines For example, Xinjiang’s representative dish, Big Plate Chicken, was actually invented by a Sichuanese chef in the 1980s, primarily to serve truck drivers Another example is that both Beijing and Nanjing have roast duck as a signature dish. This is because in the 14th century, the Ming Dynasty emperor moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, bringing roast duck along with it.

dave333 2y ago

Stopped watching after 10 minutes due to it being a detailed discussion of methodology and not about food. Would like to see a video of "Top 20 Chinese Dishes You've Never Heard Of." And here it is - don't watch this on an empty stomach! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwb3SKSLDWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwb3SKSLDWQ

netsharc 2y ago
[flagged]

mstaoru 2y ago

Wait, where is General Tso's Chicken? My wife is from a small town just 50 km southeast of Nanjing, that is now folded into Nanjing proper, with metro and all. The town's language has nothing to do with Nanjing, they cannot understand each other at all. The town's cuisine is completely different, there's no duck at all, no similarities besides focus on rice as a staple. I applaud the author of the article. Living and traveling China for 13 years drove me to understand that, to me, there's really no "X Chinese Cuisines", every little town has something unique and some cooking methods that are totally different from the next little town. Same with the language. It's a shame that it's now being destroyed.